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The NBA is still on hold, though there is some optimism we could get some sort of sports league starting back up soon. Anyway, in the mean time, we’re going to continue to head to simulated basketball on DraftKings for our DFS fix. On Tuesday, we’ve got a contest featuring the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets. Here’s a link to the contest and be sure to check out the rules before locking in your lineup.
Captain’s Picks
There are one of two ways to go about building a lineup for this contest. Either you pick between the four All-Stars at Captain or you don’t. Pretty simple. I’m leaning the latter strategy, mostly because I think you want as many of James Harden ($18,600), LeBron James ($17,700), Anthony Davis ($16,200) and Russell Westbrook ($15,600).
Russ is the cheapest option of the bunch if you’re going to pay up at Captain. He lacks some of the ceiling games Harden usually has, but I think most of his box scores are going to pop up similar fantasy totals as LeBron and AD. Starting around the middle of December, Russ slowly overtook Harden as the No. 1 option for Harden and had been playing much better than The Beard before the break.
My other Captain option is paying all the way down and stacking those four mentioned above. The only way we can do this is either by sacrificing the Captain’s spot (which isn’t a good idea) or playing Avery Bradley ($2,700) as Captain. Bradley has a few games that are respectable, but we won’t get much on that 1.5x bonus. We’d basically just get the privilege of playing LeBron, AD, Beard and Russ in the same lineup.
FLEX Options
Like I said, fitting as many superstars into one lineup should be prioritized in this contest. Outside of those four, there are almost no players with upside. Well, consistent upside. A lot of the options you can take a shot in the dark and hope they hit a high fantasy output, but the ceiling is pretty capped. I don’t mind P.J. Tucker ($4,200) and Eric Gordon ($2,800) for the Rockets. Tucker plays a ton of minutes and has a safe floor for this price (again, no upside). Gordon is a golden ticket really. He’s got that 50-point game and then mostly scoring games in the teens.