FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Sunday November 5

Welcome to the Sunday 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 tournament lineup’s cracked 364 FanDuel points as some of the slates biggest stars came through with big nights including Anthony Davis (53), Andre Drummond (54) and Kevin Durant (46) but it was some of the value plays like Jerian Grant (41), Jameer Nelson (35) and Taj Gibson (41) that really delivered the big time nights at low prices and ownership!

Over the first 18 NBA regular season slates it has taken 376.5 FanDuel points on average to take down a GPP which means on a $60,000 salary cap, we need 6.27x per player to take down a big time tournament in FanDuel NBA!

Over the first 18 NBA regular season slates it has taken 376.5 FanDuel points on average to take down a GPP which means on a $60,000 salary cap, we need 6.27x 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 Guard Picks:

Kyle Lowry ($7,400): The big injury news on this slate is that John Wall will miss this game for the Wizards (which means we are going to want some Washington exposure with all the extra usage available) so correlating that with Lowry on the Raptors side at this price point is an easy starting point especially considering that the Wizards will be down to their third string point guard tonight with Wall and Tim Frazier both out!

Lowry started off slow but has put up 34+ FanDuel points in three of his last four games and this Toronto/Washington game is projected to have the second highest pace of any game on the Main slate making it a great spot to stack around tonight!

Kyrie Irving ($8,400): The interesting thing about this slate is we really don’t have any must have studs we need to pay up for so living in this $7k-$8K range tonight feels like the best roster approach. Irving is playing exceptionally well right now with five straight games of 40 or more FanDuel points and now takes on a Orlando team ranked 22nd in DvP to opposing PG’s.

Kyrie over the last two weeks has a team leading usage rate of 33.1% while putting up 1.32 fantasy points per minute and the Celtics will get the third largest pace boost of any team on the slate so locking in Kyrie and his 50+ FanDuel point upside on this slate will be a core play for me!

Bradley Beal ($8,200): With the news that John Wall will miss this game, Beal becomes a must play in all formats as he sees a 5% usage boost with Wall off the court and leads the team with a 34% usage rate over the last two seasons. This is an easy plug and play tonight – eat the chalk and move on!

DeMar DeRozan ($8,000): Beal will likely get all the love from this game at SG but DD may be the better play for $200 less! DeRozan over the last two weeks has a team leading 34% usage rate and has put up 40 or more FanDuel points in four of his last six games! I love the idea of stacking the Raptors backcourt and correlating that with Beal on this slate to maximize your exposure to this Wizards/Raptors contest:

FanDuel NBA – Top Forward and Center Plays:

James Ennis ($4,100) and Dillon Brooks ($3,800): The Grizzlies made a change to their starting lineup and have inserted Brooks alongside Ennis, making the Grizzlies FanDuel eligible SF’s a nice stacking target and salary saver on this slate.  Ennis will get one of the best match-ups on the board against Brandon Ingram and the Lakers as Ingram has the worst individual defensive rating of any SF on this slate! The Grizzlies see one of the largest pace boosts of any team on the slate so targeting Brooks/Ennis has cheap punt options playing 30 minutes a night will open up a ton for you when building the rest of your roster!

Kyle Kuzma ($5,600): With the injury to Larry Nance Jr., Kuzma stepped into the starting line-up and proceeded to drop 21 points, 13 rebounds and 41 FanDuel points against Brooklyn. The Memphis Grizzlies are surely not the same match-up but the upside for Kuzma has been evident all season long as he has put up a fantasy point per minute when on the floor so with a clear path to minutes now it is hard for me to pass on the upside at this price point.

Carmelo Anthony ($7,400): With Al Farouq Aminu out of the line-up, this match-up against Portland is looking quite juicy for Melo tonight! Anthony has been rock solid so far this season, putting up between 30-40 FanDuel points each and every contest so he makes for a great cash game play at this price with signficant upside due to the injuries in the Portland front court!

Nikola Vucevic ($7,100) and Al Horford ($6,700): The centers in this Orlando/Boston game feel entirely too cheap to me tonight and they are two of my favorite plays on the board as a result. Vucevic is a great tournament play in my mind as his recent game logs will scare people away and I expect most will look towards Dwight Howard in the same price range which makes Vic an interesting pivot. Remember that Vucevic opened the year with 47, 56 and 51 FanDuel points so the upside is very real here considering how far the price has fallen!

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.  

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PG: Kyrie Irving ($8,400)

PG: Kyle Lowry ($7,400)

SG: Bradley Beal ($8,200)

SG: DeMar DeRozan ($8,000)

SF: James Enniss III ($4,100)

SF: Dillon Brooks ($3,800)

PF: Kyle Kuzma ($5,600)

PF: Carmelo Anthony ($7,400)

C: Nikola Vucevic ($7,100)

Slate Overview: The more I look at this slate the more I am convinced building a balance line-up is the way to go as we can load up on players in the $7-$8k range when building the core of our line-up! Bradley Beal is the must play for me on this slate and I want to ensure I have correlation with the Raptors back-court tonight in what should be a fast paced game led by the guards. Good luck tonight all!

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