NBA

3 Daily Fantasy Basketball Players to Avoid on 3/21/19

Jason Schandl  —  @JasonSchandl Mar 21st, 2019
The potential for big minutes isn't enough to overcome Devin Booker's high salary and tough matchup. Who else should you fade on Thursday night?

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?

Devin Booker, SG, Phoenix Suns

Price: $9,500

The Phoenix Suns are thin while playing without Kelly Oubre and Tyler Johnson, and Devin Booker played 40 minutes in his last outing, his third time hitting that mark in his last five games. I'm usually a sucker for big minutes, but this is still a spot to fade Booker.

The Phoenix Suns are seven-point underdogs in the game with the slate's lowest over/under (217.5). So there's already a combination of some blowout risk and the potential for a very low-scoring game out of the Suns. It's not just scoring that could be limited either, as the Detroit Pistons have played at the NBA's slowest pace (96.2) since the All-Star break, which will limit the opportunity for peripheral stats that a high-paced Phoenix team usually has.

With this matchup likely to limit Booker's per-minute efficiency, you're really relying on those massive minutes to give him any real chance at being a strong value, and even though the recent 40's show his upside, he's also played fewer than 34 twice in his last seven games. At this price Booker would need to average 1.36 FanDuel points per minute to return 5-times value if he played 35 minutes, and that would require him overcoming the tough matchup to produce well over his season-average of 1.13.

Myles Turner, C, Indiana Pacers

FanDuel Price: $7,900

With at least 45 FanDuel points in three of his last seven games, it's easy to see why Myles Turner's ceiling might be intriguing. Tonight's not the time to try to get exposure to that though.

Those three games saw him average 34.2 minutes per game, playing at least 31.4 in each, but he's at real risk of limited playing time tonight. He's averaging only 30.6 minutes per game since the All-Star break, and adding in tonight's blowout risk means it wouldn't by any surprise if he only played minutes in the mid to high-20s, with the Indiana Pacers sitting as 11-point underdogs (the slate's biggest) against the Golden State Warriors.

The Dubs are also expected to get DeMarcus Cousins back tonight, and Cousins leads the Warriors in rebound rate (16.3%; minimum 50 minutes played), while their defensive rating has been half a point better with him on the floor than off. That makes this matchup particularly tough in the middle for Turner.

There are also a ton of high-priced center options in play tonight, including Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, Andre Drummond and Rudy Gobert, so the opportunity cost of playing Turner as your one-off center is not insignificant.

Ricky Rubio, PG, Utah Jazz

FanDuel Price: $6,600

Usually the Atlanta Hawks are a matchup we can't get enough exposure to -- especially for point guards. Ricky Rubio bucks that trend tonight.

Rubio's had a couple of separate injury absences this season, and the Utah Jazz don't have much incentive to push him too hard down the stretch this regular season, as they're not playing for anything more than seeding in the West. They've played in nothing but blowouts recently, winning each of their last five by at least 15 points, and that has afforded them the ability to take it very easy on their starters. Rubio hasn't hit even 27 minutes in any of those games, averaging only 22.6 per game. And still, his salary is floating around where we've seen it all year.

The Jazz are only seven-point favorites tonight, so it may not be prudent to count on another 15-point win, but a seven-point spread also doesn't rule out blowout potential at all. The Hawks rank bottom-12 in net rating since the All-Star break, and they have little incentive to win games as that would serve to do nothing but hurt their lottery odds.

A closer game could bump Rubio's minutes into the high-20s, but Utah still isn't likely to have (or need to have) their foot on the gas here, and he's still not likely to get any more run than strictly necessary. Even with a bump in efficiency against Atlanta, that makes him a serious long-shot to provide any sort of fantasy value at this price.


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.