DraftKings Salary: $3,500
The Los Angeles Clippers cannot catch a break. They entered the year as a probable playoff team but have dealt with injury after injury. Their most recent loss was Blake Griffin, which leaves them dangerously thin in the frontcourt. Coach Doc Rivers made some ambiguous comments about who would replace Griffin in the starting lineup -- mentioning Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell ($3,500), and Willie Reed ($3,000) -- but a look at how he has handled his rotations this season points strongly to Dekker being the biggest beneficiary.
Rivers has played Dekker at power forward for 72.6% of his minutes this season, while Harrell has spent just 33.6% of his time at power forward, and Reed has spent two minutes at the four. In 169 minutes that both Griffin and Danilo Gallinari have been off the court simultaneously, Reed and Harrell have combined for 14 minutes at power forward, as opposed to 107 for Dekker. Rivers has never played Reed and DeAndre Jordan together this season. Likewise, Jordan and Harrell have shared the court for just thee minutes. Rivers clearly prefers to play those two at the five and run more small-ball lineups with Dekker or Wesley Johnson at the four. Perhaps the Griffin injury changes the complexion of the team enough that Rivers will completely revamp how he runs his rotations. The more likely scenario though, is that he continues to give the majority of the power forward minutes to Dekker.
Even if he took just half of the 36 minutes left from Griffin's absence -- which seems conservative -- those additional 18 minutes would put him at 27 minutes of court time (Dekker is averaging just over nine minutes this season). He reached the 27-minute mark seven times last season -- games in which he averaged 28.8 DraftKings points. He displayed a ceiling of 43.25 DraftKings points during that stretch, and he clearly has the ability to crush value at this price tag.
Keep an eye on the news leading up to lineup lock. If we get word that Dekker is starting, he becomes a must-play. If he is coming off the bench, he's probably best reserved for tournament-only play on a slate with plenty of value plays.
Jacob Gibbs is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jacob Gibbs also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jagibbs23. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.