Daily Fantasy Basketball Picks: Jalen Brunson Leads the Way

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Jalen Brunson could go off against the Pistons tonight

Jalen Brunson leads an intriguing four-game NBA dfs slate tonight, and our AI-powered projection model has you covered for basketball fantasy picks.

Our dfsPro daily fantasy basketball picks, which we publish in a daily email newsletter (subscribe here!), have been on fire lately. We hit on almost every role player this weekend, including Cade Cuningham, Jalen Duren, and Mo Wagner — who carried our lineup to a big victory on Saturday night.

Here are some basketball highlights from this morning’s newsletter that can help you polish your fantasy lineups and betting picks.

NBA Daily Fantasy Lineup Starter

We’ve got four NBA games on tonight, which is the perfect number for daily fantasy basketball. Enough guys are playing so that you have some options at each salary point, but it’s not so many that things are left totally up to chance. Let’s talk about guys to target at different salary points. Here are my top five targets for the DraftKings slate.

DraftKingsJalen Brunson highlights our AI-powered dfs slate.

Heavy Hitters

Jalen Brunson ($9,700) is the guy to go for at the top. He led the association in fantasy points on Saturday, and today he’ll have the privilege of going up against a Pistons defense that really can’t keep up with his shotmaking. dfsPro thinks he’s going to get 49.74 fantasy points tonight, which is well worth the price.

You can add De’Aaron Fox into the mix as well. Our AI model is predicting a 48-point outing for the Kings guard. His opponent, the Miami Heat, is generally a good defensive team, but their guards lack the speed to defend someone like Fox without fouling. It’s a great matchup for him.

Domantas Sabonis is one guy you could swap in for Brunson. I’m shying away from him, even though he leads the league in triple-doubles this season, because I think Bam Adebayo will defend him well, and he’s the most expensive player in the draw ($10,200).

Middle of the Pack

The middle of the pack is often rife with opportunity, but today’s is a little thin. Get Miles Turner ($6,900) or Jalen Duren ($6,800) in your lineup. Both players had really great nights in their last outings, including nearly 50 fantasy points from Turner last night. If you can get them both in, even better.

Discount Section

This is my favorite part of the DFS lineup-building process. Start with Dennis Schroder ($4,500) in the guard spot. There’s really no reason he should be placed this low on the shelf, given his recent production and matchup (Memphis Grizzlies). It’s not like he’s been a stud, but he’s a threat to get 10 points and 5 assists on any given night. This is a great price point for Schroder.

Next, go for Keegan Murray. He’s still struggling to return to his early-season production, but at $5,100 it’s hard to say no to him. It’s not long ago that he was flirting with breaking the single-game record for three-pointers in a game.

NBA Game Props

As a bonus, here are a couple of NBA games I’m targeting, based on dfsPro’s projection model. Our AI-powered model basically makes its own lines, spreads, and over/under predictions, so we can match those up with what Vegas predicts.

Miami @ Sacramento

Our model has Sacramento as heavy favorites, largely because Miami is struggling through major injuries. Tyler Herro, Terry Rozier, and Josh Richardson could all miss tonight’s game, leaving some serious holes in the guard spot. Most sports books have Sacramento as five-point favorites, and our model only has a six-point spread, but I think Sacramento will cover.

The Pacers tend to take part in very high-scoring games. They play a lot of offense and not a lot of defense. Subsequently, Vegas has the over/under at around 246 total points. Our model thinks it will be closer to 243, largely because the Raptors aren’t a high-powered offense. The Pacers might not have to score that much to beat Toronto. I’m hitting the under.

Daily fantasy basketball is just one of the many sports we cover for dfsPro, our daily email newsletter. If you want even more deep analysis delivered to your inbox daily, subscribe today.

Ben Dupont covers daily fantasy sports for Heavy.com. In addition to contributing to Heavy’s dfsPro Daily newsletter, Ben covers the NBA for SB Nation’s Celtics Blog. More about Ben Dupont