NBA

3 Daily Fantasy Basketball Players to Avoid on 2/10/16

Jordan Sharp  —  @TehSharp Feb 10th, 2016
Finding players you want to roster is a lot easier than finding players to avoid. Here are three players based on their price and matchups who could be landmines for your rosters tonight.

You can find a ton of great information and research on guys you might want to include in your DFS NBA lineups tonight, but what about some guys you may want to lessen your exposure to, or even fade altogether?

Avoiding players whose matchups or situations aren't as great as they seem can often be just as important as finding the best targets each night. After all, it takes only one player to sink a lineup.

With a huge slate of NBA games on tonight, searching for the landmines could mean the difference from winning or losing your contests.

Kemba Walker, PG, Charlotte Hornets

FanDuel Price: $8,700

High-priced players tend to have slightly different landmine qualifications than middle-tier players on most slates. To win most tournaments, you need your lower priced players to exceed their value threshold by far for a given game, which in turn gives you more flexibility with your higher priced stars who could end up falling just short of the “5 times” value threshold you look for in daily fantasy hoops (i.e. five fantasy points for every $1,000 in salary to roster a player).

Kemba Walker falls into that category tonight because, while he may not be a landmine, he could very easily blow up some lineups tonight if he falls to only 25 or 30 FanDuel points. Walker has been having a stellar season, and recently, daily fantasy sites have taken notice and are boosting his price. Walker is on pace to set career highs in points, free throw shooting and steals, but for his price tag of $8,700, he is going to need a big night against a good defensive team to do it. Plus, Walker’s is coming off a 54.4 FanDuel point game, so he could lure in other players.

The Pacers rank as the sixth best team defending point guards this season, and on the road, Walker is averaging nearly five fewer fantasy points per game than he does at home this season. George Hill and Walker have not played yet this season, but Hill’s Real Defensive Plus Minus still ranks him above the NBA average at 0.08. Since coming into the league in the 2011-12 season, Hill and Walker have met 10 times, and Walker has scored more than 25 FanDuel points against Hill only twice.

Trevor Ariza, SF, Houston Rockets

FanDuel Price: $5,800

Trevor Ariza had a pretty good game last night against the Warriors, but coming into tonight against the Blazers in Portland off the back-to-back, Ariza might find his production slip. However, while the Blazers aren’t perceived as a good defensive team, as we touched on two days ago in the landmines, Al-Farouq Aminu can give some players problems on the defensive end. Aminu ranks as the 10th best small forward in Real Defensive Plus Minus as 1.58, and he currently has the Blazers ranked as the sixth toughest team against small forwards in the NBA.

On top of the tough matchup tonight for Ariza, coming off the back-to-back right before the All-Star Break is going to affect just about any payer. Ariza should be no different, because, outside of one really good 30-point effort against the Pelicans on no rest, Ariza has been bad in games on the second half of a back-to-back this season, averaging fewer than 20 FanDuel points per game. Ariza and Aminu hooked up just this past weekend, and Ariza ended with just 17 FanDuel points -- and that game he played on a day’s rest.

Jared Sullinger, PF, Boston Celtics

FanDuel Price: $5,600

If you look up the definition of a landmine in the DFS dictionary, you'd find a picture of the Celtics’ Jared Sullinger. The Boston big man has once again been having a good season, but with the frontcourt rotation seemingly getting harder and harder to predict, Sullinger’s minutes might not be there against a bad matchup off the back-to-back tonight.

Sullinger hasn’t touched 30 minutes since January 22 against the Bulls, and this season altogether, he is averaging only 23 minutes per game. Head coach Brad Stevens has also shown that he is willing to fluctuate Sullinger’s minutes with little to no notice, despite his ability to play well in limited minutes. Combine this with a bad matchup on no rest, and Sullinger has big landmine potential tonight.

The Clippers rank seventh in the league in defending power forwards, and even if Sullinger matches up against DeAndre Jordan at center, the Clippers’ big man posts a Real Defensive Plus Minus of 5.85 this season, which is second only to Tim Duncan amongst centers. Sullinger is averaging only 21 minutes per game in his last eight games played on no rest, and in his last two games off the back-to-back, Sullinger has not been above 18 minutes. Don’t get fooled into thinking that Sullinger is a safe option for your cash games tonight.