Welcome to the FanDuel NBA edition of Picks and Pivots, a fantasy basketball column focused on helping you find the best FanDuel NBA lineup!
The purpose of this FanDuel NBA Picks column is to first identify key building blocks that can be used for any roster construction and then identify pivot points to help differentiate your lineup in hopes of a big payday!
For those of you that are new to Picks and Pivots, we will go through the season tracking trends in this space by looking at the winning GPP lineups each day.
One of the most basic questions when starting out the NBA season is how many points should I be targeting for tournament entries? A good rule of thumb is that you want your players to exceed 6x their salary so on a $60k team salary you are looking for 360+ points. If you spread that out over a roster of 9 players, that is an average of 40 points per player.
A good rule of thumb is that you want your players to exceed 6x their salary so on a $60k team salary you are looking for 360+ points. If you spread that out over a roster of 9 players, that is an average of 40 points per player.
Now it is unreasonable to expect every player to hit that target, especially when you are utilizing value plays but remember that is the average you need over the course of your roster!
To start the year, I would simply build your roster with the simple 6x rule in mine and do the math quickly. Can I see player X hitting 6x their salary? For example, LeBron James is priced at $9,600 so in order to return value he would need to exceed 57 points.
This is not a hard and fast rule, but as we go through the season I will track the trends each night to understand the target multiplier we should use as our baseline.
Over the first 23 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 370.1 a night which means we have needed 6.17x value to win big!
Sunday’s Main NBA action kicks off at 7:00PM EST with four games on the main slate and no shortage of superstars to choose from. Without further ado – let’s get into our top picks for the day!
FanDuel NBA Picks – Top Point Guards
Russell Westbrook ($11,500) On a short slate I almost always take the approach of locking in the superstars on the slate if the cap allows it as I find it nearly impossible to fade the chalk as if the star goes off like we expect you have far fewer options to surpass the field.
Westbrook and the Thunder come into this game with the highest team total (109) on the main slate which is over 6 points higher than their season average and see a slight pace uptick against an up-tempo Pacers team! Westbrook has hit 61 and 77 FD points in his last 4 games with a 50 point floor, this is the one player I feel you need to lock into your lineups in all formats today!
Jeff Teague ($6,600) One of the interesting aspects of this game is that it starts two hours prior to the other 3 games so it may be the only game we get injury/lineup news on which makes it the “safest” spot to build your lineups around.
With Paul George a GTD and C.J. Miles already ruled out, Teague makes for one of the best plays on the slate and is essentially a must play if PG is ruled out. Without George and Miles on the floor, Teague sees a usage rate of 31.3% which is a massive bump to his season long rate of 26.7% and averages roughly 0.86 FP/M.
Teague has hit 34 FD points in 4 straight games which gives him a solid 5x cash game floor and the match-up against OKC where he could potentially have to carry the load makes him an intriguing GPP option as well!
FanDuel NBA Picks – Top Shooting Guards
Victor Oladipo ($5,700) It has been a slow start to the season but it looks like the dynamic talent that the Thunder acquired in the off-season is finally performing at the level many of us expected! Oladipo is coming off his two best games of the season, 49.5 and 38 FD points in his last two games and has scored 20+ real life points in both contests.
The price point remains deflated due to his early season woes so this is a great spot to capitalize while there is still value to be had. If you intend to stack Westbrook and DeMarcus Cousins on FanDuel, you will have $5,471/player remaining so Oladipo makes a great play to supplement the two high-priced stars!
Rodney Hood ($5,200) Although we do not typically look to target the Jazz players in DFS, a match-up against the Nuggets gives us the chance to target their players in a rare pace up game. From a DvP perspective the Nuggets are dreadful in stopping opposing back-courts ranking dead last to PG’s and 29th in DvP to opposing SG’s!
Hood is locked into major minutes, is coming off a 33 FD point outing in his last game and should continue to take on a major scoring role with Derrick Favors out and Gordon Heyward nursing an injury!
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forwards
Jimmy Butler ($8,500) The Bulls take on the Lakers on Sunday night and see one of the biggest pace increases of any team on the slate which puts Jimmy Butler in play at a relatively weak small forward position.
Butler has been on fire the last 2 weeks, averaging 45.9 FanDuel points per game over his last seven contests. The Lakers present favorable match-ups to opposing wing players and Butler is the one player at SF that I have confidence is as he is not nursing an injury that could limit his playing time/performance.
Matt Barnes ($4,100) We are going to need to look for value somewhere and the second SF spot is an ideal place in my roster construction to do so. Barnes has played has played at least 27 minutes in five of his last six games and has eclipsed 20 FD points in four of those six games which gives him a 5x cash game floor with upside for more due to his high minutes count.
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forwards and Center
Trey Lyles ($4,000) Power forward is UGLY on this slate so it may be the best place to save some salary and Lyles will likely be a highly used value play for the Jazz. On Saturday with Derrick Favors and Boris Diaw out, Lyles started for Utah and put up 25 FD points in 33 minutes of action and with Favors ruled out again we should see Lyles continue to get major run. The one item to keep an eye on here is the return of Diaw who got the start in the prior game which limited Lyles to only 21 minutes of action!
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Nikola Mirotic ($4,200) Mirotic is a GPP play only as he has incredible volatility on a game by game basis but on a short slate we are going to need to get creative! Looking over the game logs you can see single digit games wrapped around a 40 burger so the upside is real but the floor is very low! Proceed with caution here and keep an eye out during the day for PF values as they open up as this is by far the best spot to save salary on this slate!
DeMarcus Cousins ($10,200) As I noted earlier, on a short slate I am simply not fading the top end stars and I am fine locking in Boogie and Westbrook and using the roughly $5,500 per player remaining to build my roster.
Boogie has been a beast lately eclipsing 50 FD points in 3 straight games and with a $4k price drop to the next center the decision will be either to pay up for Cousins or drop down into Rudy Gobert/Myles Turner land. We could see a legit 30 point difference between Cousins and the rest of the field here so I am locking in Boogie and I will let others play the center guessing game!
Next: FanDuel Week 11 NFL Lineup
Best of luck on Sunday night – we will see you back here on Monday for some more DFS FanDuel action!