FanDuel NBA Daily Picks and Pivots – February 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 94 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 378.6 a night which means we have needed 6.3x value to win big!
Wednesday’s Main FanDuel NBA action kicks off at 7:00PM EST with fourteen 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
Welcome to the last big FanDuel NBA slate before the All-Star Break! Looking over this massive 14 game slate, we have a lot to digest and there will no doubt be a ton of value that opens up throughout the day as players get some added rest prior to the All-Star Break so keep an eye on the injury news!
Kyrie Irving ($8,400) The news broke yesterday that Kevin Love would be out for the next six weeks due to injury and those of us who play DFS know that Kyrie Irving and LeBron James essentially become must plays every night when Love is off the floor.
With Love off the floor this season, no player on Cleveland sees a bigger usage boost as Kyrie gets a 4% usage bump and leads the team with a 36% usage rate while putting up over 42 FanDuel points per 36 minutes.
The Cavs and Pacers just played on February 8th and in that game Kyrie dropped 40.5 FanDuel points starting a run of 40+ FanDuel point outings that he has now hit in three of his last four games. On this slate, I love the idea of going with a balanced roster build of guys who can get me 35-40 points with upside and Kyrie fits that mold perfectly in a match-up he has shown he can succeed in already!
Jeff Teague ($7,200) Teague has had a run of three mediocre games which has dropped his price to just over $7k and tonight is the night I think we jump on and look to stack this game! In this match-up just a few games ago, Teague put up 22 points, 14 assists and 49 FanDuel points!
Teague has excelled in this match-up this season, averaging over 43 FanDuel points per game against Kyrie and the Cavaliers. There is no game that jumps off the page to stack tonight (ie. GS-Denver the other night) but this game does have the fourth highest combined team total on the slate and outside of LeBron, the price points here are very reasonable.
Looking at the prior meetings of these two point guards, Teague is averaging 43.9 FanDuel points while Kyrie is averaging 38.7 (both games that Love played by the way) so an “average” outing tonight gets us nearly 83 FanDuel points for $15.6k of combined salary which puts us over 5.3x value from our point guard spots which clear upside from both players!
FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks
Will Barton ($6,400) Each night that the Nuggets take the floor we have a few very solid facts locked in to start our research as we know they will score a ton of points and that their entire roster is essentially injured which is forcing the 1-2 remaining starters to shoulder the entire offensive load!
With Danilo Gallinari and Kenneth Faried already ruled out and Wilson Chandler questionable, I am going back to Will Barton again tonight in all formats for a price that feels about $1k too low in my opinion. Barton comes into tonight’s game with Minnesota with 45+ FanDuel points in three of his last five games while putting up at least 18 shot attempts in each of those contests.
The usage is off the charts for Barton and while we have seen the price jump a bit for players like Nikola Jokic, Barton has remained in the mid-range sweet spot which allows us to lock in a player with a very safe cash game floor and immense GPP upside. I see no reason to get cute here, I will have 100% exposure to Barton again tonight!
Devin Booker ($6,600) The Suns-Lakers game has the highest combined team total on the slate and the Suns are projected to score the second most fantasy points of any team tonight while seeing a nearly 9 point projected increase over their season average!
The issue with the Suns from a DFS perspective is you essentially need to roll the dice between Eric Bledsoe or Devin Booker as they tend to alternate who has the bigger game. These two teams have played twice already this season with Booker/Bledsoe doing the following:
- 11/6/2016 – Bledsoe: 26 FD points/ Booker: 51 FD points
- 12/9/2016 – Bledsoe: 55 FD points/ Booker 22 FD points
So we have clear 50+ FanDuel point upside from the Suns guards but the question is, which one gets the big game tonight? Clearly tonight is Booker’s turn based off the every other game logic so that is who I will pick(just kidding….kind of).
The Lakers are ranked 27th in DvP to opposing SG’s on the season and really the choice of Booker comes down to roster construction for me. Booker is priced $2.2k lower than Bledsoe so the opportunity cost at a weak SG position is way lower than paying up for Bledsoe and PG and whiffing so I am happy to grab Booker at this price point in GPP play with his clear 50+ FD point upside in the match-up.
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks
Paul George ($8,400) Heading back to Indiana and Cleveland, I want to continue to attack SF’s against LeBron James from a DFS perspective and PG13 has been highly successful in this match-up already in both prior meetings.
In the two prior match-ups between these two teams, Paul George has put up 43.6 and 44.7 FanDuel points against the Cavaliers and after watching what Andrew Wiggins did last night, I think we can feel safe going back to this spot tonight against the King!
I think we are finally starting to see Paul George return to form as he has a very sneaky 36 FanDuel point average this season and has 40+ FanDuel outings in three of his last nine games which speaks to his upside. Similar to my rationale on Kyrie Irving, we can stack this game with relative ease while targeting players with 35-40 point floors and upside that could separate us from a GPP perspective!
Andrew Wiggins ($7,900) We touched on this in Picks and Pivots yesterday but with Zach LaVine out, the usage is all falling to Andrew Wiggins and that was on full display in a national television game last night as he dropped 49 FanDuel points on a whopping 29 shot attempts against Cleveland.
Wiggins now has 45+ FanDuel points in three of his last four games and tonight gets to take on a depleted Nuggets team that is 25th in DvP to opposing SF’s. If Wilson Chandler is out, Wiggins is looking at a boat load of Will Barton defense (which is a great thing) and could absolutely destroy the injury ravaged wings of Denver. If you are playing Barton (and I am), I love the correlation play of Wiggins on the other side here as part of a mini-stack!
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Picks
Dario Saric ($5,300) All the excitement this season in Philadelphia has been about Joel Embiid and recently about the pending Jahlil Okafor trade but meanwhile the Sixers highly skilled rookie, Dario Saric is putting up spectacular DFS numbers on a nightly basis!
Over the last three games (with Embiid out), Saric has put up 34, 37 and 43 FanDuel points, crushing 6x value each night and putting up at least 15 shot attempts in each of those games. Embiid remains out tonight, as does Okafor sot he Sixers front-court is in play tonight as they get a match-up against a Celtics team ranked 18th versus PF’s and 22nd versus Centers. Nerlens Noel ($5,600) is also in play but we can get a $300 discount on Saric who has flashed the higher ceiling in recent games!
UPDATE: Jahlil Okafor is expected to be active off the bench for the Sixers tonight. Nerlens Noel is expected to start and Saric remains a solid play off the bench!
More from FanSided
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- USMNT news: Turner to Forest, Trusty to Sheffield, Reynolds to Westerlo
- Inside the Clubhouse: What I’m hearing as the MLB Trade Deadline nears
- Yankees: Luis Severino has blunt assessment of another miserable outing
Juancho Hernangomez ($4,000) I chickened out on Monday night. All day long the news was pointing to Wilson Chandler sitting and the Juan Hernangomez love was gaining steam and the industry was touting him as the hot value of the night. One of the things I try to do from a GPP perspective is listen to the industry buzz to get an idea of where ownership would land and I was positive that Hernangomez would be massively owned in the huge total game against Golden State.
The Chandler news never became official before lock however and I think that scared people away as Juan was only 4.5% owned and responded with 27 points, 10 rebounds and 45 FanDuel points for $3.5k of salary! UGH!
Well tonight, Chandler looks unlikely to play and the fact we have the All-Star game coming up leads me to believe the Nuggets will likely sit him tonight which opens up Hernangomez for another game of massive run. The Nuggets gave the impressive rookie 43 minutes of run against Golden State and for $4k, I think he becomes a near must play. The one benefit of a 14 game slate is that the ownership is going to be so spread out so I tend to care less about that on large slates and simply play the guys I want to – fire up Juancho tonight!
Guillermo Hernangómez ($5,700) ALL THE HERNANGOMEZ! Ok, I will be honest, I built my roster today locking in position by position and left Center for last as I was not overly in love with any one player and ultimately ended up with $5.8k left to spend and I get the other Hernangomez brother staring right at me. How can you not play the brother narrative here! When else can you realistically stack two Hernangomez players in DFS! Come on!
In all seriousness, Hernangomez was given the start for the Knicks last game out at Center and with Joakim Noah doubtful for tonight I would expect him to get the nod against Steven Adams and OKC. Hernangomez has 28+ FD points in five of his last seven games and has put up 36-40 FD points when given then run so I think we can fire him up again tonight at a solid mid-range price point.
Best of luck tonight in your FanDuel NBA contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR on Twitter for all the late breaking lineup news and roster updates!