NBA Daily Fantasy Helper: Wednesday 5/8/19

If you're new to daily fantasy basketball -- maybe you started your DFS journey during the MLB or NFL seasons, or maybe basketball is your sport and this will be your first year giving it a shot -- you're in for a treat. The NBA scene changes hugely on a week-to-week, day-to-day, and -- depending on injury news -- even a minute-to-minute basis, making every slate a unique one that requires an ever-changing approach.

With so much changing so quickly, we're here with plenty of tools to help you out. We have daily projections, a matchup heat map, a lineup optimizer, and a ton of other great resources to help give you an edge.

We'll also be coming at you with this primer every day, breaking down a few of the day's top plays at each price point.

Let's take a look at who you should target on today's main slate.

Best of the Best

Kevin Durant ($11,000): Two-game slates are strange animals. Starting from the top of the pricing spectrum, I would much prefer to play James Harden at $11,800 than Giannis Antetokounmpo at $12,500 tonight. But small forward is just too thin to skip out on at the top, and pairing Harden with a top small forward isn't really viable in terms of cap space. Giannis' salary is prohibitively high, though, so instead we shift down to KD. Durant has been relatively quiet for the Golden State Warriors in this series against the Houston Rockets, but efficiency over a four-game sample doesn't mean a ton. What does stand out is the fact that he's played at least 42 minutes in each of the four games and also closed out the first round playing at least 41 in his final two. That workload is crazy, and while we can't expect his typical efficiency when he's being worn down like this, the 1.13 FanDuel points per minute he's averaging in this series are far enough below his season average (1.30) that we can expect a bounce-back on that front. Playing minutes in the 40s, even a tiny bump in per-minute efficiency can result in a nice jump in fantasy points.