One team’s place in the conference finals has been confirmed, as the Indiana Pacers closed out the Cleveland Cavaliers last night with yet another huge comeback. The New York Knicks can confirm the Eastern Conference Finals today with a 7 p.m. ET clash against the Boston Celtics, against whom they lead 3-1, while the Minnesota Timberwolves can punch their tickets to the Western Conference Finals and await the winner between the Denver Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
After a relatively chalky first round, chaos has ruled the day in the conference semifinals, but that’s what makes the NBA playoffs exciting. Here are three must-start fantasy basketball players for tonight’s featured DFS contest on DraftKings.
Set your DraftKings fantasy basketball lineups here: NBA $350K Shootaround [$100K to 1st]
PG Jalen Brunson, New York Knicks at Boston Celtics, $8,900
Game 4 will go down as the game that Jayson Tatum ($9,800) tore his Achilles tendon, and it won’t be entirely fair to the Knicks, who led by seven at the time of his injury. Mikal Bridges ($6,200) played a huge role in New York’s rally, too, with Kobe Bryant-esque midrange jumper after midrange jumper, but at the end of the day, everything comes down to Brunson. Captain Clutch came through again when the Knicks needed it most, scoring 26 points and dishing out seven assists in the second half alone, finishing with 39 points, five boards, and 12 assists (66.25 FPTS), and he was efficient from both the field and from deep. New York is just one win away from its first conference finals appearance since 2000, and Brunson will be fired up to get it done tonight.
The Celtics have done a slightly better job than the Pistons did at slowing Brunson down — Jrue Holiday ($5,400) has held him to six-for-22 shooting, including two-for-nine from deep — but his combination of scoring and playmaking has still made him a consistently great fantasy asset. In 185 combined possessions against Holiday and Derrick White ($7,700), he’s made the smart play time after time, dishing out 14 assists and only coughing the ball up thrice. He’s third among all conference semifinals participants in usage rate, first in time of possession by more than two minutes per game, and fourth in potential assists, and he’s the only player to make at least one field goal per game at the rim, from floater range, in the midrange, from the corner, and from above the break.
PG Derrick White, Boston Celtics vs. New York Knicks, $7,700
Somebody on Boston is going to have to step up in Tatum’s absence, and the team is going to have fascinating personnel decisions to make this summer. One player who will probably step up tonight — and who should be more or less untouchable in possible trade negotiations this summer — is White, who has played decent defense on Brunson and has scored 17 or more points (31.75 or more FPTS) in each game. Not only is he a sharpshooter who made six of his 11 three-pointers in Game 4 (31.75 FPTS), he’s also a very capable rebounder for his size and has recorded two or more combined steals/blocks in each of the first three games.
The Knicks have also largely ignored him: 62.5% of his field goal attempts this series have been open or wide-open three-pointers, and they’ve guarded him mostly with Mikal Bridges ($6,200), who’s a good defender but worse than either OG Anunoby ($6,000) or Josh Hart ($6,900). That wouldn’t be true of Jaylen Brown ($8,200), who had 36 points (60.5 FPTS) in Game 2 against the Orlando Magic in Tatum’s stead. Brown is sure to be guarded mostly by Anunoby, who made Tatum work for every one of his 42 points (71.5 FPTS) and has held Brown to two-for-nine shooting in 31.1 partial possessions so far this series.
PF Jonathan Kuminga, Golden State Warriors at Minnesota Timberwolves, $5,500
Kuminga was out of Golden State’s rotation earlier in the playoffs, but with Stephen Curry ($9,300) going down with a hamstring strain in Game 1, Steve Kerr has been in desperate need of a player who could create his own shot. That has forced a lot of the offensive onus on Kuminga. The 22-year-old Congolese forward probably can’t be expected to produce at the level that he did in Game 3 — when he scored 30 points and made three of his four three-pointers (46.5 FPTS) — but he’s always been a solid scorer, ranking second on the team in usage rate this season and scoring 30.6 points per 100 possessions, which would’ve ranked 31st in the league if he’d played enough minutes to qualify.
It’s possible that, at some point, his hot shooting will slow down, given that he’s shot 10-for-17 on contested shots — defined as such when the nearest defender is between two and four feet away — in the last three games after hitting such shots at a 51.2% clip in the regular season. But still, his shot diet has been fairly healthy, as he’s taken five field goal attempts per game at the rim and more shots from the corner than from above the break. He made 71.6% of his restricted-area shots during the regular season — the second-highest mark on the team among players who attempted at least two such shots per game — and I expect his strong finishing to continue tonight, even against a rim protector as good as Rudy Gobert ($5,800).
