Update: LaMelo Ball will reportedly “not play 35 minutes but might play 30” which is a death sentence to his upside. I’m swapping off him unfortunately. I still like using Williams and Washington with Trae Young, but that game stack is less of a priority now. My favorite may now be DeRozan and Holmgren as a mini-stack.
Note: The slate breakdowns will be much more focused on GPPs because the way to play cash games is simply to use the optimal team from the projections (unless it’s giving you a risky min-price player in which case I’d exclude them).
Optimal Plays: Obi Toppin (DK lock), Jaren Jackson, Evan Mobley, Tyus Jones, Desmond Bane, Zach LaVine, Jeremy Sochan
Top GPP Plays: LaMelo Ball, Trae Young, Mark Williams, Walker Kessler (DK), PJ Washington, Markelle Fultz, Zach Collins, Jordan Poole, Brandon Ingram
Opening Night in NBA is really fun for GPPs. When there’s a lot of uncertainty, the brain’s natural reaction is to seek safety. This plays into our favor, because there is no safety on a slate like this, but people will play chalk anyway because they perceive it to be safer. Unless it’s Obi Toppin on DraftKings, who you just have to play, I think there’s merit to fading almost all the chalk. You just don’t actually know what the rotations are going to look like. Just last night we nailed the slate by predicting Saric could play more than everyone expected and crush in his role. But that easily could’ve gone the other way and it wouldn’t have stunned me. We’re guessing here, and the edge is massive but it’s not based on us being perfect guessers. The edge is how much you embrace the unknown instead of fearing it.
If you make plays tonight with the mindset of “I don’t want to get beat by this guy” then you’re wasting this great opportunity to ship GPPs. There are so many players on this slate capable of going for monster scores at single digit ownership. You should want to roster as many as possible, and avoid wasting roster spots on a guy projecting 2 points better and 20% higher owned. That 2 points is worth less than it will ever be going forward, because I will never be more uncertain about the minutes these guys will play. And the minutes are extremely important for NBA DFS. So this is the time to play slightly suboptimal players at extremely low ownership.
This season I plan to do a lot of game stacking, but tonight it’s not as much of a priority. I’ll still do it if it fits well, but I don’t expect coaches to give up on the Opening Night game quite as quickly, and I don’t think we really know who the closers are outside of the absolute studs. For example, Wiggins didn’t close last night, and with Draymond out that seemed like an extremely unlikely scenario. So it’s not a requirement because there are so many unknowns tonight, but if you are between a few studs and two of them are in the same game, that’s always ideal.
To reiterate, with how much uncertainty there is on opening night, it’s really not smart to play the chalk. If you sort the projections, you can see that with every chalk option, there is often somebody else pretty close in projection that projects much lower owned. On FanDuel, some prime examples include Markelle Fultz over Tyus Jones, and Zach Collins over Jeremy Sochan. Also on FanDuel, Alec Burks projects as one of the top PT/$ guards on the slate, but projects to be much lower owned than other guards around him that project very similar on a PT/$ basis. On DraftKings, Mark Williams and Walker Kessler project very similarly on a PT/$ basis to the likes of Nikola Vucevic and Myles Turner, but are projecting to be very low owned while the big names are expected to garner hefty ownership. Williams and Kessler are two of our top GPP plays on DraftKings tonight, and Williams is a great option on FanDuel as well. Kessler is priced too high on FanDuel tonight, so we prefer him on DK only.
Desmond Bane projects as one of the highest owned players tonight, but rightfully so. Ja Morant is suspended for the first 25 games, and the rest of this Memphis squad is either hurt or defensive minded players. Bane should be the focal point of this offense until Ja comes back. In 13 games without Morant, Adams, and Clarke, Bane’s usage skyrocketed and he averaged 37.2 FPPG. In what should be a high paced matchup, Bane carries one of the best floor/ceiling combos on the slate and is viable in all formats, but you can fade anyone chalky tonight in GPPs. Jaren Jackson also projects as one of the top plays on the slate tonight, and was a huge beneficiary of Morant, Adams, and Clarke being off the court last season. Last season with these Grizzlies off the floor, Jackson averaged 41.2 FPPG, which would be a complete smash at his price on this slate. The only concern with Jackson is that he historically gets himself into foul trouble, but if he can stay out of it, he possesses a huge ceiling to go along with a solid floor. Jackson is also a great play in all formats.
While we love both of these players tonight, you could definitely consider a fade on opening night with so many unknowns around the league. Another optimal play you can use in cash games or lineups with a chalky stud or two is Zach Lavine. He won’t give you a huge ownership differential from Bane, but Lavine does have a high ceiling in a matchup with the Thunder. If you’re going to eat chalk, you want it to be guys with very high ceilings. A lower owned option we like in this price range is Brandon Ingram. Ingram projects 3 points less than Bane at a similar price, and as an elite scorer in a fast paced matchup, Ingram makes sense here as a pivot. The last guy to mention around this price is Jordan Poole. Poole is a deep GPP play only, since he projects the worst amongst this group, while also being the most expensive. However, Poole should be the focal point of this offense, and we know Poole is not afraid to keep shooting when he is hot. In a game with the highest total on the slate, Poole is worth using in large field GPPs.
When looking for pivots off of Jackson, PJ Washington looks good at a much cheaper price tag. PJ does not possess the ceiling that Jackson does, but if Jackson were to get in foul trouble or just simply not have a great game, PJ could be a solid option to have instead. The other potential route is only possible on DraftKings, where Demar Derozan is PF eligible. Derozan can score in bunches and is a viable pivot option tonight in a plus matchup.
Evan Mobley projects right there with Jackson in just about every category (points, ownership, PT/$), and is a phenomenal play in all formats. Mobley projects so well because Jarrett Allen will miss tonight’s game, which benefits Mobley greatly. Mobley and Jackson are two of the best plays on the slate, but with both of them in your lineup, your lineup becomes pretty chalky. Lock them both in your cash lineups, but you will probably want to fade one or both of them in your GPP lineups. Our two favorite options are in the above paragraph, but you can also use the projections to find a good pivot at whatever price point you need.
The ownership within the studs is pretty spread out tonight. Our top stud is Luka Doncic, as he will face the San Antonio Spurs who over the last couple years have just handed out fantasy points in bunches to their opposition. Doncic will see the highest ownership of the high priced studs, but we do not expect him to be overly chalky, so he’s fine to use in all formats.
Now we get to my favorite way to attack GPPs, which is with game stacks. One of our favorite studs in GPPs tonight is LaMelo Ball. Ball projects as the second highest scorer on the slate despite costing less than some of the other studs. Ball also correlates well with one of our before-mentioned GPP plays, Mark Williams. You can run Ball with Williams or with PJ Washington and get two presumed closers (albeit not guaranteed) from the Hornets side. On the other side of the ball, Trae Young is also one of our favorite GPP studs, as he projects for the 4th most points on the entire slate and is projected to be just 2% owned. The Hornets have struggled to defend the three for the past few years now, so Trae Young should get a lot of opportunities from deep tonight. We like playing Young as a runback to Lamelo, along with Washington and/or Williams, as our favorite game stack of the night. Both of these young point guards can drop 60+ and win you the slate, and the only reason they are low owned is because their mean projections make their PT/$ value slightly worse than the 7k players. The super balanced build will be really popular tonight, so paying up for the expensive studs is a great way to be unique.
Conclusion: This is a great slate to sacrifice a couple projected points and get low ownership. I’m confident as soon as the slate locks you’ll be glad you have 2% owned studs rather than 30% owned studs. All it takes is one steal to fall into their lap and you’ve overcome the difference in projected points. And realistically, your guy could retroactively project way better if he plays more minutes than the chalky guy. And we really don’t know how minutes will shake out on Opening Night. I’m playing at least 2 lineups tonight and one of them will be a stack of Charlotte and Atlanta while the other will be a bunch of various guys that project pretty well but with very low ownership. There’s no need to dip way down into guys that project poorly. There are so many good options on a slate this large that project for low ownership. Don’t go crazy. Stick to the good plays at two percent ownership rather than the bad plays at half a percent.