NBA Daily Fantasy Helper: Friday 6/8/18

If you're new to daily fantasy basketball -- maybe you started your DFS journey during the MLB or NFL seasons, or maybe basketball is your sport and this will be your first year giving it a shot -- you're in for a treat. The NBA scene changes hugely on a week-to-week, day-to-day, and -- depending on injury news -- even a minute-to-minute basis, making every slate a unique one that requires an ever-changing approach.

With so much changing so quickly, we're here with plenty of tools to help you out. We have daily projections, a matchup heat map, a lineup optimizer, and a ton of other great resources to help give you an edge in our new Single Game Boost format for the Conference Finals.

For these contests, you'll fill out a five-man roster with a $60,000 salary cap. Those five players include an MVP, a Star, a Pro, and two utility players. The MVP will have his FanDuel points doubled. The Star will have his fantasy points multiplied by 1.5. The Pro gets a multiplier of 1.2. The two utility players will return the standard FanDuel points.

We'll also be coming at you with this primer every day, breaking down a few of the day's top plays.

Let's take a look at who you should target on today's one-game slate.

LeBron James (FanDuel Price: $22,000)

The worst fantasy score LeBron has put up in his last five games was 60.3 FanDuel points in Game 2 against the Warriors. Over that stretch, he has averaged 69.9 FanDuel points per game, and in his first three games of this series he's averaging 67.8.

He played a ridiculous 46.9 minutes in Game 3 (giving him 46.1 per game in the series), and unless this is a blowout we can expect him to be right up in that range again. Playing nearly a full 48 minutes is obviously a recipe for massive fantasy production for the King, who finished the regular season fifth in the NBA (and first among players in this series) with 1.47 FanDuel points per minute.

His combination of an unmatched floor and ridiculous ceiling make him well worth paying up for, and make him a terrific option for your MVP spot in tonight's single-game lineups.

Stephen Curry ($15,000)

Despite Kevin Durant's offensive explosion and Curry's ice-cold shooting in Game 3, there's still a lot to like about Curry's fantasy outlook tonight.

His 21.7 field goal attempts per game are still tops among Warriors players in this series, while his 12.7 three-point attempts are 5.0 more than anyone else in the series. Steph finished the regular season with a 61.8% effective field goal percentage, which is a good indicator that we can expect an uptick in production again, with that percentage sitting at 50.0% for the series.

The Cavs allowed the NBA's third-most made three-pointers per 100 possessions in the regular season, and despite the awful Game 3 showing, Curry having double-digit attempts from long range in every Finals game gives him massive offensive upside.

J.R. Smith ($7,000)

Value is especially important if you're trying to pay up for LeBron, and despite a slight uptick in salary, Smith continues to be a unique value option.

His 34.4 minutes per game rank seventh among all players in this series, but his price tag ranks only 12th tonight. Nobody else priced below $10,000 is averaging 30-plus per game and he's tied for the cheapest salary among players averaging at least 20.

Smith's lack of efficiency has kept his price down, but he bounced back on that front in Game 3, when he notched a strong 26.8 fantasy points. He averaged 0.58 FanDuel points per minute in the regular season and is now averaging 0.57 in this series. If you put that alongside his big workload, it's easy to like him at this price point.

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.