FanDuel NBA Daily Picks and Pivots – January 15
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 74 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 372.5 a night which means we have needed 6.2x value to win big!
Sunday’s Main FanDuel NBA action kicks off at 6:00PM 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 – Top Point Guard Picks
Reggie Jackson ($6,400) With only a four game slate on tap, we surprisingly have three games that are legit GPP stack candidates with combined team totals of 212 or higher.
The Lakers-Pistons game has a 213.5 combined team total and a 2 point Vegas spread so we should expect a close/high-scoring game here and I want to maximize my exposure here. The Pistons are expected to score 107 points which is over 7 points higher than their season average and the price points for the Pistons players are very reasonable so you can lock in Detroit pieces around the slates big stars tonight.
With Kentavious Caldwell Pope out with an injury for the foreseeable future, Jackson leads the Pistons from a usage perspective(28.3%) and gets to match-up with a Lakers team that is ranked 26th in DvP to opposing PG’s.
Jackson is coming off a string of bad performances as the Pistons have been blown out, so it may keep his ownership down in this spot but remember this is a player who had 35+ FanDuel points in five straight games prior to that cold stretch!
D’Angelo Russell ($6,200) The point guard position essentially boils down to whether or not you are going to roster Russell Westbrook against the Kings or not. I will never tell you not to roster Westbrook, but there are other stars I think should take priority so I will look to save money at point guard and stack the PG’s in the Lakers-Pistons game.
The best spot to attack Detroit all year as been at PG as they are ranked 21st in DvP and Reggie Jackson has one of the worst individual defensive ratings of any PG on this slate!
Russell is very similar to Jackson in the sense that they are both coming off a bad recent games which may decrease their ownership percentage but the game logs would show this could just be a blip on the radar. Prior to his last two down games, Russell had 30+ FanDuel points in his previous seven games and hit 6x value in three of those seven games.
FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks
James Harden ($11,800) Looking over this slate, we have four superstars – James Harden, Russell Westbrook, DeMarcus Cousins and Jimmy Butler all in amazing spots and I will look to get exposure to two of them in my FanDuel lineups tonight.
To me, The Beard is the player I am most likely to pay up for tonight as he gets to face off against the worst defensive team in the NBA in the Brooklyn Nets. This game has a massive 231.5 combined team total and the Rockets are projected to score 122+ points. Seriously read that again – that is 7 more points than the Rockets season average!
These two teams faced off earlier this season and Harden dropped 62.1 FanDuel points against the Nets and should be in line for similar production tonight. I do not believe this is a night where you can go “balanced” and compete with the high-end stars on this slate so lock in Harden and look to find salary savings elsewhere!
Sean Kilpatrick ($4,100) The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expected a different result. Kilpatrick is my DFS insanity as I continue to roster him in what should be ideal situations for fantasy performance only to be let down!
The Nets are projected to score 109 points, seeing an uptick both in projected points scored and pace so I want to grab some correlation plays if I am playing the Rockets/Harden. Kilpatrick has hit 6x value in two of his last six games but has also scored single digit FD points in two of those games so this is the definition of a GPP boom/bust play.
With Jeremy Lin out and Isaiah Whitehead questionable for tonight, it should set up nicely for Kilpatrick. Memo to coach Kenny Atkinson, Kilpatrick is one of your best offensive weapons – unleash the man! Come on Kenny – we both went to the University of Richmond – do me a solid and help a fellow Spider out!
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks
Jimmy Butler ($9,400) On Saturday night our Picks and Pivots picks finished firmly outside the cash line as we had zero exposure to Jimmy Butler who went absolutely nuts. Butler returned from illness and had lost 10 points so I assumed it would take him some time to ease back in but after a 55 FD point outing, he clearly showed he was ready to dominate!
In DFS, we always want to be early to a players breakout instead of chasing with the field and I expect Butler will be incredibly popular tonight as a result of last night’s game. The reason I am recommending him however has nothing to do with last night and everything to do with Dwyane Wade sitting out this game.
With Wade off the floor this season, Butler sees a 34% usage rate and averages 1.37 fantasy points per minute. Comparing Butler’s usage with Wade on the floor, he will see a 4% usage increase and .23 FP/M increase which equates to over 8 additional fantasy points in 35 minutes of action.
Stanley Johnson ($3,500) With KCP out for the Pistons, Stanley Johnson played 25 minutes for Detroit and anytime we can get a stone minimum player with extended run we have to take notice.
The fact that the Pistons take on a Lakers team that is ranked 27th in DvP to opposing SF’s only increases his appeal. From a pure value perspective, Johnson is one of the best punt options on this slate and allows you to easily fit in two top end stars in your FanDuel lineup.
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Picks
Ryan Anderson($5,000)/Trevor Booker ($5,400) The power forward position is ugly on this slate so I like the idea of utilizing it to further stack my exposure to Houston/Brooklyn with the Booker/Anderson pairing.
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From a DvP perspective, the Rockets are 26th against opposing PF’s and the Nets are ranked 28th, so both players have an extremely favorable match-up. In the last meeting between these two teams, Anderson dropped 29.2 FanDuel points while Booker racked up 32.1 FanDuel points.
If we can get 61.3 FD points from our PF position for $10.4k, this would equate to 5.9x value which woud set our roster up nicely from a GPP perspective.
Andre Drummond ($7,900) If you opt not to pay up for Boogie on this slate, than dropping down to Drummond against the Lakers is a great way to target GPP upside at a significant discount.
The Lakers are ranked 27th in DvP to opposing centers on the season and we have seen the 50+ upside that Drummond has in elite match-ups. In a similar spot against Portland last week, Drummond put up 28 points, 14 rebounds and 55 FanDuel points.
Next: FanDuel NFL Playoff Picks
Best of luck in your FanDuel NBA lineups tonight and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR Twitter all day for late breaking lineup news and roster updates.