NBA Daily Fantasy Helper: Friday 4/19/19

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.

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

Let's take a look at who you should target on today's main slate.

Best of the Best

Russell Westbrook ($11,800): The top mid-range options are on the cheap end tonight, so even though our value plays aren't super inexpensive, it's not too tough to fit Westbrook tonight. Westbrook's fantasy production hasn't been anything special this series, notching 3.3 and 47.0 FanDuel points, and that's pulled his salary down from $12,100 where it sat for those games. His workload has been absolutely fine though, topping 37 minutes each night, and just because it's the playoffs doesn't mean it's time to start overreacting to small-sample efficiency changes. Westbrook averaged the league's fifth-most FanDuel points per minute in the regular season. With the Oklahoma City Thunder down 0-2 in the series, we can also expect 37 minutes to be right around his floor. He played that many even in 20-point blowout loss in Game 2, and with this deficit in the series there's no reason for OKC to hold back. Russ should get as many minutes as he can handle tonight.