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The featured simulated basketball contest on DraftKings for Wednesday afternoon is between the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets. Here, we’ll go over how to approach lineup construction for the fantasy basketball contest.
Captain’s Picks
There are only a few ways we can go at this position in this Celtics-Rockets Showdown. Really, the only way is James Harden ($17,400) because this price is sort of dumb. We’re used to seeing Harden priced up and this is arguably a better scenario for him in randomly generated sims. Any box score can roll so that means $17,400 for a 100-plus point outing. That’s massive upside, insane upside, tremendous upside.
You can maybe make a case for Russell Westbrook ($16,500) but it’s tough. Why play Russ at $900 less than Harden? There’s really no point to be quite honest. The one reason why could be ownership. We get some leverage with Russ over Harden but it’s risky. If it busts, you’re SOL unless we get some RNG with the rest of our lineup. I think Harden is the play regardless of chalk.
FLEX Options
You know me, I’m a Big Game Hunter and I like chasing big plays. That’s Eric Gordon ($5,000) and his 50-point game against the Jazz. Gordon also has a few other heavy volume games in January and he played 13 of 34 games this season in that month. P.J. Tucker ($4,800) is always a good play. He’s going to put up minutes in pretty much every game. That leads to points most of the time and Tucker’s price is affordable.
We’ll need some extreme value to make this work with Harden and Russ and Jayson Tatum ($10.200). Danuel House Jr. is a great value at $1,200. It’s a little nutty. House has started 47 of 58 games for Houston this season! He’s almost min priced! Like, his averages should easily get him to almost 10x value on his salary. I’m not crazy about the Boston plays but Enes Kanter ($3,800) is OK from his rebounding stats. Marcus Smart ($6,400) is volatile and a little overpriced but I like the leverage and variance in his box scores.