FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Sunday October 29 Main

Welcome to the Sunday Main 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!

Saturday’s winning GPP line-ups put up 363 FanDuel points as we got another big outing from DeMarcus Cousins (66 FD points) while Damian Lillard (47.9) and Devin Booker(46.2) went head to head in Portland and carried their teams offensively!

Today we get a multi-slate Sunday with an early two game slate breakdown you can read HERE and a Main Slate with five solid games and some big time potential news we need to wait on including a suspension for Bradley Beal.

Over the first eleven NBA regular season slates it has taken 372 FanDuel points on average to take down a GPP which means on a $60,000 salary cap, we need 6.2x per player to take down a big time tournament in FanDuel NBA!

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 – Top Point Guard Picks:

The big news on the Main Slate today is the status of Bradley Beal who it is widely expected will receive a suspension prior to tip-off which mean John Wall ($10,100) will be sitting in an elite spot with ALL the Wizards usage against the Sacramento Kings. Wall is already putting up insane numbers this season with a 30% usage rate but without Beal on the court he sees a 5% usage bump while putting up 1.35 FanDuel points per minute.

On the other side of this game, De’Aaron Fox ($5,500) will start for Sacramento as George Hill has already been ruled out for rest. With Hill and Zach Randolph (also ruled out) off the court this season, Fox has a 28.3% usage rate while putting up a fantasy point per minute and with Hill’s 25-30 minutes off the court we should expect that Fox will get all the run he can handle.

I expect Wall will be highly popular today assuming Beal is suspended so pivoting down to someone like Kemba Walker (8,300) could give you the same upside at a fraction of the price and ownership. With this game being at home, where Walker historically scores 4-5 more FanDuel points per outing, we can fee free to roll out the Hornets PG in a massive pace up spot! With Elfrid Payton out, that means D.J Augustin will draw the start tonight which gives Kemba the best pure match-up on the board as August has the worst defensive rating of any PG on the slate!

FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks:

Tim Hardaway JR. ($4,300): No Brian. NO!

D’Angelo Russell ($7,400): I literally cannot tell you how excited I was to see that FanDuel moved the Nets point guard to SG on this slate as I can not roster one of my favorite PG’s at a super weak position!

The Nets-Nuggets is THE game to target on this slate as it has a massive 224 total (14 points higher than any other game) and a 4.5 spread which should mean 4 quarters of fantasy goodness. Russell returned to the Nets line-up against the Knicks, only playing 17 minutes but assuming we get a full complement of run – this is the PERFECT spot to employ a player with a 33% usage rate against a Nuggets team ranked in the bottom 10 in DvP to opposing PG!

Tim Hardaway Jr. ($4,300): I mean we get the second option on the Knicks offense, locked into major minutes/volume and the price just keeps dropping…..

Will Barton and Gary Harris ($5,600) I want to get as much exposure to his game as I possibly can and by now you know the drill with these two in NBA DFS – Barton is the GPP upside play while Harris is the cash game staple. Both players are locked into 28-30 minutes a night and the Nuggets have the highest team total on the slate at 114 with is FIFTEEN points higher than their season long average.

Tim Hardaway Jr ($4,300): In all seriousness, I have no idea how to attack this play today and the fact it is raining outside and I have nothing to do but watch sports/have some cold ones means I will likely have an ungodly amount of THJ come lock. For as horrendous as he has been all season, this is a guy who is STILL 30-40% owned on slates like Friday’s so I am very interested to see how the masses treat him today. Will they finally jump off or will they continue to be duped by the price point and supposed upside. Ugh, I already hate today.

FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks:

Kelly Oubre Jr. ($5,300): The Bradley Beal suspension will have a significant trickle down effect as anytime we lose a player putting up 17+ shot attempts and soaking up 27% of the team’s usage, we will have to have other players step up and Oubre seems like a player in a great position to do so. One thing to note is that the Kings are ranked 2nd in DvP to opposing SF’s so the only way I think you can consider Oubre is if Beal is suspended.

Wilson Chandler ($4,700) has been a massive disappointment so far this season but the match-up today against the Nets sets up perfectly as they rank 27th in opponent DvP against the SF position so if there was ever a great bounce back spot – this is it!

Allen Crabbe ($4,500) could be set up for a big game with DeMarre Carroll questionable to play today as if the Nets are forced to play without Carroll, Crabbe would likely step into the starting lineup. Crabbe has his 6x value in three of his six games so far this season and all of those were games Carroll played in so he makes for a great tournament play in either scenario but one that I love even more if he gets the start!

One of the things you will notice with small forward today is that all of these mid-range options are great boom/bust GPP plays but the inconsistency may lead you to be more inclined to pay up for one of the studs (Lebron James/Kevin Durant) on this slate to give you a safer floor to build around.

FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Plays:

Nikola Jokic ($8,700) and Paul Millsap ($6,800): The highest projected scoring team on the slate against a team without the big men to slow these two down AND they are under-priced? Sign me up.

Jokic has now put up 43+ in two of his last three games and will take on a Nets team without the big men capable of slowing him down. This is simply a player with 50-60 point upside that feels $1-$2k too cheap and will be in every single line-up I build today.

Speaking of cheap, Millsap under $7K should be a cash game staple and a great GPP core play against a Nets team that is ranked 29th in DvP to opposing PF’s. We just saw what PF’s could do against this Nets team as Kristaps Porzingis put a 30/9 line on the board which was good enough for 52 FanDuel points so rolling with the Nuggets 1-2 punch is a great core strategy today.

Otto Porter ($7,600) is another player that at the surface seems Beal suspension dependent but the reality is, this is a player that has put up 47+ FanDuel points in three of his five games this season. With Beal off the court last game we saw Porter dominate, putting up 29 points 10 board and 50 FanDuel points which would give us the kind of upside that could win us a GPP!

FanDuel NBA – Sample GPP 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.

More from FanSided

PG: John Wall ($10,100)

PG: De’Aaron Fox ($5,500)

SG: D’Angelo Russell ($7,400)

SG: Tim. Hardaway. Junior. ($4,300) – Don’t @ Me.

SF: Kelly Oubre Jr. ($5,300)

SF: Allen Crabbe ($4,200)

PF: Otto Porter ($7,600)

PF: Paul Millsap ($6,800)

C: Nikola Jokic ($8,700)

Skate Overview: Keep an eye on the Bradley Beal news as the biggest piece of information we are waiting on and be prepared to stack the Wizards “Big Three” that remain while correlating it with Fox on the Kings side. The Nets-Nuggets game should be at the core of your roster build today with Russell/Crabbe/Jokic/Millsap which leaves you with only a second shooting guard spot to fill in and $4,400 to do it – guess who fits in there? Let’s get it people.

Next: FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots - Early Slate

Best of luck in your FanDuel NBA contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all your NBA DFS content!