Best lineup strategy for Pistons vs. Mavericks NBA simulation Showdown

The featured simulated basketball contest on DraftKings for Wednesday afternoon is between the Detroit Pistons and Dallas Mavericks. Here, we’ll go over how to approach lineup construction for the fantasy basketball contest here.

Captain’s Pick

Luka Doncic ($19,500)

I’m not going to go into much detail here, but yeah, Doncic is the best Captain’s pick and honestly the best overall play in this Showdown. He’s almost averaging a triple-double and the odds of him rolling one of the box scores is higher than any other player in the NBA. There isn’t much upside on the Pistons, so we’re probably stacking the hell out of the Mavericks in this contest. Doncic is $4,500 more than the next highest captain — Kristaps Porzingis ($15,000). That should tell you all you need to know.

FLEX Options

Derrick Rose ($8,200)

Rose makes a lot of sense in the FLEX and I wouldn’t mind playing him at Captain either. There was a stretch of games in January in which Rose was probably the most consistent scorer in fantasy basketball. He had at least 20 points in 14 straight games. He almost went the entire month of January with 20+ points. Then he got hurt. So Rose has a decent ceiling and his floor is high from that stretch.

If you want two other value plays from each side, look no further than players who got hurt. Luke Kennard ($3,400) and Dwight Powell ($2,200) were both basically out for the season after being injured in 2019-20. Kennard and Powell were producing decent numbers before injury, and the missed games gives you less variance in their box scores. Fewer potential outcomes.