NBA Postseason Best Bets (5/14)
Alex Christenson
It’s officially NBA playoff best ball season. With season-long best ball contests in their finals (using this space to brag once again that I’ve got four entries of the 186 making up the “Small Ball” final, although none are looking too hot), it’s time to get back to drafting. In this weekly article leading up to the playoffs in mid-April, I will discuss any developing trends, ADP shifts and strategies that I’m using in my own drafts. Draft season is the best season, so saddle up at Underdog Fantasy and if you’re a first-time depositor you can get a deposit match bonus up to $100 with promo code FTN!
March 29 Update
Playoff Targets
In last week’s article, we discussed some build strategies for the NBA playoff best ball contests. Today, I want to talk about how playoff outlooks have shifted over the past week of games and any new targets we may have, especially relative to ADP. As I said last week, this season’s playoff drafts are much tougher at this point compared to the same time last year. The incredible parity in the Western conference, where there is just a 3.5-game gap between the 4 and 11 seeds, is making it risky to be drafting with high volume. Not only can seeding dramatically change the landscape, but there’s still between five and seven games remaining for every team in that range, meaning any one of them could still not only just miss the playoffs but the play-in tournament all together.
There are a few notable changes to how we should be approaching these teams, the most prominent in my mind being the return of LeBron James. There had been plenty of mystery surrounding his potential timeline for return. Even as LeBron dropped hints on his social media accounts pointing to a return being imminent, Lakers head coach Darvin Ham told reporters that same day James would be back “at some point.” It turned out that “some point” meant Sunday, when he suited up off the bench in a loss to Chicago. Even with that misstep, the Lakers are much less likely to falter enough between now and April 9 to miss the play-in tournament. Users in the draft rooms reacted quickly, moving the ADP on all three key offensive players for the Lakers we discussed as interesting fliers (James, Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell) upward in dramatic fashion. Just two weeks ago I saw Davis going in the eighth round, James in the ninth and Russell going undrafted. As of this morning, the ADPs on those three are fourth, fourth and eighth rounds, respectively. Considering that is factoring in all of the playoff drafts on the site that have taken place so far, these Lakers are going even higher than that in some drafts. Although, for what it’s worth in the most recent draft I took part in just before writing this week’s update, LeBron and Davis both did go in the fourth round while Russell wasn’t selected until the 10th and final round.
Another big return from injury in the last week was Karl-Anthony Towns being added back to the mix for Minnesota. The Wolves have won four straight (tied for second best current win streak in the league only behind the W7 for Memphis) and vaulted themselves into the seventh seed, just a game and a half back of the fourth seed with six games remaining. There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding this team and what they actually are when all the pieces are available. But one thing is for certain, they’re all one-off values at worst if they get into the tournament. The current ADPs on the top three Timberwolves are extremely low, with Anthony Edwards as a seventh-round pick, Towns as an eighth-rounder and Rudy Gobert going in the 10th and final round. As things stand now, I’m actively looking to target Edwards or Towns in the later rounds if I have no viable stack options and need a one-off. In that draft I mentioned above, I grabbed Gobert with the final pick of the draft to bolster my “bigs” depth.
We haven’t spoken much about the Eastern Conference outside of my contender stack targets we discussed last week. My thoughts on that top half of the conference haven’t changed, but I do think it’s worth listing out some of those “one-off” players from the lower half of the field out East with ADPs of 10th round or undrafted that I’m fine with taking shots on to get different in your drafts. Keep in mind that none of these players are currently guaranteed to make the tournament.
Eastern Conference Late-Round One-Offs
Bam Adebayo
Mikal Bridges
Trae Young
Pascal Siakam
Tyler Herro
Fred VanVleet
DeMar DeRozan
By this time next week, we’ll have just a few days left in the regular season and a much clearer picture on which teams are more likely, especially in the Western Conference, to not miss out on the play-in.
My Top 10 Most Drafted Players in Playoff Contests
(As of March 29)
With each strategy article I will give an update on who my top exposures are. I expect these to shift significantly by the next update as I continue to draft, especially with the nightly results so heavily impacting the playoff picture this season. As always, feel free to reach out to me in the FTN Discord or on Twitter @KawhisenbergDFS for questions on best ball.
Andrew Wiggins
Nikola Jokic
James Harden
Tobias Harris
Kawhi Leonard
Jamal Murray
Desmond Bane
Draymond Green
LeBron James
Anthony Davis
