DFSGhost 
Kevin Durant went nuclear and gave us one of, if not the best NBA Playoff performance in league history as the Brooklyn Nets take a 3-2 series lead. Tonight, we have the other two remaining series tied at two games apiece, with Utah and Philadelphia looking to take advantage of their home courts. It’s Wet Wednesday’s edition of the Gems – let’s ride.
Before running to the DraftKings, FanDuel, or Yahoo lobby to construct your NBA DFS lineup after reading this article, please make sure to utilize the abundance of tools we have at Win Daily:
NBA Core Member #1: Paul George ($9,200 FD / $8,600 DK)
Kawhi Leonard suffered a sprain to his right knee and is now unlikely to play for the remainder of this series. Paul George instantly becomes the most popular player on the NBA slate, and he’s nothing other than a lock on DK, where his price hasn’t moved despite averaging 31/6/4.5 on 47.7% shooting in his last two games, where he logged over 39 minutes per game and has a 33.7% usage rate. With Leonard sidelined tonight, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see PG13 play as close to – if not every minute of this game.
NBA Core Member #2: Donovan Mitchell ($9,700 FD / $9,000 DK)
Give me the star battle in the second game of the night all day long. Donovan Mitchell has simply been electric all NBA Playoffs long, averaging 32.9/3.5/5.1 on 46% shooting in 8 games for the Jazz. Sporting a 39.7% usage rate, his 4.6 3PM/game is second in the league behind only Damian Lillard, who averaged 5.8 in his first round series versus Denver. He’s scoring at will and looks to give Utah a stranglehold on the series.
NBA Core Members #3 and #4: Clippers Role Players
I bet you were hoping for me to tell you which two Clippers to play alongside Paul George – is it two? Three? One? The trio of Nicolas Batum, Marcus Morris, Reggie Jackson should start alongside PG, while we await whether the fifth be one of Luke Kennard, Terance Mann, Patrick Beverly, or Ivica Zubac. When selecting the “other” Clippers to play tonight, you need to decide on a few factors: the first would be to consider one, if not both scoring guards – being Reggie Jackson and Luke Kennard – but I’m not a fan of playing both if they are starting together considering how much PG is going to soak up on the offensive side of the ball. In that case, look for Patrick Beverly or Terence Mann to be your second guard, who are more active on the glass and can distribute the ball far better than both Kennard and Jackson. Amongst the forwards, Morris has proven to get hot from behind the arc, but his lackluster rebounding in the series leads me to give the edge to the savvy veteran in Nic Batum, who has been logging minutes both at the ‘4’ and the ‘5’ when the Clippers go small – which they will surely have to do when Zubac gets four fouls in four minutes. All in all, you need at least another Clipper in your NBA lineups tonight, if not two, and I categorize them as followed: scorers (Kennard/Jackson), forwards (Morris/Batum), and secondary guards (Beverly/Mann). The fact that all of these secondary Clippers are so cheap likely makes the field have at least three of them plus Paul George, if not four plus Paul George in some contests, which is a big mistake. Don’t overlook consistent contributors on the rest of the NBA slate, such as Joe Ingles, who are floating at the same price range as these guys.
Value Gems: Check the projection model.
I will continue to stress the importance of having both the projection model and cheat sheet open when building lineups for a further player pool and to ease a decision between two players, in addition to finding additional value plays.
You can find me on Twitter @DFS_Ghost
