Welcome to the Monday edition of FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots, a fantasy basketball column focused on helping you find the best core lineup for this slate of DFS action!
For those of you finding us for the first time, the concept behind FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots 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!
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Over the first two slates it has taken 238.6 and 239.6 FanDuel points to take down a large field GPP on FanDuel with both preseason slates featuring only two games. The biggest takeaway to me from a roster build perspective is that the winning line-ups are basically chalk builds centered around the starters who will play 20-25 minutes while including 1-2 bench players with upside at low ownership!
On the Sunday slate the winning roster was loaded with all the elite players on the slate including Kyle Lowry, Blake Griffin and Hassan Whiteside, but it was the inclusion of John Collins at less than 6% ownership who put up 15 points, 9 rebounds and 31.5 FanDuel points that made all the difference when trying to separate from the field!
Picks and Pivots is not a simple “best plays” column but rather it focuses on slate strategy and roster construction to help give you insight into how I will look to play this slate! The goal of this article is to dig through the slate, highlight our top plays and give you a sample line-up as an example of what our core roster build could look like using the analysis we lay out in the coming pages!
As always, we will look to update our picks and final lineup thought prior to lock on our twitter account @FantasyCPR so make sure to give us a follow for all the late breaking lineup news.
Without further ado, let’s get into this week’s slate!
FanDuel NBA – Key News and Notes:
Looking over this slate there are a few key items of note that already help us shape the slate including the fact that Kawhi Leonard will be out for the entire preseason and Marc Gasol will also miss the Monday contest. It is worth noting also that Denver and the Lakers square off again tonight after playing on Saturday night as the first teams to play a second pre-season game. With a five game slate it may make sense to avoid the Nuggets/Lakers tonight as they attempt to adjust minutes and get different looks after taking the court just 48 hours ago!
FanDuel NBA – New Look Celtics:
Over the first two slates the one thing I have focused on in my roster build is to target the teams with new look line-ups that are trying to gel in a pre-season that has been shortened by one week. Veterans like Paul Millsap for example put up big time numbers on Friday with 22 points and 11 boards (36.2 FD points) as they try to acclimate to their new teams.
The Celtics are a team I plan to target heavily tonight as they have 10 new players that Brad Stevens needs to get familiar with and only four preseason games to do it in. The fact that the Celtics do not play again until Friday gives me confidence in a strong core of minutes for the Celtics starters and I will certainly keep my eye on social media throughout the day and pass along any information as we get it.
The Celtics come into this year with an entirely new look as Kyrie Irving ($5,100) and Gordon Hayward ($4,400) step in as the new stars for Boston and in their first game together I want to stack them both as I expect a similar outcome to what we saw with Paul Millsap on Saturday night where they work to make their presence felt and soak up the 35% usage rate left behind by Isaiah Thomas now in Cleveland.
FanDuel NBA – Core Roster Build:
One of the things that you will hear me talk about each and every slate when identifying players is to target players with a high usage rate and effective fantasy point per minute output. The rationale is extremely simple but effective in NBA DFS – the higher the usage, the more chances to rack up fantasy points so find the guys who have the ball in their hands the most!
Giannis Antetokounmpo ($6,600) is the premier play any time the Bucks take the floor and with Jabari Parker out with an injury through January/February, the Greek Freak is going to be a usage monster for Milwaukee. With Parker off the floor last season, it is not surprising that Giannis had a team leading 30% usage rate and racked up 1.3 fantasy points/minute so locking him in at PF on this slate is the perfect place to start.
UPDATE: The Bucks will sit Giannis Antetokounmpo tonight as well as Thon Maker and Jabari Parker. With this news Khris Middleton ($3,000) becomes a near must play as he had a massive 32.2% usage rate and 1.03 fantasy points per minute with Parker and Giannis off the floor last season. It is worth notng Greg Monroe had a 30% usage rate and put up 1.22 fantasy points oer minute in the same scenario.
Nikola Vucevic ($4,300) is in a similar spot to Giannis in that he was the clear usage leader for his team last season, racking up a 25.3% usage rate and 1.2 fantasy points per minute. Outside of finding stars in new line-ups like we did with Boston, targeting elite players with clear team high usage and a high fantasy point per minute repertoire is a great way to build your core tonight!
FanDuel NBA – Which Sleepers to Target:
The Sacramento Kings may not be a team we look to utilize often as their projected starting lineup is well, underwhelming to say the least, but for pre-season slates I actually like the upside that a few of these players have. When you take last season’s roster and start to peel away all the notable subtraction – Tyreke Evans, Rudy Gay, Ty Lawson etc – you are left with a TON of usage to soak up and very few players honestly that have the game to take advantage of it!
Buddy Hield ($1,600) and Skal Labissiere ($1,400) would have been the team leader’s in usage based off the available players left and Willie Cauley-Stein ($1,600) averaged nearly a fantasy point per minute making this three-man stack an intriguing one for GPP play! Once the Kings cleared the way for WCS with the trade of Demarcus Cousins, he responding by averaging 13 points, 8 rebounds, and 1 steal/block per game over the final 25 games making him a great value and high upside GPP play!
Dennis Smith Jr. ($1,000) is expected to be the starting point guard for the Dallas Mavericks and the ninth overall pick in the 2017 draft is already drawing rave reviews in training camp as an explosive 6-3 point guard with massive ability to get to the rim. Tonight’s slate is loaded with name point guards so the casual fan who is playing NBA DFS tonight because they have NFL cash burning a hole in their pocket may ignore the upside of the Mavericks rookie who will get a chance to impress much the way Lonzo Ball did on Saturday night!
FanDuel NBA– Sample Line-Up and Slate Overview
Please Note: This is NOT an optimized line-up, it is simply illustrative to show the type of roster build we can have using the logic previously laid out in Picks and Pivots. My actual line-up may differ from the line-up shown here.
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PG: Kyrie Irving ($5,100)
PG: Dennis Smith Jr. ($1,000)
SG: Nicolas Batum ($3,200)
SG: Buddy Hield ($1,600)
SF: Gordon Hayward ($4,400)
SF: Khris Middleton ($3,000)
PF: Giannis Antetokounmpo ($6,600) (WILL NOT PLAY)
PF: Skal Labissiere ($1,400)
C: Nikola Vucevic ($4,300)
Slate Overview: First off – I am going to say this in every preseason slate write-up I do – PLAY THESE SLATES. There is no better way to get familiar with NBA DFS, the current rosters and the likely rotations than by playing FanDuel NBA. There are a ton of free leagues and even some free beginner tournaments you can play if you are unwilling to risk cash, but just getting in the practice is a valuble tool that will give you an edge when the regular season starts.
From my perspective there are a few over-arching thoughts as I build my rosters tonight – I am going to avoid the Nuggets/Lakers game as the only teams playing for the second time and considering it is only two days later we have the potential to see some funky minute fluctuation making that a risky spot we can avoid with four other games to play. The Spurs without Kawhi should have a ton of usage but do you want to trust Pop in the pre-season with minutes? No thanks!
Instead I will focus my build tonight on the new stars in Boston while building a relatively safe boring core around team high usage guys like Vucevic and Giannis. You can safely mix in safe starters like Batum/Middleton which then allow you to take risks in other spots like Sacramento of the Mavericks rookie PG!
Next: Have you Tried the Newest DFS Game?
Best of luck in your FanDuel NBA contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR as we get you set for all the Fantasy Basketball and DFS action heading into the season!