Best NBA DFS Picks Today - Top Plays, Values & Pivots (4/15)

Another two-game NBA Play-In Tournament slate is upon us. The room for error is tiny, but there are still NBA DFS contests to take advantage of at DraftKings. Yesterday’s core went 2-1 with Mark Williams being a bust, and my GPP plays fell flat. Not a great run, but we’d been running hot so we were due for a stinker.

Let’s get it going again on Tuesday night, where we’re faced with some tough decisions. Do we force Steph Curry into our NBA DFS lineups? Can we trust Tyrese Maxey? I’ll break it all down and highlight the best NBA DFS picks today, while also suggesting some GPP pivots and the best game to stack. Let’s build!

🏀 Slate Overview

Top injury news to monitor: Joel Embiid (appendicitis) is OUT. That opens up major usage and value for the Sixers.

Best value plays: Drummond/Lopez. Value at center, while the position lacks a true stud in general.

Top game to attack: Orlando vs. Philadelphia (tighter spread), but neither game feels especially stackable.

Top stud: Kawhi Leonard. Top stud, dollar for dollar. Cheaper than Maxey, more reliable, and projection is right there with him.

Blowout risks: Warriors vs. Clippers, but it’s a 2-game slate so not concerned with that.

Top NBA DFS Top Picks for Wednesday, 4/15

Kawhi Leonard ($9.2k)
Kristaps Porzingis ($6k)
Brook Lopez ($4.1k)

🏀 New to DFS? Core plays are the guys you put in most or all of your lineups. They have strong matchups, clear paths to big minutes, and prices that make it easy to fit premium players elsewhere.

Tyrese Maxey is in theory an excellent spend, but I don’t think a pivot to Kawhi is any less appealing. Pair them if you’d like, but they’ll both be owned. Instead, I think Maxey offers more leverage opportunity since he will likely be more owned. Targeting guys like PG-13 or even Banchero or Curry is pretty interesting.

That said, Leonard is a great play no matter what you think about Maxey or leverage. The Warriors have nobody that can actually stop him and he is a comparable play to Maxey, yet cheaper and lower owned.

Porzingis is a very tough fade. Center is pretty bad today, but he also is PF eligible. He should have no limitations like he normally would during the regular season, either. The usage, matchup, price, and projection all look good for him tonight. He should be popular, so you can leverage that a bit with Curry and other Warriors bigs if you’d like.

Brook Lopez is shaping up to be The Chalk at a bad center position. He’s been playing bigger minutes lately and any risk associated with him is baked into this super cheap salary. There’s always a chance he gets run off the floor, but he’s probably too cheap for me to concern myself with that too much.

NBA DFS Lineup Strategy for 4/15

Both games last night were insane. As we saw, you really can’t make any mistakes on a slate this tiny, either. I think eating a lot of chalk again makes sense, but there are some key decision-points where we will want to take a chance and roll the dice with some leverage.

A lot of the value looks pretty good, however, and we know how Chalk Maxey has gone. My guess is he crushes here, but I will still look to leverage his ownership and go way over on Curry and Banchero on this slate.

There’s also some mid-range stuff like Podz, Draymond, Mathurin, and more that could go overlooked and I have no issue soaking that up.

🟢 SAFE – Kawhi and Porzingis. Price, projection, and roles are too good to ignore.

🟡 BOOM/BUST – Lopez. Price makes him low risk but we know he can be volatile.

Best NBA DFS Game Environments for 4/15

🏀 New to DFS? We look for games with high point totals because more points scored = more fantasy points available. The “total” is the sportsbook’s projected combined score for both teams. Higher is generally better for DFS.

This chart I put here isn’t working today, so I’ll just say that the first game is probably the most stackable in terms of pace, game total, and point spread.

In big GPPs that has me naturally looking for ways to get to the second game a bit more. That said, both games are pretty similar and could probably go either way. My lean right now is Philly and Los Angeles winning, and if I were stacking a game without caring about leverage, I’d fire up plays in ORL vs. PHI the most.

Wednesday’s NBA DFS GPP Pivots

🏀 New to DFS? GPP stands for Guaranteed Prize Pool — the big tournaments. To win tournaments, your lineup has to be different from everyone else’s. A “GPP pivot” is a player who will be lower-owned than his upside deserves, giving you a tournament edge if he performs well.

Steph Curry ($8.9k)
Bennedict Mathurin ($6.1k)
Franz Wagner ($6.6k)

Curry is the most obvious GPP play of the slate, so I won’t be that shocked if he ends up gaining some steam. He’s $600 cheaper than Maxey, but his projection is significantly lower. I just can’t see him not showing up in a playoff game, while I loathe Maxey chalk, so I will be going Curry > Maxey a lot.

Mathurin is not going to be owned for some reason even though he crushed Golden State in his last game and can heat up in a hurry. Other Clippers will be very popular, so cramming him in with them or in lieu of them is definitely something I’ll be looking to do.

Wagner is more owned than these other two guys and he’s still limited a bit, but we know what he’s capable of. He also loves to attack the paint and Philly doesn’t have much of a threat inside defensively with Embiid sidelined.

🏀 Not Sure Where to Start?

If you’re newer to DFS and feeling overwhelmed, here’s how to approach it:

Know what contest you’re entering before you pick a single player. Cash games (50/50s, head-to-head) pay out the top half of the field. Your goal is a safe, reliable lineup. GPP tournaments pay out the top 15-20%, with most of the prize pool at the very top. Your goal there is the ceiling. These two goals require completely different lineups.
Shorthanded teams are your best friend. When a team is missing rotation players, the guys left get more minutes, more shots, and more fantasy opportunities than their salaries reflect. That’s the formula. Check every team’s injury report before building — not as an afterthought, but as step one.
Avoid blowout games unless you’re on the right side. High game totals tell you where the points are — the total is the sportsbook’s projected combined score. Higher total = more points on the floor = more fantasy points available.
Minutes are the currency of DFS. Always ask: how many minutes is this guy going to play? A player can’t score if he’s on the bench. Before you add anyone to your lineup, ask yourself: is his role clearly defined tonight? Does he have a path to 28+ minutes? Then that guy is probably viable.
Understand floor vs. ceiling before you decide who to play. Floor is the minimum you can reasonably expect from a player. The ceiling is the maximum upside if everything goes right. In cash games, you want floor guys who almost certainly hit their value. In tournaments, you want ceiling — guys who can go nuclear.
Ownership can be your edge — use it. In GPPs, the field chases names or super-owned options. We can leverage that by playing comparable plays with lower ownership.
Don’t pay for a big name if the context is bad. Salary doesn’t equal value. A star in a tough spot is often worse than a role player in a great one.