FanDuel NBA Daily Picks and Pivots

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 71 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 373 a night which means we have needed 6.2x value to win big!

Thursday’s Main FanDuel NBA action kicks off at 7:30PM EST with five 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 – Top Point Guard Picks

Looking over this slate initially, we have a two games with massive blowout potential and one huge injury question in Anthony Davis that will have a domino effect across our rosters.

Derrick Rose ($6,100) The Knicks-Bulls game opens with a 204 combined team total, largely due to the absence of Jimmy Butler, but this is a game I will look to get significant exposure as it is expected to be one of the closest games of the night.

Rose returned to the Knicks starting lineup on Wednesday night and put up 33.4 FanDuel points on the back of 25 points and 4 assists. Tonight Rose takes on his old team, the Chicago Bulls, who he dominated earlier this season to the tune of 15 points, 11 assists and 7 rebounds for 40.9 FanDuel points which would exceed 6.7x value at this price point.

Jrue Holiday ($6,800) The Pelicans-Nets game should be chock full of fantasy points with two of the worst defensive teams squaring off against each other, however with the status of Anthony Davis up in the air, it is tough to get a solid read on how to attack this game so early in the day!

Davis is the clear-cut top salary play on the board but any time we see Anthony Davis nursing an injury, it may be best to play the fade game in tournaments!

Assuming Davis sits out, Holiday becomes a must play for me as he would see a 7% usage bump, leading the team in usage with over 31% while averaging 1.07 fantasy points per minute. The production has been down for Holiday lately which has brought his price down, but against a Nets team that is ranked dead last in DvP to opposing PG’s this is a GREAT spot to jump back on Jrue.

FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks

Dwyane Wade ($6,900) With Jimmy Butler and Nikola Mirotic already ruled out of this game, Wade is going to be the first player I click into every single one of my lineups. Not only does Wade get an elite match-up against a Knicks team that is 28th in DvP against opposing SG’s, but he also gets a significant usage bump due to the Bulls injuries.

With Butler off the floor this season, Wade has a massive 41% usage rate and averages 1.17 fantasy points per minute. In this match-up earlier this season (with Butler on the floor), Wade managed to drop 45.5 FanDuel points off 35 points and 10 rebounds and I expect him to flirt with a 50 burger again in this spot as the key cog in the Bulls offense!

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($5,900) Although the Pistons are projected to get blown out by the Warriors, I love the idea of targeting KCP in a fast paced game like this. When these two teams played right before Christmas Day, KCP racked up 34.2 FanDuel points against the Warriors off of 25 actual points without any significant peripheral contributions.

KCP comes into this game with 30+ FanDuel points in three of his last five games making him a safe foundational play in your roster construction with upside due to the pace up nature of this game!

FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks

Kawhi Leonard ($8,700) It is always dangerous to target the Spurs stars and even more so when they are in a projected blow out but on a short slate, we may have to do some things a bit differently, especially if Anthony Davis is out!

The Spurs gets to take on a Lakers team that is 26th in DvP to opposing SF’s and Kawhi was able to drop 23 points, 12 rebounds and 7 assists for 48.9 FanDuel points against LA in their earlier meeting this season.

That game actually stayed close and all the Spurs starters played in that game so IF this game could stay close, we could see Kawhi get another 35+ minutes of action and flirt with 50 FanDuel points.

Bojan Bogdanovic ($4,400) For as bad as the Nets are on defense, the Pelicans are not much better so do not be afraid to attack the Nets side of this game in what should be a high scoring affair!

Bojan is playing great basketball, having hit 6x value in each of his last three starts while putting up 26+ FanDuel points in each of those games. The Pelicans are ranked 24th in DvP and if we want to build a balanced lineup of stars (in place of AD), Bojan is a nice way to get salary savings while still shooting for 6x value!

FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Picks

The AD news will obviously shape this position as it could open up tremendous value with players like Terrence Jones or Donatas Motiejunas and considering it is the first game on the slate, we will have the news to adjust to before lock.

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If you want to pivot away from that situation, I like the idea of stacking LaMarcus Aldridge ($7,600) and Julius Randle ($6,600). Both players will likely get overlooked in this match-up but if you are going to play guys from this game, I think it is best to build a game stack and hope it stays close!

LMA put up 41.2 FanDuel points in this game earlier this season while racking up 23 points and 6 rebounds in 36 minutes of action. Randle on the other hand put up 13 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists for 32.3 FanDuel points.

Randle has seen his price come down and after a let down against Portland, I expect most will avoid him tonight against the Spurs which makes him an ideal GPP pivot play!

Brook Lopez ($7,000) The Center position is UGLY on this slate so I will opt to pay up and get some additional exposure to the Nets-Pelicans game with Brook Lopez. Assuming Anthony Davis is out, Lopez should be able to dominate the big men for the Pelicans who are left to fill his void.

Last season when these two teams matched up, BroLo dropped 59.5 FanDuel points on the back of 33 points and 10 rebounds. I expect Lopez will go overlooked tonight at this price point, but for GPP play, I love the idea of targeting him against a Pelicans team that is 17th in DvP against opposing Centers.

Next: FanDuel NFL Playoff Picks

Best of luck in your FanDuel NBA contests tonight and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR Twitter for all the late breaking lineup news and roster updates!