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The featured simulated basketball contest on DraftKings for Wednesday afternoon is between the Toronto Raptors and Oklahoma City Thunder. Here, we’ll go over how to approach lineup construction for the fantasy basketball contest. This is a link to the contest and be sure to check out the rules before making a lineup.
Captain’s Picks
This appears to be a more balanced contest as far as fantasy basketball simulations go. Both the Raptors and Thunder boast rosters with a handful of guys who could feasibly make for a decent Captains. The first one that stands out is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($13,800). You of course know about SGA’s triple-double this season, that’s your lottery ticket to potentially punch here. That makes Gilgeous-Alexander more attractive at this price — he’s the fourth-highest priced Captain.
If we’re considering some other options, the mid-range is viable in this contest. Steven Adams ($8,700) isn’t a sexy play, but he’s safe enough at Captain. We get salary savings under $10K and Adams has a safe floor from rebounding stats. Serge Ibaka ($10,500) — albeit a bit more expensive — fits the mold of Adams but on the Raptors side. Ibaka had been filling in as the starter for Marc Gasol for most of the season with Toronto dealing with so many injuries.
FLEX Options
Like I said, injuries for Toronto will open up a ton of value on this slate. Here’s a list of Raptors players $5K or under that have played in the starting lineup or additional minutes due to injury: Norman Powell ($5,000), Terence Davis ($4,600), Rondae Hollis-Jefferson ($3,600), Chris Boucher ($3,200), really any of them make for good plays. We’ve see Powell in particular have strong shooting nights this season plenty of times to make for value at $5K. Boucher and RHJ get a bit of a boost as bigs who are both under $4K.
Luguentz Dort ($1,200) for some reason remains really cheap for the Thunder. He’s spent a good chunk of this season starting for OKC and has plenty of box scores that make it easy to roll something worth value at this price. Nerlens Noel also has some value at $4K for the Thunder, similar to the thinking with RHJ and Boucher. Noel has been hurt this season, but he’s also had to step up and play more minutes due to injury and lack of depth in the front court for OKC.