FanDuel NBA Daily Picks and Pivots – January 17
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 75 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 372.2 a night which means we have needed 6.2x value to win big!
Tuesday’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
D’Angelo Russell ($6,000) After an action packed double slate on Monday, the NBA returns on Tuesday with a short five game slate. The one game that stands out above the rest to me is the Nuggets-Lakers game which has a massive 227 combined team total and with only a 1 point Vegas spread, this is a game I will look to stack heavily on this slate.
The Nuggets are giving up the second most fantasy points to opposing PG’s on the season, so this is a spot where Russell should be able to shine. Russell has 30+ FanDuel points in seven of his last nine games and with a weak PG crop to choose from, he makes for a great mid-tier play with GPP upside.
Emmanuel Mudiay ($4,500) The Nuggets are going to be at the core of my Tuesday night lineups and I love the upside and salary savings that Mudiay provides on this slate at only $4.5k. The Lakers are ranked 27th in DvP to opposing PG’s on the season and Mudiay was able to perform well in this match-up last year as he averaged over 27 FanDuel points per game against the Lakers which would exceed 6.1x value at this price point.
Mudiay is coming off one of his best games of the season on Monday when he put up 18 points and 13 assists for 41.9 FanDuel points and makes for an elite GPP punt play on this slate!
FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks
James Harden ($12,300) I will admit, initially when looking over this slate I expected to fade Harden as he was priced $3k higher than anyone else on this slate but the more I look over the roster construction, I find myself working him in as part of a Lakers-Nuggets game stack.
The reason I find myself coming back to Harden(besides the fact that he is decent at basketball) is that the other high-priced stars on this slate don’t appeal to me. I have no interest in paying up for the Toronto back-court in a likely blowout against the Nets, Jimmy Butler in a huge pace down game against Dallas or Karl-Anthony Towns against the Spurs. This all leads back to a weak SG position and the need to lock in the best player on the slate.
Although we always harp on finding 6x value, this may be a spot where we simply look for highest raw point performance on a short slate and simply lock in The Beard.
Lou Williams ($4,600) The trick with stacking the Nuggets-Lakers game is finding the best plays on LA as their crowded rotation often makes it difficult on a nightly basis to identify the best fantasy plays.
Rather than identifying the best players, I will simply look at the numbers which tell me to attack the Nuggets in the back court. The Nuggets give up the most fantasy points per game to opposing SG’s and Williams was able to average over 31 FanDuel points against the Nuggets in three games last season.
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks
Danilo Gallinari ($5,900) The Lakers are ranked 29th on the season against opposing SF’s and Gallo is another elite Nuggets target that is reasonably priced on this slate!
Gallinari is locked into major minutes, having played at least 30 minutes in 11 of his last 13 games and has excelled in this match-up in previous seasons having put up over 40 FanDuel points in his last two games against the Lakers.
DeMarre Carroll ($4,600) The one player from Toronto I am interested in rostering on this slate is SF Demarre Carroll who has hit 6x value in three of his last four games including an 18 point, 11 rebounds 31.2 FanDuel outing against this very same Nets team just two games ago.
Brooklyn is ranked dead last this season against SF’s and Carroll has hit 5x and 6x value in his first two starts against the Nets this year which makes him a safe play with GPP upside at this price point!
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward Picks
Nikola Jokic ($8,500) Even with James Harden on this slate, the one player I am building around tonight is Nikola Jokic who is putting up monster numbers each night and faces off against a Lakers team that is giving up the most fantasy points to opposing PF’s this season.
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Jokic comes into this game with 35+ FanDuel points in eight straight contests, and is averaging over 50 FD points per game in his last two contests. Jokic is the clear-cut top point per dollar play for me on this slate and I will have 100% exposure to him regardless of how chalky he may be on a five game slate!
Kenneth Faried ($4,300) Faried entered the starting lineup on Monday and responded with 33 minutes, 20 points and 33 FanDuel points which would exceed 7.6x value at this price point. Faried dominates up tempo match-ups like this one and assuming he remains in the starting lineup, he makes for an easy pairing with Jokic to maximize your exposure to the Nuggets big men!
Hassan Whiteside ($8,900) Hey look – a player outside the Nuggets-Lakers game! The Miami-Houston games has a solid 221 combined team total and if we are locking in Harden, we will want some sort of correlation play from the Miami side. I love the idea of locking in Whiteside who should dominate a Rockets interior without the personnel to keep him from racking up huge rebounding numbers.
Whiteside is averaging over 40 FanDuel points per game since returning from injury and with a price point under $9k, he has the ability to far outperform his salary tonight!
Best of luck tonight in your FanDuel NBA contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR throughout the day on Twitter for all the late breaking lineup news and roster updates!