Rhyne Howard enters Friday's three-game WNBA slate as one of the most expensive DFS plays on DraftKings, priced at $10,600 after a steady run of production that has kept her in the center of lineup debates. For fantasy players sorting through a short board, that salary is the number that changes the shape of the slate.
The reason her name is drawing attention now is simple: Howard has posted between 26.8 and 45.5 DK points in each of her last eight appearances. That kind of floor matters on a night with only three games, but the cost is steep enough that she would have exceeded 4x value in only two of those eight outings. In DFS terms, that makes her one of the clearest boom-or-bust calculations on the card.
Angel Reese is the player who showed what the upside can look like at a more manageable price. She bounced back Wednesday against the Golden State Valkyries with 32.4 FD points and is listed at $7,600 on FanDuel for Friday, a number that gives lineups more room elsewhere. Citron also sits near the top of the pricing board on FanDuel and comes in after 45.2 FD points against the Connecticut Sun on June 17, with at least 20 points in three of her last four appearances. Those recent outputs are why the salary sheet matters as much as the injury report.
That injury report is busy. Aneesah Morrow, Saniya Rivers and Hailey Van Lith are out for the Connecticut Sun, while Karlie Samuelson is questionable for the Portland Fire because of a finger injury. Courtney Vandersloot is questionable for the Chicago Sky with a knee injury, and DiJonai Carrington is out for the Chicago Sky with a foot injury. Aaliyah Nye and Brionna Jones are out for the Atlanta Dream with knee injuries, while the Washington Mystics and the Golden State Valkyries have no injuries to report.
The friction on Friday is that the safest-looking expensive play is still expensive. Howard's range says she can deliver, but the salary says she has to deliver almost immediately. On a three-game slate, that gap between strong production and elite pricing is where lineups are won or buried, and it is why the next question is not whether Howard can score, but whether the rest of the slate gives enough relief to pay for her.
That is what makes Friday's slate worth watching. The Washington Mystics and Connecticut Sun are meeting again after the Mystics won by seven points on June 17, the Chicago Sky are back after routing the Portland Fire at home on Wednesday, and the Golden State Valkyries are coming off an 11-point win over Atlanta. For DFS players, the board is set: Howard brings the price, Reese brings the value, and the rest comes down to which injury situations and matchup reruns create the cleanest path to a lineup that can hold up by the end of the night.
