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The Hawks have an interesting, long time nemesis opponent tonight in the Bucks, in Milwaukee. The Bucks have served as a foil dating back to when they blocked the Hawks free agent signing of Julius Erving by drafting the already two-year ABA pro. Crafty!
They also were a solid playoff foil in the Scott Skiles era and, as Kris could tell you, they are almost always thought to be much improved and then, they aren't.
But what they have had are a lot of DFS friendly players, just like the Hawks and the matchup looks great tonight, with a 208.5 game total and the Hawks favored by four. Let's go Hawks!
Milwaukee Bucks:
Pace: 22nd (96.30 possessions per 48 minutes)
Offensive Rating: 20th (101.3 points per 100 possessions)
Defensive Rating: 29th (106.9 points given up per 100 possessions)
Net Rating difference between 76ers and Hawks: 8.0 in favor of Atlanta
If you need a primer in what those rating stats mean, I'll just cut to the chase about Milwaukee's defense. It's bad. Really bad. Only the 76ers are worse bad.
So what do we do with that information? Well, let's look deeper by position (stats from Fantasy Labs):
PG: Bucks (-1.0) This means the Bucks subtract value to opposing PGs.
PG: Hawks (-0.3) This means the Hawks subtract a little bit of value from opposing PGs.
Michael Carter-Williams is long and makes things difficult on opposing point guard. With Teague and Dennis already splitting minutes, it's hard to get behind either of them fully, though Teague's price on FanDuel down to only $5,800, which means he need only deliver 29 fantasy points to bring value. Still, I'll likely pass on these guys.
On the flip, MCW has been really good from a fantasy perspective and has a fairly neutral matchup here. At 6.7K, he could reach value against the Hawks pair of points.
SG: Bucks (+0.5)
SG: Hawks (+2.4)
SF: Bucks (+0.8)
SF: Hawks (+1.0)
So the wings are in play on both sides here, as both MIL and ATL haven't had the best of luck guarding opposing twos and threes. The big winner here is Khris Middleton, who has been hot lately, using a lot of possessions (24.7% in January compared to Giannis Antetokounmpo's 21%) and has scored 36.7 and 37.5 in his last two games.
Now the bigs,
PF: Bucks (+1.8)
PF: Hawks (+1.7)
C: Bucks (+0.6)
C: Hawks (+0.2)
Starting to see how the game total is 208.5? Only the Bucks PG position is tough enough to avoid here - every other position adds fantasy value to opponents. Good times!
Paul Millsap is always a threat to go for 40, and his salary reflects that. Al Horford has found the groove recently and his salary has lept from 6.9K at the start of 2016 to 7.8K in this game (was all the way to 8.2K when he did zippy-zap against the Hornets). Between the two of them here, I'd go to Millsap as he'll get to the line way more than Al and has the better matchup as well against Jabari Parker and the foul-prone John Henson.
On the Bucks, Greg Monroe is in play tonight as he'll be grabbing the rebounds vacated by the Hawks transition defense and handles himself well in the post, another Hawks struggle. The only caveat recently with Monroe is minutes, but the Bucks have been running him out there more lately, so he's in a good spot here.
So, in summary, here are the targets for today's game:
Paul Millsap ($8,400)
Kent Bazemore ($5,700)
Khris Middleton ($6,900)
Greg Monroe ($7,800)
Good luck and let's go HAAAAWWWWWWKSSSS!!!!
Jason Walker is the Managing Editor for Peachtree Hoops and is an avid fantasy sports player in both seasonal and daily sports leagues. You can read other daily fantasy related items from him through his Twitter feed @JasonWalker_72.
How to Play and The Rules of Engagement:
The way that FanDuel works is as follows:
1. Head over to FanDuel today, register and check out the NBA games they have running.
2. Once you enter, you set a lineup based on a salary cap of $60K and enter 2 PG, 2 SG, 2 SF, 2 PF and a Center (yes, Horford is considered a center).
3. Once your cap-friendly lineup is complete, click Enter and BOOM!, the fun begins!
Now, a bit of bad news. Here are specific rules. They include this: "In order to deposit money to play paid entry games you must be able to represent and warrant that you are not a resident of any of the following states: Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Nevada, Montana or Washington."
But there are still free games on the site, in which you can take part if you are from those states, and I know most of our readers don't fall into this category, but if you do, you can still have some fun!