Best lineup strategy for Jazz vs. Spurs NBA simulation Showdown

The Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs will face off in a sim Friday at 3:00 p.m. ET. We break down the ideal Showdown lineup strategy for the DFS contest that will be played in the snow. You can set your lineup and play in the DraftKings contest before tip.

Captain’s Picks

There’s no way I’m going to touch Donovan Mitchell ($15,900). He’s had an OK season but his upside is capped because really the only valuable box scores he has are high point totals. Mitchell lacks the big game ceiling we need at Captain and for some reason he’s the most expensive player in this Showdown contest. Because of that, the easy choice is DeMar DeRozan ($14,700), who is cheaper and has more upside. If you want to get creative, you can pay down a bit. The issue there is the upside just gets worse and worse as you go down the line. There’s not many ceiling plays in this game overall. So the play is almost always to pay up at Captain.

FLEX Options

This category will mostly be reserved for San Antonio Spurs. The Jazz are pretty top heavy and weren’t much of a fantasy-point-producing powerhouse during the regular season. So we’re going to look at mostly mid-range plays from San Antonio. Bryn Forbes ($6,600), Derrick White ($6,200) and Dejounte Murray ($5,400) are all pretty decent options. We get some 3-point shooting, some assists, a little bit of defense out of each of them. Jakob Poetltl ($2,600) is really the only strong really cheap value play in this contest. He had been starting some games with the Spurs front court banged up in the 2020 portion of the season.