FanDuel NBA Daily Picks and Pivots – February 16
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 95 slates, we have seen the average winning GPP score at 378.7 a night which means we have needed 6.3x value to win big!
Thursday’s Main FanDuel NBA action kicks off at 7:00PM EST with two 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 final FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots before the All-Star Break! We only have a two game slate tonight but it is always fun to play NBA DFS and I will certainly have some action tonight before I prepare for a week without the NBA! I hope you guys have enjoyed these articles so far this year, have learned some things, improved your DFS game and made some money!
John Wall ($10,400)/Jeff Teague ($7,200) On short slates like we have tonight, my #1 rule is to take stance and stick with it. My position tonight is that I want to try to game stack one of the two games (as much as I can) and hope that my game is the fantasy winner while the other simply fizzles out.
The Wizards and Pacers have the higher combined team total (217 versus 212) and both teams actually see slight pace bumps which is the polar opposite of the Bulls-Celtics game in which both teams see a pace decrease!
At point guard you essentially have three options (unless you like Rajon Rondo) – John Wall, Isaiah Thomas or Jeff Teague. I am locking in the Wall/Teague combo tonight so I can maximize my correlation here and stack these guards as they go against each other.
Wall has played well against Indiana thus far with a 38.8 FD point outing and a 61.7 FanDuel point performance in their last match-up which is exactly the kind of upside we need to target in this slate. Teague on the other hand has put up 38.9 and 46.8 FanDuel points against the Wizards this season so we can essentially lock in two players with near 40 point floors and hope this game shoots out to where they reach their ceilings in GPP play.
IT4 is the one player I am fading 100% tonight(gotta take a stand somewhere right) as he has yet to top 45 FanDuel points in two prior meetings with the Bulls and has not reached that mark in any of his last seven games! While IT4 is clearly a solid play, I am not willing to pay $10k for a player who essentially could perform at the same level as Jeff Teague who is priced nearly $3k cheaper!
FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks
Monta Ellis ($4,200) Monta was one of my better pivot plays on Wednesday night’s slate and I am going right back to the well here tonight. Ellis comes into tonight’s game with 30+ minutes in each of his last three contests and has 20+ FanDuel points in each of his last five games.
The more I watch the Pacers the more I notice how much Ellis has the ball in his hands as a playmaker for Indiana and that was evident by his 7 assists against Cleveland on Wednesday night. Ellis put up 21 FanDuel points the last time they faced the Wizards and I am looking for a similar output tonight as one of the best pure value plays on the slate!
Marcus Smart ($5,800) With Avery Bradley still on the sidelines, Smart has responded with some truly high ceiling DFS games for the Celtics. If you are fading IT4, this is the guy I want as my Celtics pivot as he comes into this game with 40+ FanDuel points in two of his last four games!
The Bulls are ranked 16th in DvP against SG’s and assuming Dwyane Wade is out again, that means Smart will see a lot of Michael Carter-Williams defense which is a match-up he should dominate and I will have significant exposure to Smart as my primary Celtics piece in DFS lineups!
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks
Jimmy Butler ($9,700) and Paul George ($8,600) From my perspective, I think Small Forward is the position to pay up at tonight and I am going to lock in Butler and PG13 in all formats tonight!
With Dwyane Wade still questionable with an injury, I would expect the Bulls to play it safe and let Wade rest through the All-Star Break which sets Butler up for a massive usage night! With Wade off the floor this season, Butler sees a 6% usage increase per RotoGrinders Court IQ Tool and leads the team with a 35% usage rate while putting up just under 50 FD points per 36 minutes!
Butler put up 43 FanDuel points against Toronto last game and amazingly did that on the back of 2-10 shooting as he was able to get to the free throw line 19 times! I love what that says about Butlers aggressiveness and will fire him up tonight in every single lineup I have!
Paul George really let me down in the second half last night as he went into the half with over 20 FanDuel points yet finished with only 24 FD points as a result of brutal 4-19 shooting against the Cavs. Tonight he takes on a Wizards team that he has dropped 37, 39 and 45 FanDuel points against this season and that stability of 30-40 FD point scoring is exactly what I am looking for on a night with so many dicey options!
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Picks
Amir Johnson ($3,700) and Bobby Portis ($3,500) Power forward is an absolute dumpster fire of awful options so I would highly recommend you punt this position entirely! The highest priced option is Markieff Morris at $7.4k but I cannot pay that price for a guy who failed to top 20 FanDuel points in two of three games against the Pacers this season!
Instead I am going to look for some bargain punt plays who have the ability to get me 22+ FanDuel points in an effort to eek out 6x value! Amir Johnson has actually had tremendous success against the Bulls this season as he dropped 23 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks for 44.7 FanDuel points in their last meeting! Now I certainly do not expect a repeat performance but Amir has hit 6x value in three of his last six games so the upside is there and he is a player I feel comfortable taking a risk on!
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Portis on the other hand is a volatile asset who sees his value pretty much tied to the availability of Nikola Mirotic tonight. If Mirotic sits again, we can fire up Portis who dropped 23 FanDuel points in 31 minutes against Toronto before falling flat with only 10 FD pts in his last game. If Mirotic were to play, at only $3.7K you have the salary flexibility to easily pivot to him and he has had success against Boston this season with 24 and 25 FD points in their previous two meetings!
Myles Turner ($6,500) Center is a very “safe” position tonight as we have a variety of players who all play 30+ minutes a night and can put up solid stat lines so I think the opportunity cost is relatively low here and you simply can fill in the rest of your roster then work in whoever from the Gortat-Horford-Turner group fits in your roster build.
Turner has played well against the Wizards this season, putting up 27 and 38 FanDuel points in their previous two meetings. Turner also is a much better play at home this year as he averaged 33.7 FD points in Indiana as opposed to 26.9 FanDuel points on the road!
Enjoy the last night of NBA Action FanDuelers but stay tuned to Fantasy CPR each day during the ASB as we will have EPL, NHL and PGA DFS action to hold you over!
Best of luck in your FanDuel NBA contests tonight and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR on Twitter for all the late breaking lineup news and roster updates!