Yahoo Perfect 5: Victor Wembanyama, Yaxel Lendeborg and De'Anthony Melton lead my Friday lineup

Yahoo Sports is giving fans another way to play fantasy basketball with Perfect 5, a free-to-play game featuring each week's NBA on Prime doubleheader. The rules are simple: pick five players, stay within a $15 budget and rack up fantasy points through scoring, rebounds, assists, defensive stats and 3s.

Friday's slate features the Knicks at Pacers (7 p.m. ET) and Warriors at Spurs (9:30 p.m. ET). The big news came Thursday afternoon: Stephen Curry left the Warriors' 115-108 loss to the Rockets in the first quarter with what turned out to be an oblique tear, and ESPN's Shams Charania reported he's expected to miss closer to a month. That knocks out one of the most valuable $5 options on the board and reshuffles the Golden State usage tree, which is exactly where I'm hunting value.

Using Yahoo projections and the latest injury news, I ran 20,000 simulations of the slate across all 542,277 legal $15 lineups. I'm paying up for Victor Wembanyama and stacking the Warriors' backcourt vacuum around him. Here's my lineup:

My Perfect 5 lineup

In my sims, this group averaged 160.24 fantasy points and finished in the top 1% of all possible lineups 35.9% of the time, sixth-best of the more than 542,000 builds I tested. It's 3.07 projected points shy of the max, but it's roughly seven times less likely to be duplicated by the field.

Victor Wembanyama – C, San Antonio Spurs – ($5, 81% picked)

The chalkiest pick in the pool, but why fight it? He's putting up absurd numbers on both sides of the ball. Wembanyama leads the slate at 50.31 projected fantasy points, more than 4.5 clear of anyone else, on the back of 30.3 points, 11.7 rebounds and 4.4 blocks per game. The Spurs have won 10 straight and sit at 10-2. Golden State is now without Curry and has an old and uninspiring frontcourt featuring Draymond Green, Al Horford and Charles Bassey. There's no real size to bother Wemby at the rim.

The one worry is the spread. San Antonio is a 12.5-point favorite, so a blowout could cap his fourth-quarter minutes. Even so, he showed up in the single best lineup in 33.4% of my sims, and at 81% picked, fading him feels riskier than playing him.

Yaxel Lendeborg – SF, Golden State Warriors – ($4, 27% picked)

The rookie has been the story of Golden State's start. Lendeborg is averaging 21.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.4 3s, and he's firmly in the Rookie of the Year conversation. Against Houston, with Curry leaving after a few minutes, he carried the offense with 25 points, 10 rebounds and two steals in 36 minutes. After the game, Green told reporters that when Curry and Kevin Durant were off the floor against Houston, he was probably the best player on the court.

At $4, his 41.14 projection is within half a point of Jalen Brunson's at $5. With Curry out, the Warriors have to run their offense through him. He was in the optimal lineup in 32.3% of my sims, third-most of anyone on the slate.

De'Anthony Melton – PG, Golden State Warriors – ($3, 7% picked)

Here's my leverage spot. The math slightly prefers De'Aaron Fox at $3 (33.33 projected), but Fox is picked in 51% of lineups and his team is a double-digit favorite. Melton is projected for 30.26 at the same price, picked by just 7% and he's the obvious beneficiary of Curry's absence. He's averaging 10.1 points, 4.2 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 2.3 3s, and the steals give him a defensive floor even on a night his shot isn't falling. I won't say he's blowout-proof, but with Brandon Williams also out and no back-to-back to worry about workload, 28-30 minutes is a reasonable expectation.

Melton was in the optimal lineup 25% of the time. Swapping Fox for Melton costs about three projected points, but it's the main reason this build is so much less likely to be duplicated.

Keldon Johnson – SF, San Antonio Spurs – ($2, 21% picked)

Johnson is the best $2 on the board at 23.68 projected fantasy points. He's averaging 8.0 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists off the bench. He's also the Spurs player who can benefit if this one gets out of hand, because a blowout means more minutes for the second unit. He was in the optimal lineup in 29% of my sims, the most of any player at $2 or less.

Will Richard – SG, Golden State Warriors – ($1, 8% picked)

Richard leads every $1 player at 14.68 projected points; the next-best is Harrison Barnes at 11.22. He's averaging 5.5 points and 2.0 rebounds, but Curry's injury pushes more backcourt minutes his way, and he's one of the few $1 options without a DNP-coach's-decision risk. In 25% of my sims, he was in the optimal lineup. He played 19 minutes on Wednesday, finishing with 9 points (3-6 FG, 2-3 3PT, 1-2 FT), with 4 boards, a steal and 2 turnovers.

How close is that to the max?

Close. Using Yahoo's projections, the highest-scoring possible lineup is Wembanyama, Lendeborg, Fox, Johnson and Richard at 163.14 fantasy points. Mine is 3.07 points behind it.

The max lineup is the best build on paper. It averaged 163.30 points in my sims and finished in the top 1% 41% of the time, the highest rate of any lineup. The trouble is everyone has it. Wembanyama (81%) and Fox (51%) are the two most popular players in the pool. Based on pick rates, it's about seven times more likely to be duplicated than mine. In a game where you need to finish near the top of the whole Yahoo community, tying a pile of people doesn't help much. Swapping Fox for Melton gives up three projected points, buys a lot of separation and leans into the Curry injury instead of a Spurs starter facing a potential blowout. My lineup still beat the max head-to-head in 42.6% of sims.

If you'd rather keep more of the projection, Wembanyama, Lendeborg, Fox, Landry Shamet and Richard (161.67 projected) was the No. 2 lineup in my sims at a 38.5% top-1% rate. It swaps the 21%-picked Johnson for Shamet at 4%.

The contrarian play: fading Wemby

If you want to go fully against the grain, the best build without Wembanyama is Karl-Anthony Towns, Lendeborg, Fox, Johnson and Richard.

Towns is picked in just 7% of lineups, yet he's the second-highest projection on the slate thanks to 20.9 points and 13.6 rebounds per game. New York is a 7.5-point road favorite. The build averaged 158.73 points and finished in the top 1% 32.8% of the time. If Wembanyama sits late in a Spurs blowout, this lineup jumps past most of the field.

For a deeper fade, Lendeborg, Brandin Podziemski, Fox, Johnson and Shamet (158.58 projected, 32.7% top-1% rate) skips the $5 tier entirely. It doubles up on the Warriors' top-two healthy scorers, and Podziemski is picked in just 2% of lineups while averaging a career-high 17.3 points.

You can start building your Perfect 5 roster for Friday's slate now, including going up against me in my Perfect 5 group. Good luck!

https://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/article/yahoo-perfect-5-victor-wembanyama-yaxel-lendeborg-and-deanthony-melton-lead-my-friday-lineup-165818631.html