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Chris Meaney
Bettings
The WNBA playoffs are into the finals, and the DFS action rolls on. In this article, I’ll provide a few of my favorite building blocks on the day’s slate, my MME player pool and some of my preferred picks for the prop market. Keep in mind that staying up to date with player availability and starting lineups is just as important here as it is in NBA DFS, so make sure to check in with the FTN WNBA Discord channel for any news updates that our team finds.
We’ve got a showdown slate in front of us for Game 4 Wednesday night, so let’s dive in.
(Aces lead 2-1)
With the mountain of uncertainty surrounding the Aces headed into Game 4, I’m going to break down each team separately. Not only did Chelsea Gray suffer a serious injury in Sunday’s Game 3, but Las Vegas will also be without Kiah Stokes due to a foot issue. With Candace Parker still sidelined, the Aces are running on fumes when it comes to any semblance of depth. Alysha Clark ($5.6k) should move into the starting lineup here, but what other changes come to give those starters a breather, even for a few minutes, remains to be seen. With that trio of absences, I expect Becky Hammon to run an even tighter rotation than we’ve been used to this postseason. I would not be surprised to see 38 or more minutes for the four starters who are “regular” rotation pieces here, barring foul trouble, further injury or a blowout. We don’t have a huge sample size with the three players missing off the court this season, but what data we do have suggests (unsurprisingly) that A’ja Wilson ($11.4k) is likely going to produce at an insane rate if this game is to remain competitive. In a 67-minute sample with those three off the court this season Wilson is averaging 1.9 DK points per minute with a 34.3% usage rate. Kelsey Plum ($8.8k) has been more productive on a point per minute basis than Jackie Young ($8.6k) in that small sample, but I don’t have much of a lean on, which I prefer. Young was the more productive of the two through the first two games of this series before her dud Sunday. They’re both quite strong plays given the increased usage they should see. Clark is a fantastic value play and should be expected to play at least mid 30s in minutes.
So how do we parse through the remaining four active players for the Aces? If we’re going off of whose played the most with the list of the inactives off the court this season, then the clear answer is Kierstan Bell ($2.2k), who is second on the team in minutes in that sample size. But even though Bell is a good size guard, standing at 6-foot-1 and 176 pounds, she hardly feels like the answer to the New York frontcourt tandem of Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart. So I’m skeptical Bell gets the start, and I’m not surprised if either the 6-4, 225-pound Alaina Coates ($1k) or 6-4, 195-pound Cayla George ($1k) do get the nod and some significant run here. I prefer whoever starts of this bunch, but if you’re running an MME build tonight I would want shares of all three. How much of each would be a question I could more thoroughly answer once we get starters. Sydney Colton ($1.2k) could factor in, but as of this writing she’s clearly the fourth of the four choices when it comes to which value play we should prioritize.
With the Liberty favored by six at home and the Las Vegas value opening up all kinds of options for our showdown lineups, we should have a lot of interest in stacking up New York players here Wednesday. The Aces haven’t been able to do much in the way of slowing down Jonquel Jones ($9.4k) and losing Stokes only makes Jones a more attractive DFS option. With the interest I have in rostering Wilson as a spend up and the $800 savings you get dropping down from Breanna Stewart ($10.2k) to Jones, I’m leaning toward having more Jones shares tonight than Stewart. That’s not to say that I am full fading Stewie, quite the contrary. But if I have to pick just one, give me Jonq.
Sabrina Ionescu ($8k) finally woke up from a fantasy standpoint last game, as did her backcourt mate Courtney Vandersloot ($7.8k). I slightly prefer Ionescu to Vandersloot if I have to choose one, and I also lean toward grabbing a share of the Aces guard pair (Plum/Young) before rostering a Liberty guard option. Betnijah Laney ($7k), who just hasn’t gotten going this series from a fantasy standpoint, is likely to be a lower-rostered pivot off of those other guard choices. But we know she can get hot in a hurry, as evidenced by her closing out the final three games of the previous series against Connecticut with fantasy performances of 33, 39.5 and 38.25 DK points. I would be at least 10 lineups in before considering an option off the New York bench, and I would only grab shares of Marine Johannes ($4.4k) and Kayla Thornton ($3.6k).
A’ja Wilson
Jonquel Jones
Breanna Stewart
