Any time a high-priced, high-usage player is out for a game, it obviously shakes up not only his own team’s fantasy potential for that game, but the DFS slate landscape as a whole. Tonight, Dwight Howard has been suspended and will miss the Rockets’ game against the Miami Heat. This will open up minutes, points, rebounds, and other statistics to his teammates, despite the bad matchup against the stingy Heat defense (although Hassan Whiteside has already been ruled out).
Dwight Howard has been out 10 games this year and I thought it would be interesting and hopefully useful to quickly look at his teammates’ fantasy impact in those particular games. Is it a small sample size? Sure. Is it tough to 100% trust the data because the rotation has been constantly changing throughout the season? Of course. However, DFS isn’t about finding perfect data, as that doesn’t exist. DFS is about using the data you have and making the best, most-informed decisions possible.
So, I use our Trends section to look at how players have performed in Dwight’s 10-game absence.
As you can see, Harden has been an elite play in these instances, destroying his salary-implied value by +11.29 points per game. Both Clint Capela and Trevor Ariza are interesting cases – their Plus/Minus’s are good without Dwight, but they’re all over the place when you break those 10 games down individually over the course of the season. Here’s how it looks (click for larger picture):
Capela was clearly the guy at the beginning of the season, as he crushed his salary-implied value in those first four non-Dwight games: +14.74, +0.64, +23.77, and +17.17. However, once Terrence Jones got back into the mix, that has died down a bit. Looking at Jones’ numbers without Dwight, they were really good from when he returned in that fourth non-Dwight game up through the eighth. However, that then coincided with the Rockets re-acquiring Josh Smith, who now takes the torch (if you’re following, it was Capela to Jones to now Smith). Despite the last game, Smith dominated his salary in the first two non-Dwight games that he played.
Now, all of this needs a big caveat – Miami is an elite defense and especially against big men – they have the fifth-stingiest True DvP, or Opponent Plus/Minus, allowed to PFs. However, this certainly won’t be the last time that Dwight will be out this season, especially if they decide to give him periodic rest approaching the playoffs in a couple of months. Knowing which players fill in will be key to maximizing the value in your DFS lineups.
So while the matchup tonight dictates probably only using Rockets in tournaments as opposed to cash, some exposure to Harden, Josh Smith, and possibly Ariza is warranted given the above data. And if Dwight is out later against a weaker opponent, those players – unless someone else takes the current torch from Josh Smith (maybe it’s Ariza, who has been amazing the last two non-Dwight games) – become cash-game viable and elite tournament plays.
