Injuries Reshuffled the Deck. Miles Is Holding the Aces.

Three games, first tip at 8:00 PM ET, 64 players in the pool. That's a manageable Friday night — tight enough that every lineup decision matters, small enough that a well-constructed roster can win the whole room. The matchups are MIN v POR, NY v IND, and WSH v GS. Two of those three have real star power. One of them is a genuine spectacle.

The model's read on the shape of the slate: injury news has redistributed minutes in a meaningful way across both the Minnesota–Portland and New York–Indiana games, and that redistribution is the story tonight. On a three-game slate you don't have the luxury of burying a missed injury call in a sea of alternatives. You need to know who absorbed those minutes before lock. That's what this card is for.

The Washington–Golden State game rounds out the slate and will offer correlation options in the build section, but the models' sharpest projections tonight are concentrated in Minneapolis and New York.

On a three-game slate you typically want at least one anchor — a high-projection stud who gives your roster a floor to build from. Tonight the model hands you a rare problem: an embarrassment of riches at the top. Five players project above 36 points, and four of them are priced between $9,800 and $10,900. That compression is unusual and it matters for construction.

Olivia Miles is the model's top projection at 45.1 points — $10,700, 36 projected minutes, and the best value score in this tier at 4.21 points per $1K. An injury has bumped her minutes, and the model has priced that in while the salary hasn't fully caught up. Her floor of 37.6 makes her as close to a cash-game anchor as this slate offers. The ceiling of 54.2 makes her a GPP centerpiece too.

Breanna Stewart at $11,800 is the highest-salaried player on the card and projects 44.0 points against Indiana. Her floor (31.7) is the widest spread in this group, which tells you something: Stew can go sideways, but her ceiling of 56.1 is real, and an injury has bumped her minutes. She's a GPP play as much as a cash play — the range is just honest.

Natasha Howard ($10,900) and Jonquel Jones ($10,800) are nearly co-equal in projection and value — 41.5 and 40.8 respectively, both at 3.78–3.81 points per $1K, both with bumped minutes. They're priced within $100 of each other and project within 0.7 points of each other. The differentiator is their volatility profiles: Howard's ceiling (54.1) almost matches Miles', while Jones has a tighter spread (30.1 floor, 51.3 ceiling) — she's the more reliable of the two if you need a steadier anchor alongside a boom-or-bust play.

Caitlin Clark at $11,700 is the outlier in this group — 28.5 projected minutes, no minutes bump, and a floor of 19.7 that is a genuine concern. But her ceiling is 59.2, the highest on the entire slate. Clark is the definition of a GPP-only play tonight: she can win your tournament or sink your cash entry. Know which contest you're building for before you roster her.

Courtney Williams ($9,800) rounds out the studs tier with a 36.7 projection and bumped minutes in the MIN–POR game. She's the cheapest anchor on the board and her value (3.74 per $1K) holds up. On a slate where salary is tight, she's the flexibility piece.

On a slate this top-heavy, the value tier is where lineups actually separate. You can't pay up for every stud — someone has to give you 13–20 points on $3,000–$5,000. Tonight's value board has two genuinely interesting pieces at the very bottom of the salary range, and one mid-tier play that the injury news elevated.

Let's start with the pair that might look unfamiliar: Teja Oblak ($3,300, POR) and Luisa Geiselsoder ($3,200, POR) are the two best points-per-$1K projections on the entire slate at 4.48 and 4.31 respectively. Both play for Portland against Minnesota, both had injuries bump their minutes, and both project in the 14–15 point range. Their floors are low — 5.9 and 4.4 — so these are variance plays, not cash-game staples. But at minimum salary (or close to it) on a slate where you need salary relief to afford Miles, Howard, and Jones simultaneously, Oblak and Geiselsoder are the names that make the math work in GPP builds.

Marine Johannes ($5,300, NY) is the mid-tier value play of the night. Twenty-five projected minutes, a projection of 20.8, and an injury has bumped her into a larger role against Indiana. Her ceiling of 29.2 is achievable — she's not going to carry your lineup, but at 3.92 points per $1K she gives you real production at a price that opens up the top of your roster. On a three-game slate with this much salary concentration at the top, a reliable 20-point floor piece at $5,300 is the connective tissue every lineup needs.

This is the model's signature move, and tonight it's working overtime. An injury has redistributed minutes across multiple players in two different games. The model's process: injured-out players are excluded, their minutes are redistributed to remaining rostered players, and projections are updated in real time. That's the edge — not a rumor, not a gut feel, but a systematic minutes reallocation that the salary board hasn't fully absorbed.

Six players on tonight's card have bumped minutes. You've already met most of them — Miles, Stewart, Howard, Jones, and Williams all appear here because the injury news elevated their floors and ceilings simultaneously. But the one name in this section that isn't in the studs tier deserves a moment: Sabrina Ionescu ($10,400, NY).

Ionescu projects 34.8 points with 36 minutes — an injury has bumped her into a full workload. Her floor (19.9) is the widest spread on this list, and her ceiling (53.3) is legitimate. At $10,400 with bumped minutes against Indiana, she's priced like a secondary option but projecting like a co-anchor. The value (3.35 per $1K) is the lowest in this section, which is the honest caveat — she's not the efficient play Miles or Howard are. But if you're building a GPP lineup that wants NY stack exposure, Ionescu at 36 minutes is a real piece of that puzzle.

The broader takeaway from the injury section: Minnesota and New York each lost a piece tonight, and the minutes didn't vanish — they landed on players who were already projecting well. That's a compounding effect the model captures and the casual price list doesn't show you.

Three games means correlation is both available and dangerous. You can stack a game, but there aren't enough fallback options if your stack goes cold. Here's how to think about construction tonight.

The Cash-Game Core

Start with Olivia Miles. She's the model's top projection, has the best value score among the studs, and her floor of 37.6 is the most comfortable on the slate. Pair her with Jonquel Jones — tight projection, reasonable floor, bumped minutes — and you have two reliable anchors at a combined $21,500. That leaves room to add Marine Johannes as your mid-tier bridge and either Oblak or Geiselsoder as your salary relief, bringing the MIN–POR and NY–IND games into both lineups without overcommitting.

The GPP Build

The NY–IND game is the GPP stack of the night. Breanna Stewart and Ionescu together give you 70.8 projected points at $22,200 — and if that game runs up and both players cook, the upside is significant. Layering Caitlin Clark on the other side is the pure ceiling swing: her 59.2 ceiling is the highest on the slate, and in a GPP you can live with the 19.7 floor if you've structured the rest of your lineup to absorb it. The MIN–POR stack (Miles + Howard + Williams) is the safer GPP build — three players who all absorbed bumped minutes, all projecting well, all on the same side. That game-stack correlation is particularly strong when the minutes redistribution affects the same team's entire rotation.

Salary Relief

Oblak ($3,300) and Geiselsoder ($3,200) are the mechanism that lets you pay up at the top. Their projections are modest and their floors are low, but in a GPP where you need to fit three high-salary players, minimum-adjacent salaries that still project 14 points are how you solve the puzzle. Don't force both into a cash entry — one is enough, and only if the rest of the lineup demands it.

The Ceiling Lineup to Consider

Miles + Stewart + Clark + Johannes + Oblak (or Geiselsoder) is the high-variance GPP build: the two top-ceiling players on the slate (Clark at 59.2, Stewart at 56.1) alongside the top projection (Miles at 54.2 ceiling) and two value pieces to make salary work. It's correlated across two games, which on a three-game slate is about as aggressive as you can responsibly get. The floor is real — Clark's 19.7 and Stewart's 31.7 mean this lineup can disappoint. But the upside is genuinely tournament-winning if two or three of those ceilings are approached simultaneously.

Tonight's slate is shaped by injury news in the best possible way for an informed player — the minutes were redistributed to players who were already good, which means the model isn't asking you to bet on a previously marginal option suddenly becoming a star. Miles, Stewart, Howard, Jones, and Williams were all credible plays before the injuries; the bumped minutes just improved projections that were already compelling. The model is walk-forward validated — it has beaten both naive baselines out of sample (MAE 7.03 vs. 7.11; methodology on The Standard) — and the floor/ceiling figures you see here represent each player's own historical volatility, not a generic range. The honest read: this is a slate where cash-game construction is unusually accessible because the top value and the top projection happen to be the same player in Miles, and the GPP paths through New York are genuine. Clark is the wild card, as she always is — she can absolutely deliver that 59.2 ceiling, and she can absolutely land on 19.7. Three games, good injuries (from a DFS standpoint), clear hierarchy. Build deliberately, stack with purpose, and let the math do what it's supposed to do.