Daily Fantasy NBA Basketball Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/18/16 Opening Round Game 1 of each series is in the books! A few blowouts, a few upsets, and a lot of what we expected. Let's break down game two for the four series going today. In case it isn't obvious, a lot of these picks will remind you of Saturday's picks - but there will be some changes! Keep your pens moving - this will be on the test.   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. We've also launched a Stats and Research Page, which includes a lot of the individual statistics that we use to make our projections. It's free! Enjoy.   Indiana Pacers at Toronto Raptors Analysis The Pacers "upset" Toronto in game one, but frankly, it looked pretty sustainable to me. They got a little lucky from three (going 11-21), but were pretty cold from two, and even dealt with a little Ian Mahinmi foul trouble. Now it doesn't matter a ton for our fantasy purposes who will win the series, but on a day that features two other series that did contain blowouts, it's worth noting that this is the game most likely to see starters hit their projected minutes totals. It's also worth noting that this is easily the slowest game on the slate. It has the lowest over/under on this small three game slate by far, and as Doug wrote when he previewed the series last Friday - these are two defensively minded teams. Indiana comes in as the third best team in defensive efficiency this season. Meanwhile Toronto was 11th and played at the second slowest pace in the league this year. Top Plays Paul George - FD 9000 DK 8700 Opponent - TOR FD Proj. Pts - 42.29 DK Proj. Pts - 44.89 As we predicted, PG13 played his biggest minutes in ages in game 1, and did so admirably. With Demarre Carroll clearly not physically ready to chase him around, Toronto was left with a mismatched crew of guys either too small or too slow to cover him. George stuffed the sheet, going for 33/4/6/4/2, and it sure...

Daily Fantasy NBA Basketball Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/17/16 Opening Round Hey all! James here, with our 2nd breakdown of the first round of the NBA playoffs - daily fantasy basketball edition. If you're a regular DFSR reader, you're going to notice that our daily playoff basketball articles are a bit different than our regular season articles. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, we're going to see a LOT of repeat picks here. If Jonas Valanciunas was a good play against the Pacers in game 1 (and he was - booya!). Second, it probably makes sense to go a little deeper on these short (but consistent) slates - so we'll go game by game instead of position by position. Another quick note - we probably won't do updates articles unless there actually ARE updates on a given day. So if you want to talk hoops, comment on this article! Enjoy!   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.   Detroit Pistons at Cleveland Cavaliers Analysis On the surface, we'd like to be pretty cautious about recommending players from 1-8 match-ups in the playoffs. With a lot of teams going that are pretty evenly matched, why bother? I'm going to suggest this one is an exception. The Pistons took 3 of 4 from the Cavs this season (though the last one was without the starters), and should have the ability to at least stay in this one. Our lineup optimizer projects all starters on both sides of this game to get more than their season totals of minutes, making it one of the more stackable games on the slate. Top Plays LeBron James - FD 10500 DK 10000 Opponent - DET FD Proj. Pts - 50.2 DK Proj. Pts - 52.2 Early returns on the optimizer have LeBron basically everywhere, and it makes sense. It's a day without many expensive plays, and there's a significant chance that we see LeBron in God mode today. In the interest of full disclosure, though, LeBron was less than amazing in his three games against the Pistons this season. It's a small sample, but he turned the ball...

Daily Fantasy NBA Basketball Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/16/16 Opening Round   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 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! We've also launched a Stats and Research Page, which includes a lot of the individual statistics that we use to make our projections. It's free! Enjoy.   Indiana Pacers at Toronto Raptors Analysis The Pacers come into Toronto a little beat up but there's a chance the four days off for most of their guys gets them back to about 100%.  Toronto on the other hand was able to rest a bunch of their key guys down the stretch and should be firing on all cylinders coming into this series. This first game (and the series in general) projects to be much lower scoring than any other matchup. The opening over/under at 195 is about ten points lower than the next lowest matchup. It makes sense. Indiana comes in as the third best team in defensive efficiency this season. Meanwhile Toronto was 11th and played at the second slowest pace in the league this year. It's going to be a grind it out series for sure. The Raptors are favorites to win, but not as much as a typical 2-7 matchup. Top Plays Paul George - FD 8800 DK 8400 Opponent - TOR FD Proj. Pts - 42.24 DK Proj. Pts - 44.84 It stands to reason that we'll see big minutes out of PG13 in this series. He's played limited run leading into the playoffs as he nursed some ailments. But dude should be good to go in this one. I suspect you see most of the offense run through him and the Pacers will need it. My only concern with him is that among the guys in his price range, he can pull disappearing acts from time-to-time and the Raptors defense is tough. Kyle Lowry...

Daily Fantasy Basketball Injury News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/13/16 The end of the NBA basketball season! And, like all last days of the NBA season, it should probably just be canceled for all of the horrific squads we're going to see today. But you know what that means - opportunity for the steady of hand and bold at heart. Let's break down what we should be keeping an eye on tonight. 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 A lot of teams are sitting a lot of guys. Here's the ones we have confirmed news on so far: The Cleveland Cavaliers They've announced they're going to sit Kyrie, Love, Smith, and LeBron for the concluding game of the season. This almost assuredly means Matthew Dellavedova will be a solid play (he played 31 minutes with Kyrie out last time around, and more than produced on his minimum salary). I'm also very bullish on Channing Frye's chances, assuming he gets the starting gig. I'm a little less excited about Richard Jefferson, who rates to get the lion's share of the hole left by LeBron, but he could still put up big numbers as well. I don't care about Jams Jones. This is one of those crazy situations like we had in OKC last night - This is basically all of the Cavs' usage and 140 minutes a game to redistribute. Anyone who "knows for sure" how this will go is lying to you, but just know that anyone who plays on the Cavs tonight is likely to be a "value" relative to their price. How much a value? A better value than some others? Also kind of impossible to say, because they'll likely be playing against the Pistons' back-ups as well. The last day of the NBA = the wildest of wild Wests. The Los Angeles Clippers They've announced that Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, JJ Redick, and Jamal Crawford will be sitting. So, yeah. That's a lot of minutes and usage to go around. Cole Aldrich was dominant against the Jazz in this exact situation recently, and Austin Rivers was amazing in his own right on 3/31 when he got all the point guard minutes against the Thunder. Pablo...

Daily Fantasy NBA Basketball Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/13/16   Wednesday night is bitter=sweet. The schedule brings 14 games but signals the finale of another NBA season. DFS players will have to find something else to do until Saturday (I can recommend a site with great DFS projections and picks for MLB, NHL, and many other sports!). Along with the huge slate comes a tremendous amount of uncertainty. Only half the games have lines posted less than 24 hours before they start. Some teams are still vying for playoff qualification and/or seeding. Other teams are playing out the string. Many stars cleared out their mental lockers games ago. Other players (even entire starting lineups) may be sitting to rest and avoid injury before the playoffs. Just listing all the variables in play would take an entire article. Below are picks to form the nucleus of your Wednesday lineups. You’ll notice a few commonalities. Most are on teams with something still to play for (as of this writing – but even that’s in flux, pending Tuesday night’s results). A few players are from teams that haven’t been playing for anything in a while, but they’re (more) predictable, as there’s little reason to expect significant changes in rotations, usage, or minutes. All are pretty much cash game recommendations. Tournament lineups typically contain many of the same players, but be aware that there will be more punt/flier opportunities than any other night. Of course, many won’t be clear until right before tipoff… Wednesday’s games are essentially separated into two smaller slates. Ten games tip at 8:00ET. Be sure to note this - it's an hour later than usual. The remaining four games tip at 10:30ET. That creates more options for late-night contests, but also presents additional challenges for full-slate participants. The Jazz will know before tip if they’re playing for anything, but we won’t know before lineup lock. More chaos. If ever there were a day to follow breaking news, Wednesday is it. Fortunately, DFSR has your back on this. Now’s your chance to get a free trial to DFSR Pro with NBA Optimal Lineups, Projections, Player Cards. While the seasons overlap, you'll get access to our tools for the NBA, NHL, and MLB! 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 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...