FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Tuesday October 17

Welcome to the Opening Night Tuesday 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!

During the regular season we will use this spot to break down the previous day’s winning line-ups and look to identify trends and key metrics to help us better understand what it takes to win a GPP on FanDuel.

Over the fourteen preseason slates, it has taken 283.6 FanDuel points to take down a GPP but in the regular season we will need to routinely be above the 300 mark.

Over the fourteen FanDuel NBA preseason slates, it has taken 283.6 FanDuel points to take down a GPP which means we are roughly shooting for 4.7x value at this point in the season which once the regular season kicks off will ratchet up to 5-6x value!

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 today’s slate!

FanDuel NBA – Opening Night Two Game Slate

Welcome back NBA! My favorite DFS sport is back and I cannot wait to break down each slate with you through Picks and Pivots each day. For those of you joining me for the first time – this is not going to be a simple best plays column, but a slate strategy piece that outlines our top plays and overall slate approach!

On this first slate, even though it is only two games, I think we have a variety of paths to roster construction and some overarching questions/themes that will determine how we attack this slate!

First and foremost for me is the status of LeBron James ($10,400) who is nursing an ankle injury and is in danger of missing the Cavaliers home opener against a certain point guard they traded to the Boston Celtics! If LeBron is OUT, then it will open up a massive amount of usage for the Cavaliers remaining starters and we saw last year when James was off the floor that Kevin Love ($7,000) became a near must play. With the King off the court, Love sees a near 7% usage bump to a 33% individual usage rate while putting up 1.3 fantasy points per minute which assuming 30 minutes of action would put him right at 39 FD points which would exceed 5.5x value at this price point!

The other game on the slate between the Rockets-Warriors has a massive 232 total which is nearly 20 points higher than the Cavaliers-Celtics so if you are prioritizing where to spend your money then this is the game to me that I think you make a point to lock in 2-3 stars in your roster build! Looking over the game logs from last season’s match-ups there were three key players that excelled in this match-up:

• James Harden ($11,000): FanDuel Point totals of 35.7, 52.7 and 65.5 (which was a double OT game)
• Kevin Durant ($9,800): FanDuel Point totals of 54.2 and 68.8 (2OT)
• Draymond Green ($8,000): FanDuel Point totals of 42.8 and 53.5 (2OT)

What is most interesting about these game logs is that Stephen Curry never topped 42 FD points and Klay Thompson never topped 25 which could be attributed to the fact that Patrick Beverley was in the defensive back-court (and now on the Clippers) but it is interesting that it was mainly KD and Draymond that drove the high DFS output.

It is also worth noting that outside of a double-OT game, James Harden failed to hit 5x value in either “regular” affair so a case can be made (albeit a dangerous one) to fade the most expensive player on a two game slate and allocate those savings to a more well-balanced roster!

Ultimately, I believe that Durant and Green are the two must plays on this slate considering their price point/upside combined with their recent performance against the Rockets. At $9.8K, Durant would need 49 FanDuel points to hit 5x, a number he eclipsed in both meeting last year while Draymond would need only 40 FanDuel points for 5x value, which he exceeded in both contests as well. When you layer on top the fact that FanDuel has increased the scoring for blocks/steals, Draymond becomes a near must play on this slate at a price point that feels entirely too cheap.

FanDuel NBA – Roster Build

With the success that Durant and Draymond had in this match-up last year, those two will be the first two into every single one of my rosters for Opening Night but after that the build gets a little hairy. If LeBron is OUT then I am going to have heavy exposure to Love at the other PF spot but if LeBron is in, the Cavaliers become an intriguing fade to me as a less than 100% percent LeBron is not worth the salary investment and he detracts any usage from the rest of his teammates.

UPDATE: Reading the news the last 24-48 hours, I fully expect LeBron to suit up for this game but whether he is 100% or not remains the biggest question mark in my mind. The fact that he is $600 more than Durant takes him completely off my radar as I will simply take the healthier player in the faster paced match-up who has already excelled in the same match-up AND is somehow cheaper. The question really is – how does his presence impact the rest of the Cavaliers starters?

With LeBron on the floor it will crush any chance of using the Cavs value plays like Jeff Green/Kyle Korver/JR Smith so simply cross them off your list on this two game slate. I think Derrick Rose ($5,500) will end up being a popular pairing with one of the top dollar PG’s from a roster build but if I am targeting any player in the Cavaliers back-court it is going to be the one who has proven they can co-exist with LeBron in Dwyane Wade ($6,000). Shooting guard is actually surprisingly strong on this slate and Wade has been the clear top facilitator on this team during the pre-season so paying up for him as your Cavaliers exposure is an intriguing GPP strategy!

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Kyrie Irving ($8,200) stands out to me at the point guard position as he heads back to Cleveland for the first time as a member of the Celtics and the narrative for a massive revenge game is simply too juicy to overlook. If the Cavaliers try to slow down Kyrie with Derrick Rose and/or Dwyane Wade, the one time Cavs PG could put up monster numbers as the best value (cheapest) of the three elite point guards.

Outside of Kyrie, the Celtics are a great spot for value as with Marcus Morris ruled out we can expect a starting line-up that includes Jaylen Brown ($3,700) and Jayson Tatum ($3,500). The more we lead up to lock the more I find myself intrigued by Aron Baynes ($3,200) at center as this is the position to me with the least amount of opportunity cost and the one spot I think we can take a calculated risk at. With the Celtics being thing in the front-court, Baynes is going to get minutes as one of the only interior defensive/rebounding threats and I would expect he sees 20-25 minutes off the bench matching up with Tristan Thompson and the Cavs second unit! 

If you take the approach of fading The Beard on this slate, locking in the other Rockets top offensive options may be a way for you to get Rockets exposure as part of a mini-game stack against the Warriors as players like Client Capela ($6,000), Ryan Anderson ($4,700) and Eric Gordon ($5,200) all had 30+ FanDuel point outings against the Warriors last season!

Slate Overview: Ultimately like every other NBA DFS slate, this one is going to come down to news – specifically the health of LeBron James – and we will not have the news until hours before lock. My going in position is to lock in the trio of Durant-Green-Kyrie in every line-up and utilize the SG/SF value combo in the Celtics starting five. Once we get news on LeBron it will help direct the rest of my roster build and the decision to lock in James Harden or build a more well-rounded line-up will be one I toggle with until lock! Follow me on Twitter @2LockSports for all the latest roster news leading up to Tuesday’s locks and my updated line-up thoughts!

Next: DraftKings NBA Picks - Opening Night

Best of luck in your FanDuel NBA contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis across the NBA, NFL, NHL and EPL!