After briefly climbing to the second seed in the Western Conference, the Memphis Grizzlies’ chances at making the playoffs hinge on one game, which will take place on Friday night. The Grizzlies’ opponent in that game will be determined tonight, as the 10th-seeded Dallas Mavericks travel to California’s capital to take on the No. 9 Sacramento Kings.
The winner will then travel to Memphis to take on the Grizzlies, while the loser will enter the draft lottery and hope that ping-pong balls bounce their way in order to land the first overall pick.
Sacramento is a 4.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set to 214. The Kings are -192 on the Moneyline, and the Mavericks are +160.
DraftKings is offering a Showdown contest for the big game, so I’ll take you through my two captain’s picks, two FLEX picks, and one fade. Let’s dive in:
Set your DraftKings fantasy basketball lineups here: NBA Showdown $30K Jab Step [$5K to 1st] (DAL @ SAC).
SHOWDOWN STRATEGY
Captain’s Picks
Anthony Davis ($16,800 CP) – Dallas’ chances of keeping its nightmarish season alive rest on Davis, who’s far and away the best player on the Mavericks’ roster with Kyrie Irving done for the season. Although the two most important players on the team that brought Dallas to the cusp of a championship last June — Luka Dončić and Irving — are no longer on the roster, the Mavericks still have enough high-quality, experienced role players, especially PJ Washington ($12,600 CP) and Dereck Lively II ($7,500 CP), to win two Play-In games if Davis plays up to his standards. If he puts up another outing like he did against the Toronto Raptors in the final game of the season — a 23-point, 13-rebound, 10-assist, seven-block (72.25-FPT) masterpiece — Dallas will win tonight’s game easily.
Expecting that level from Davis is unrealistic, of course, but there’s reason to believe that he’ll do well, even if he probably won’t get quite as many boards as usual against the two-headed Lithuanian rebounding monster that is Sacramento’s center corps of Domantas Sabonis ($17,400 CP) and Jonas Valančiūnas ($6,000 CP). Sabonis defended him for nearly 41 minutes during the regular season, and Davis was excellent, scoring 53 points, dishing out 15 assists, and drawing 10 shooting fouls. There are very few players I’d consistently back to slow down The Brow, and Sabonis isn’t one of them.
Zach LaVine ($14,700 CP) – Captaining a player $2,100 cheaper than Davis provides you with the flexibility to go with, say, LaVine’s teammate DeMar DeRozan ($15,000 CP) instead of being forced to settle for several less-heralded options in a game between two relatively top-heavy teams. Of Sacramento’s three primary stars, I like LaVine the best, given that his consistently elite three-point shooting is a good matchup against a Mavericks team that is roughly league-average against opposing shooters. Since Davis’ return from injury, Dallas has been elite at guarding the midrange — having two of Davis, Lively, and Daniel Gafford ($10,500 CP) on the floor at all times helps — which limits DeRozan’s offensive effectiveness, and The Brow has effectively guarded Sabonis by holding him to just 39.3% shooting in 30 minutes.
LaVine should be the primary beneficiary of the calf strain that Malik Monk ($11,400 CP) suffered in the season’s fourth-to-last game, given that Monk was the only other reliable perimeter scoring threat on the roster. Monk got hurt just six minutes into the Kings’ 127-117 win over the Detroit Pistons on April 6, and in that game, LaVine finished with 43 points (58.25 FPTS) on 16-for-28 (57.1%) shooting from the field. He then dropped 26 or more points (40.0 or more fantasy points) in each of his next two games. In his final game of the season, he scored just 16 points (20.0 FPTS), but played only 27 minutes in a win against the Phoenix Suns’ reserves. Over the last four games, LaVine posted a 27.5% usage rate, the 11th-highest among 92 players who played at least 100 minutes over that span.
FLEX Plays
DeMar DeRozan ($10,000) – One of the 10 players better with a higher usage rate than LaVine over the team’s last four games of the season was none other than the 26th-leading scorer in NBA history. DeRozan attempted 20 or more shots in each of the final three games of the season in which he played his regular minutes, although he only scored more than 25 points once because he shot just 38.9% from the field and 12.5% from deep across that span. If he maintains his astronomical usage rate while his efficiency deviates back towards the mean, both he and LaVine could have stellar performances.
Plus, while I trust both Davis and Lively to effectively limit the midrange, the Mavericks’ two bigs can’t shore up everything defensively, and both will have their hands full in the paint. Dallas used Naji Marshall ($6,600) to guard DeRozan most frequently this season — a total of seven minutes of game time — and in that span, DeRozan was pretty effective, scoring 14 points on five-of-nine shooting from the field and two-of-three accuracy from downtown. He also scored 14 points in under seven minutes against Max Christie ($4,800) between Christie’s stints in Texas and Los Angeles and 14 more against Davis in six minutes.
Klay Thompson ($5,600) – I know that in last season’s 9-10 matchup against Sacramento, Thompson shot zero-for-10 from the field and zero-for-six from downtown, a disgraceful end to his Hall of Fame stint in Golden State. But for all the memes about Thompson’s atrocious performance in that game, he’s still a decent player and the second-greatest shooter in league history, and his 2024 season — 14.0 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game on 41-39-90 shooting splits — wasn’t that horrible. He’s still capable of producing impact performances like his 17-point (31.0-FPT) outing against the Atlanta Hawks on April 2, in which he made six of his 11 shots and five of his nine three-pointers.
The Kings have been a pretty average team in just about all ways — they were 20-21 at home, 20-21 on the road, and had a net rating of plus-0.6, the third-closest to zero of any team in the league. They had the seventh-best offense and ninth-worst defense in the league, although those figures neutralized to 18th-best and 17th-best, respectively, after Sabonis’ return from injury. It’s unsurprising, then, that Sacramento was average against opposing shooters, allowing the 15th-most made threes per game on the 15th-best accuracy over its last 12 games and an average shooting performance for Thompson is pretty good. He hit five triples against the Kings on February 10 in a 19-point (27.5-FPT) performance.
Fades
Dereck Lively II ($5,000) – Props to Lively for coming back at all amid what has been mostly a lost season after suffering a stress fracture in his ankle that cost him nearly three months. Prior to his injury, he showed plenty of flashes in his sophomore season, including a 21-point, 16-board (49.0-FPT) game against the Portland Trail Blazers on January 9, and he shot an incredible 70.2% from the field for the campaign. Big offensive performances like those, which came without both Dončić and Irving, prove that Lively is capable of putting up solid numbers even without a superstar-level playmaker to throw entry passes or lobs, and he’ll be an important member of the Mavericks’ core for years to come, unless Nico Harrison trades him for pennies on the dollar. But he hasn’t played more than 18 minutes in any game since his return and has only scored more than 20 FPTS once. Perhaps he’ll be healthier coming off four days’ rest, but of the teams’ centers, I simply trust Gafford more. Jason Kidd has split minutes roughly evenly between his two centers since Lively’s return, and Gafford is a higher-usage player.
THE OUTCOME
Neither of these teams is in great form — Sacramento is 5-5 in its last 10 games, and Dallas is 4-6 — and I don’t feel confident that either of them can upset Memphis on Friday. I see it as a complete toss-up, although the Kings have been slightly better at home than the Mavericks have been on the road.
It’s hard to assess this Dallas team, given the turmoil — most self-inflicted — that it’s been through this season. Its starting lineup of Marshall, Thompson, Washington, Davis, and Lively played together just twice, losing to the Lakers behind a Dončić masterclass and beating Toronto. Sacramento has slightly more continuity, at least, but even it has started its current lineup of Keon Ellis ($5,400), LaVine, DeRozan, Keegan Murray ($5,800) and Sabonis four times.
In the end, it comes down to two factors: Davis is the best player on either roster, and Monk’s injury hurts the Kings’ offense a little too much. The Mavericks squeak through in an upset.
