NBA

3 Daily Fantasy Basketball Players to Avoid on 10/25/16

Carmelo Anthony has to go up against Lebron James in a difficult matchup. Which other players are in a tough spot?

Welcome back to another season of daily fantasy basketball! In DFS, 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 tonight in your DFS NBA lineups, but what about some 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 each night. After all, it takes only one player to sink a lineup.

With a small slate of NBA games on tonight, searching for the landmines could mean the difference from winning or losing your contests.

Carmelo Anthony, SF, New York Knicks

FanDuel Price: $8,000

Being a landmine in NBA DFS requires several qualities. A player's matchup and price has a lot to do with it, as does their potential ownership or recent hot and cold streaks. While we don't have any prior games to go off of to judge a player's ownership, Carmelo Anthony embodies almost every other landmine quality tonight.

Anthony is already a questionable DFS option on most nights. He is a very scoring-reliant asset, and he has nights where he doesn't add much in other categories to help him reach value. At $8,000, you need around 40 FanDuel points for Anthony to reach value. Unlike other fantasy sites, the fact that you lose a full point for turnovers and don't get a bonus for three-pointers hurts him even more.

Even though he had some very nice games against the Cleveland Cavaliers last season, most of them were at the beginning of the year before the Cavs' coaching change and defensive reboot. One factor that will remain the same from last season is going against LeBron James, who held players he was defending to only 37.4% shooting from the floor and only 32.1% shooting from beyond 15 feet last season. Anthony is still a fine tournament play because of his upside and potential for this game to be a high-scoring affair, but he may not be worth the risk in cash games.

Evan Turner, SF, Portland Trail Blazers

FanDuel Price: $5,600

The Portland Trail Blazers spent most of their offseason money on Evan Turner, signing him to a $70 million deal, but things have progressed slowly. Turner is coming off the bench in favor of Maurice Harkless, and in what should be the lowest-scoring game of the night, according to the implied totals, there are better options at small forward,

Outside of one solid preseason game against these same Utah Jazz, Turner could not put the ball in the basket in the preseason. If we ignore the game against Utah, Turner was only 14 for 45 during the other exhibition games.

Combined with the slower-paced game and Turner's cold preseason, he likely won't get the minutes needed to be a strong play today on FanDuel. He is going to have to go against some tough defenders, too. Rodney Hood is going to have to play a lot tonight because of the injuries to Gordon Hayward and Alec Burks, and if Hood matches up against Turner, that hurts the newest Blazer even more.

Last season, Turner took over 31% of his shots from 10 to 15 feet from the basket, which isn't his strong suit. It's best to wait and see how Portland utilizes him before investing, especially with a tough matchup in his debut.

Andre Iguodala, SF, Golden State Warriors

FanDuel Price: $4,300

If the addition of Kevin Durant is going to impact the offensive output of Klay Thompson and Draymond Green -- which it did in the preseason -- then it makes sense that Andre Iguodala will see a diminished offensive role.

Over the preseason, Iguodala barely shot the ball. A lack of points is not a complete killer in DFS, but it means Iguodala is going to have to beast everywhere else to be valuable. The days of him handling the ball a lot with the second unit are likely over. Outside of one game where Iggy dropped 13 points on 10 shot attempts, he averaged only 3.5 shot attempts per night in the Warriors' other preseason games.

On top of that, the Warriors have a tough matchup tonight against the San Antonio Spurs. Iguodala figures to be cheap for most of the year, but he has very little upside when Golden State's stars are healthy.