FanDuel NBA Daily Picks and Pivots – February 10
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 90 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 379.0 a night which means we have needed 6.3x value to win big!
Friday’s Main FanDuel NBA action kicks off at 7:30PM EST with nine 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
Derrick Rose ($6,200) Friday night at Madison Square Garden should be one of the more fascinating places to watch in all of sports both from a DFS perspective and from a social perspective. After Wednesday’s Charles Oakley embarrassment, I expect the fans to be in rare form and with how beloved the Oakley is by the fans and players, this could be an odd rallying cry for a franchise imploding before our eyes!
On the court, the Knicks and Nuggets is going to be a game I go VERY heavy on as I think this is a spot to build a GPP game stack around as this game as a 228 combined team total which is the highest on the slate by 10 points!
The Knicks have the highest projected team total on the slate where they see a significant pace boost and are projected to score almost 10 points higher than their season average. The Nuggets rank 29th in DvP to opposing PG’s on the season and Rose comes into this game fresh off a 40 FD point performance his last time out!
With the increase in pace and the mid-range price point, Rose makes an elite play in all formats tonight and will be a core play as part of any game stack I build here!
Darren Collison ($5,200) With Ty Lawson doubtful for this game, Darren Collison will see all the run he can handle as the Kings primary point guard in a great spot against Atlanta tonight. No point guard on this slate has a worse individual defensive rating than Dennis Schroder so the match-up is primed for Collison to have another big game.
With DeMarcus Cousins off the floor for Sacramento in their last game, Collison stepped up as the primary offensive option and racked up 26 points, 5 assists, 4 steals and 40 FanDuel points against Boston. Although Cousins will be back tonight, the absence of Lawson puts Collison firmly on my radar as the second scoring option for the Kings and we can roll him out as a great value option with elite upside tonight!
UPDATE: With Dion Waiters ruled OUT, I will be looking to pivot up to Goran Dragic ($8,100) tonight in an elite spot against the Brooklyn Nets. The Miami Heat see the biggest pace bump of any team on the slate and are projected to score 11 points more than their season average so we should feel confident locking in as much Miami exposure as we can get. Dragic is my favorite play on the Miami side as he comes into the game with eight straight 30+ FanDuel point outings and 40+ in five of those eight including a 40.6 FD outing against this very same Nets team!
FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks
Will Barton ($5,800) The injury to Danillo Gallinari was a clear boost to Wilson Chandler‘s fantasy status but it appears that Will Barton may also have been one of he biggest beneficiaries for the Nuggets based off his recent play.
Barton has 37+ minutes in back to back games putting up 44 and 49 FanDuel points which puts Barton in 7x-8x value at this price point. Barton has put up 18 and 19 field goal attempts over the last two games and with a Knicks team ranked 21st in DvP to opposing SG’s, this is an elite GPP spot for Barton who gets the added benefit of Kenneth Faried being OUT tonight which will likely put Barton into the starting lineup!
Wayne Ellington ($3,700) Initially I was looking to build my roster around Dion Waiters here but with the early news that Waiters is OUT tonight, we can fire up Ellington who will enter the starting lineup against a Nets team dead last in DvP to SG’s this season.
Ellington played 28 minutes in his last start and put up 11 field goal attempts, scoring 17 actual points and 20 FD points which puts him right at 5.5x value.
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks
Carmelo Anthony ($8,100) and Wilson Chandler ($6,700) The price point on both the small forwards in this game have spiked a bit off recent levels but they are not at levels I feel we can outright ignore and as part of a game stack, they make for two of the more critical components at a weak SF position!
Anthony may actually be a better cash game play as he is a consistent mid-30 FanDuel point scorer but has flashed 40-50 point upside in spots recently and that is what we are going to need from a GPP perspective. In a pace up game like this and with so much chaos surrounding the Knicks, this spot just feels primed for a monster Melo night and with his price point at $8.1K many may opt to stay away which makes him an intriguing GPP play!
Chandler has been a popular target with Gallinari sidelined but I see no reason to fade a player who has at least 35 FanDuel points in three of his last four games with Gallo off the court! The minutes are more than secure with Barton playing 36+ minutes in three of his last four and we get the added bonus of a double-revenge narrative here as two players traded for each other get to take on their old teams!
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Picks
Nikola Jokic ($9,900) I am not sure what the rest of the DFS community is afraid of but night after night, Jokic is so wildly under-owned that is baffles me. On Wednesday night, Jokic was 6% owned, Monday night he was 9% owned and tonight he sits under $10k in the highest total game of the night so I am ALL IN ….. AGAIN!
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Jokic has double-doubles in two of his last four games since returning from injury and 40+ FD points in four of his last six games. With the Knicks without Joakim Noah on the floor, I see no way that the Knicks interior keeps Jokic from getting whatever he wants tonight and he will be the first player I put into every single lineup today!
Kristaps Porzingis ($6,800) We have been waiting for KP to return to form and it looks like he may be finally hitting his stride again as he is averaging 18 points and 9 rebounds a game over his last four contests with 37+ FanDuel points in two of his last four games.
The last time these two teams faced off, Porzingis dropped 22 points, 8 rebounds and 40 FanDuel points and with a price point tonight under $7k, he has elite GPP upside in this fast paced, high scoring match-up!
Kyle O’Quinn ($4,200) Hey look -another player from this game! O’Quinn has started the last two games with Joakim Noah off the floor and with Noah doubtful for tonight, we can expect KOQ to garner another start!
KOQ had one of his best games in his last start against the Clippers with 37.2 FanDuel points in 25 minutes of action while putting up 13 shot attempts! KOQ will continue to garner the lower ownership as most look towards Guillermo Hernangómez ($5,900) however in this roster construction I am fine dropping down to KOQ and spending up elsewhere on this slate!
Best of luck tonight in your FanDuel NBA contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR on Twitter all day for late breaking lineup news and roster updates!