3 Daily Fantasy Basketball Players to Avoid on 3/22/19
In daily fantasy basketball, finding players you want to roster is a lot easier than finding players to avoid.
You can find a ton of great information and research on guys you might want to include in your DFS NBA lineups, but what about guys you may want to lessen your exposure to, or even fade altogether?
Avoiding players whose matchups or situations aren't as great as they seem can often be just as important as finding the best targets. After all, it takes only one player to sink a lineup. Searching for the landmines could mean the difference between winning and losing your contests. Which players should we avoid tonight?
LeBron James, SF, Los Angeles Lakers
FanDuel Price: $10,800
With tonight's expensive players all coming with some serious drawbacks, it might seem appealing to look at a cheap LeBron James in a high-paced matchup. He just carries too much risk, though.
He's expected to play after missing last game with a sore groin, and he's been on the shelf for two of the Los Angeles Lakers' last three games. Even when he plays, his minutes have been down while the Lakers play for nothing but improving their draft pick, and he's averaged 31.8 minutes per game over his last five. With a lingering injury affecting him, we can also expect the team to be hyper-conservative with his minutes tonight.
Other than their pace, the Nets don't make for a particularly good matchup, either. They rank third in the NBA in defensive rating since the All-Star break, allowing only 105.5 points per 100 possessions. The Lakers have a bottom-five offensive rating since the break, and we can expect them to struggle to get much going tonight.
Montrezl Harrell, PF, Los Angeles Clippers
Price: $8,400
Montrezl Harrell has been on fire lately, topping 40 FanDuel points in four straight games and averaging 44.4 FanDuel points per game in that time. That has driven his salary up over $1,000, after he was priced at a much more reasonable $7.200 in the first of those games.
That production has come on some likely unsustainable efficiency, though. He's played fewer than 30 minutes in three of those last four games, averaging only 28.4 per. Even with his average of 1.23 FanDuel points per minute on the year, we'd expect him to post about 35 FanDuel points in those minutes.
So at $7,200, there would be some reason to be intrigued by Harrell, but seeing as he needs 42 FanDuel points to hit 5-times value on tonight's salary (that would be 1.48 per minute if he played that average of 28.4), even a soft matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers isn't enough to overcome this increased salary.
Serge Ibaka, PF, Toronto Raptors
Price: $5,700
Serge Ibaka played his first game back from a three-game suspension on Tuesday, and for the second time in a row he came off the bench. As the Toronto Raptors prepare for the playoffs, it looks like we're going to get a healthy dose of Marc Gasol in the starting lineup, which should severely limit Ibaka's fantasy value.
Even in an overtime game on Tuesday, Ibaka only saw 22.7 minutes of run, and he hasn't played more than 23.9 in any of his six games off the bench since the All-Star break, averaging a paltry 20.9 per game in that sample.
Yes, his salary is coming down to reflect that, but even his 1.1 FanDuel points per minute aren't enough to make a workload that small worth even considering at this price. Unless his salary comes way down, or we see him move back into the starting lineup, it doesn't look like Ibaka's going to offer any sort of daily fantasy appeal down the stretch.
Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
