Fantasy Alarm Daily Fantasy Basketball Du-Rant

Daily Dandies for Friday November 1st

 

by Michael Pichan (@FantasyNomad)

 

Fantasy Basketball Du-Rant

The Du-Rant title derives from a play on "Double Ups" in DFS lingo, which will be the backbone of my recommendations for you each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The Rant portion will vary with each article. Sometimes I'll just go off on an opinionated Rant that hopefully will be entertaining and at times helpful, other times I'll rant about some statistical nuances that standout that could hopefully help you make a daily lineup decision. Today's Du-Rant we tip-off with what went down in Thursday night's late game.

 

    vs.   

For those of you who stayed up late on Halloween night, you got a big bag of NBA Tricks and Treats if you watched the Clippers versus the Warriors game. You would have saw history made, and a little, “Whatever you can do, I can do better,” action between Chris Paul and Steph Curry, along with some high flying, high scoring entertaining NBA action. While Steph Curry dropped bombs from about everywhere imaginable beyond the 3-point line (38 points, 9-for-14 from 3-point land), Chris Paul was not going to be out down. Paul became the first player in NBA history, (since they started keeping track of steals during the 1973-74 season), to finish a game with 40-plus points, 15-plus assists and 5-plus steals. Paul’s final tally was 42 points on 12 of 20 shooting, along with 15 assists, six steals, and two rebounds to lead the Clippers to a 126-115 victory and looks like he may be on his way to making my preseason prediction, of him being crowned this season’s MVP, come to fruition. While Curry was fantastic offensively in his own right, he may have had trouble guarding Cliff Paul last night, not to mention Curry had 11 turnovers in the loss. Which segues into a question that was posed by Ernie Johnson on last night’s late edition of Inside the NBA, “Would you rather have Steph Curry or Klay Thompson?


    or    

Steph Curry                       Klay Thompson

 

 

Choosing between which Splash brother, regardless of what Chuck says, is a no-brainier...Curry. You can make an argument that Thompson’s defense is better than Curry’s, I’ll buy that to a certain extent, but you have to realize Curry is usually matched up with the tougher defensive assignment and has to deal with defending the pick-n-roll much more frequently than Thompson does. From an offensive perspective, I do need to extend this Rant much longer as it is not even close, Curry has the huge advantage over Thompson. They both can shoot the lights out from any where inside the arena, but Curry is much more consistent night-in and night-out, is more versatile, is much more adept at distributing the ball even though he is not a natural point guard, and has a slight edge in career rebounding numbers and steals. If that is not enough, just remember that if Charles Barkley says it, in this case he said he would prefer Thompson over Curry, you know the opposite answer is the correct one, ‘nuff said, now it’s time to pass out some treats of my own, to you, in today’s Daily Dandies for you DFS players.

 

 

Daily Dandies

For those of you checking out my recommendations for the first time, I group the players in A,B,C,D Tiers as a play on the old A,B,C,D basketball camps and as an easy way to distinguish player tiers. (All prices are according to Draft Street). If you have any specific questions post them in the comments section and I will answer them asap or send me a tweet by clicking on my twitter handle at the top of this article. To see who is starting each night visit our NBA Lineups Page

 

A-All Star priced players that should put up All Star stats today (target 35+ FP, $15,000-on up).

* G Kyrie Irving (16.7% of your cap) averaged over 26 points in three games against the Bobcats last season with four-plus rebounds, six-plus assists, and almost two steals a game.

* C DeMarcus Cousins (17.1%) will be facing a Clippers team that has already played twice this week, including last night, and has had trouble defending lesser talented bigs thus far.

B-rated Ballers: Big name players with big games, but not as high of a price tag as the top five or so priced players at each position (around 30 FP, $12,000-$15,000).

* F Rudy Gay (14.1%), the Hawks did not defend the small forward position very well last season, and very little should change this season.

*C Marcin Gortat (12.7%), originally a little step of a price for me, but now he will get the start with Nene out of the lineup

C-as in players that COULD be in line to provide you with good to great value in the mid-tier price range (target 25+ FP, $8,000-$12,000).

* F Magic Andrew Nicholson (8.8%) should see plenty of playing time tonight with Tobias Harris out of the lineup again versus the Pelicans.

* F Gordon Hayward (11.5%) did not have a very efficient night, but that was sort of expected against a tough Opening Night matchup versus the Thunder. Things get easier tonight for Hayward against the Suns tonight.

D-Discounted Dandies: Players on the cheap whose production may exceed what their discounted price tag suggests. (Double Digit Fantasy Production, $3,500-$8,000).

 

* G Jordan Crawford (6.9%) the Bucks back court is very depleted, so much so that you will get to see Nate Wolters play, which is great news for Crawford, whose versatility to fill the stat sheet is more appealing than his teammate Avery Bradley who has been cleared to play tonight.

 

 

 

Michael Pichan is a co-host of the Fantasy Alarm podcast, frequent guest on Sirius/XM Fantasy Sports channel, contributor of written Fantasy advice and insight for FantasyAlarm.com, and an FSWA member. If you have any questions or comments feel free to post in comment section below, e-mail him to thefantasynomad@gmail.com and or send him a tweet @FantasyNomad