Daily Fantasy NBA Basketball Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/3/16 Welcome to Sunday NBA Basketball! It's everyone's favorite time of year. Lowry and DeRozan were late scratches just now (I'm writing this on Saturday), and thankfully our lineup optimizer had both outside the optimal lineup. Let's hope the luck continues! Today's slate is predictably a total mess. It's very tough to know who will play and who won't today, for injury reasons, shutting down dudes for the season reasons, and teams resting their players for the playoffs. Still, we should be able to pick out a good set of core guys to build around. Today is a day to be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the updates article for sure. A quick note on format, to that end. It's going to be a little different. I'm going to highlight some key plays, for sure, but there will also be some thoughts on how the day could go in general based on the playoff picture. Whew, enough preamble - let's do it. Now’s your chance to get DFSR Pro with NBA Optimal Lineups, Projections, Player Cards and Google Chrome extension that auto-populates your lineups into FanDuel. Or try a free trial of our base package with projections for every player. While the seasons overlap, you'll get access to our tools for the NBA and NHL (and MLB when the time comes)! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! First time with NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered. POINT GUARD All the damned cheap guys you could pick from today. Barea is great once again if Deron is out, Ronnie Price is worth a look if he starts again, likewise for Jerian Grant, and heck, even Shane Larkin. The only rub here, of course, is that this time of the season is absolutely bananas. If we know any of these guys is starting, they're all worth a look. Damian Lillard - FD 8000 DK 8600 Opponent - GSW FD Proj. Pts - 38.84 DK Proj. Pts - 41.92 Stephen Curry - FD 10200 DK 10300 Opponent - POR FD Proj. Pts - 48.98 DK Proj. Pts - 53.23 Or you could go entirely in the opposite direction today. It's the age old question this time of year - do you want teams with nothing to play for because they suck, or nothing to play for because they're already in the playoffs? I'm giving these two their full minutes today because the Dubs still want the record (and redemption after losing their first home game), and the...

Daily Fantasy Basketball Injury News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/1/16 Welcome to the daily updates and injury news article. We'll try and update it right up to line-up locks with as much information as comes across our desks. Let's get to it! Last night's picks can be found here, so you can wrap your mind around what you need to be looking at before lineups lock tonight. By the way - we keep our projection system updated with all of the changes as they occur throughout the day right up until lineup lock. Every day. If you want access to that system so you can cut out a lot of the research element, click the button below! START YOUR FREE TRIAL! What We Know April Fools Day is arguably the dumbest holiday, and it's been made worse by social media. Nothing more fun that watching all of your uncreative friends make transparent and dumb April Fools "jokes," only to double down on their lack of a sense of humor by tacking on a "JK GUYS!! We're not actually having Sextuplets!!" Those of us who are old enough to remember April Fools Days of yore when you could go until, say, noon without even realizing it was going on will hardly be believed when we explain to our grandchildren how much less torturous it used to be. Deep breaths. On to basketball. DeMarcus Cousins is out, and Kosta Koufos looks delicious Cousins has missed 2 of his last 5 games, and we've seen what Koufos can do when the Boogie disappears. He paid 6x and 8.5x points per dollar on his FanDuel price in those contests, and his erratic role has him priced at a deep discount to what he can do as a starter. Great play in any format. Rudy Gay was a chalk play the last time Boogie missed one, and was truly terrible. Gay has played a much smaller roll in the offense in general recently, and I'm not sure he warrants even his current discounted price. Deron Williams is out, JJ Barea is playing Barea's price continues to climb, but frankly, he's earning it right now. He's on back to back games with 39+ fantasy points, and the Pistons are basically a league average match-up for opposing point guards. Increased price means increased risk on Barea, but he's so involved right now that it's hard to imagine him not having a respectable floor here regardless given than he's paid 6x+ points per dollar in three of his four games in this role. Zaza Pachulia is starting Zaza's been on up and down minutes recently, and the point-per-minute production has been similarly erratic, but...

Daily Fantasy Basketball Injury News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 3/30/16 Welcome to the daily updates and injury news article. We'll try and update it right up to line-up locks with as much information as comes across our desks. Let's get to it! Last night's picks can be found here, so you can wrap your mind around what you need to be looking at before lineups lock tonight. By the way - we keep our projection system updated with all of the changes as they occur throughout the day right up until lineup lock. Every day. If you want access to that system so you can cut out a lot of the research element, click the button below! START YOUR FREE TRIAL! What We Know Justin Anderson and Dwight Powell will start again tonight for the Mavs. And they'll send Salah Mejri back to the land of obscurity from whence he came. Both Powell and Anderson are capable of having excellent games against the Knicks today, with Powell being the safer of the two on account of his longer track record and better rebounding ability. Anderson has flashed some significant upside, though - he's cheaper than Powell, and seems to have the ability to rack up defensive stats. Both are worth of consideration even in a big daily fantasy basketball slate tonight. Raymond Felton and J.J. Barea keep their bumps since Deron Williams has been ruled out Williams has missed three games now, but in case you missed it, both Barea and Felton have been generally excellent in his absence, and both are in a lovely spot against the Knicks' generally lousy back-court today. Felton is more of the steady-Eddie of the two, putting up 30, 30, and 25 fantasy points in each of his last three games, but Barea's role as the primary ball-handler gives him 40+ fantasy point upside when his teammates are knocking down shots. Paul Pierce is out, so we're bumping Jeff Green The little injuries are sometimes the most significant when it comes to winning big tournaments, and that could be the case here. Green played 32, 27, and 45 minutes in the last three games Pierce missed, and while he wasn't a consistent performer in those games, we know he has it in him to put up reasonable point and rebounding totals. I suspect he won't be a very big play at all, and while I wouldn't play him with your money in 50/50s, he'd be a mandatory part of a Clippers/Wolves stack for a big tourney. Jrue Holiday will miss the rest of the NBA season. This leaves the Pelicans with something like 2 guards total to play against the...

Daily Fantasy Basketball Injury News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 3/29/16 Welcome to the daily updates and injury news article. We'll try and update it right up to line-up locks with as much information as comes across our desks. Let's get to it! Last night's picks can be found here, so you can wrap your mind around what you need to be looking at before lineups lock tonight. By the way - we keep our projection system updated with all of the changes as they occur throughout the day right up until lineup lock. Every day. If you want access to that system so you can cut out a lot of the research element, click the button below! START YOUR FREE TRIAL! What We Know All seems relatively quiet at this point. Which of course means we'll get some late scratches that will ruin everything. But for now, the news is relatively light. Still, there are a few important things to note, so let's get to them. LeBron is out. I covered this last night, and the ramifications are fairly straightforward, here. Kyrie and Love get huge boosts, and the rest of the guys stay relatively the same. One interesting punt tonight, though, will be Iman Shumpert. He played 32 minutes the last time LeBron sat, and had the rare 2/4/5/1/3 line. He's a capable shooter when the game calls for it, and might get a few extra looks with Kyrie being blanketed by Patrick Beverley. Not sure it's "safe," per se, but it's a way to punt on a short slate with relatively little injury news elsewhere. Victor Oladipo has been cleared to play One never knows what Scott Skiles will do on a given day, but as of now it looks like Oladipo will suit up for tonight's game against the Nets. I wouldn't trust Oladipo as far as I can throw him at these prices, and especially with wrist problems - we've seen countless instances where a wrist issue takes a huge toll on field goal percentage (Nic Batum last year comes to mind) - but his return does throw a little cold water on the value of guys like Elfrid Payton (who should relinquish some ball handling duties) and Evan Fournier. I still like both, however, given how tough a night it is in general. Aaron Gordon gets a bump because Ersan Ilyasova is out again. Recently this has freed up for non-commodities Andrew Nicholson and Jason Smith, but there has also been some signs that Aaron Gordon could be given regular minutes once again. The tricky thing with the Magic, here, is that their game scripts have been all over the place....

Daily Fantasy NBA Basketball Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - 3/29/16 Hello, DFSR family! You may (or may not) have noticed that I was absent this last Friday and Saturday, and that our team of writers picked up the slack. You probably (didn't) miss me - and don't worry, I missed you, too. But we were busy welcoming in a member of our actual family! We had another son in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and Doug was gracious enough to get writers together to cover me in my brief paternity leave. Well, I'm back! So - I imagine stuff has been happening in the NBA. I've researched a bunch and have gotten as caught up as I can, so let's get to work making some picks! Now’s your chance to get DFSR Pro with NBA Optimal Lineups, Projections, Player Cards and Google Chrome extension that auto-populates your lineups into FanDuel. Or try a free trial of our base package with projections for every player. While the seasons overlap, you'll get access to our tools for the NBA and NHL (and MLB when the time comes)! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! First time with NBA? Be sure to read our free NBA Ebook on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered. A quick heads up - we post an updates article every day (except Sunday) in the early afternoon, EST, to catch everyone up on how things are changing as a result of whatever news has come through. We also have great talks in the comments of that article. Hope to see you there! POINT GUARD Kyrie Irving - FD 7000 DK 6900 Opponent - HOU FD Proj. Pts - 39.64 DK Proj. Pts - 41.69 LeBron is getting a day of rest, and that means a lot of offensive workload will shift to Kyrie and Kevin today. Irving has had a ridiculous 42% usage with LeBron off the court this season, and while it's tough to imagine that sustaining itself over the course of a whole game here, the point remains the same - he's not priced in a way that assumes James won't be out there. Irving is a must play for me tonight, even if he sucked the last time one of the big 3 was out, and even if it's not an ideal match-up with Patrick Beverley. Russell Westbrook - FD 10600 DK 10300 Opponent - DET FD Proj. Pts - 51.92 DK Proj. Pts - 53.71 As of this writing, Wesbrook has a 17/6/5 in the first half against the tough Raptors. I mean, that's pretty awesome, considering the Raptors...