FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Tuesday November 7
Welcome to the 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!
Monday’s winning tournament line-ups put up 365 FanDuel points and frankly were based off which duds you were able to avoid on the night – believe me there were many! Kyrie Irving (47), Kevin Durant (50.6) and D’Angelo Russell (46.2) all put up solid nights as did mid-tier players like T.J. Warren (47.8), James Johnson (50.8) and Jayson Tatum (40.8). The two biggest duds that sunk my line-up and many other were Hassan Whiteside (11.2) and Tyler Johnson (8.3) – YUCK! Well, on to tonight!
Over the first 20 NBA regular season slates it has taken 376.12 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 20 NBA regular season slates it has taken 376.12 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 Point Guard Picks:
Kemba Walker ($7,400): The Knicks-Hornets game is not one I expect will be highly targeted tonight as it doesn’t have the massive game total like Denver/Brooklyn or the star power of LeBron versus Giannis but this is a very sneaky game stack that I think could pay big dividends. This game has the fourth highest game total on this ten game slate and is projected to be the third fastest pace game so maybe we need to pay a bit more attention to it!
I am a narrative guy when it comes to DFS – I know some in the industry scoff at the idea of narratives or home/road splits but I very much believe that certain plays thrive in certain situations. Kemba Walker’s home/road splits are well documented in NBA DFS and the stats certainly back it up, however there is one major outlier – his performance at Madison Square Garden.
Since 2013, Kemba Walker has averaged 25 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.6 steals while racking up 40 FanDuel points/game over eight starts at the World’s Most Famous Arena! Over his last four games, Kemba has put up 44, 44, 33 and 52 FD points at MSG and with no Nicolas Batum on the floor, the clear usage leader for the Hornets will take on a Knicks team ranked 27th in DvP to opposing PG’s! All aboard!
T.J. McConnell ($5,500): With the news that Joel Embiid and Jerryd Bayless will be out for this game, it immediately vaults the Sixers guard into DFS consideration who has put up 29+ FanDuel points in four of his last five games and makes for a solid mid-range choice against the Jazz.
Frank Ntilikina ($4,300): Staying in MSG, one of my favorite GPP plays tonight is the Knicks rookie point guard who has exceeded 6.3x value in two of his last three games. The game log watchers may see his 23-25 minutes of action and not think twice about him but consider this for a minute – in the last game against Indiana, Ntilikina played only 8 minutes in the first half but when he checked back in at the 4 minute mark of the third quarter – he never again left the floor.
Ntilikina played the entire fourth quarter when the game was on the line, relegating Jarret Jack to the bench and he responded with 27+ FanDuel points from the time he checked in until the final buzzer. It will be interesting to see how Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek allocates the minutes tonight as it is clearly only a matter of time before the rookie takes the reins at point guard, but considering Vegas has this game as a pick ’em, we could see Frank logging the major minutes in crunch time again!
FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks:
D’Angelo Russell ($7,300): Whenever the Nets are on the slate and for as long as D-Russ is SG eligible on FanDuel, he is going to be a mainstay for me within Picks and Pivots! The Nets have the third highest team total on the slate and although they are playing on the tail end of a back to back in Denver, it is hard to ignore the top player in one of the fastest paced offenses in the NBA.
Russell has played 28+ minutes in three straight games and put up FanDuel point totals of 41, 45 and 46 points which would exceed 5.6x value at this mid-range price point. The Nuggets are ranked 24th in DvP to opposing PG’s on the season and with the injury to Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, even more will fall on the shoulders of Russell tonight in order for Brooklyn to keep this game close!
Dwayne Bacon ($3,800): With Michael Kidd-Gilchrist already ruled out for this game, Bacon will make another start for the Hornets at SF, his fourth straight such start where he has exceeded 6x value in two of his three previous starting assignments. The Knicks are ranked 20th in DvP to opposing SF’s on the year and utilizing the savings of Bacon, we have the ability to spend up on some elite spots in this slate.
Overall, shooting guard lacks any true “elite” plays tonight so paying down at the position is likely going to be a popular strategy in order to fit in the slates biggest stars tonight!
FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Plays:
Small Forward is perhaps the most interesting spot on this slate as we get an elite match-up with LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounompo, both priced under $12k on FanDuel, with well demonstrated ceilings to build around. I cannot argue with paying up for one or both of these SF’s tonight if you want to play a mini-game stack here but I think there are actually better point per dollar stars to focus on with tonight’s slate.
Allen Crabbe ($4,300) and Wilson Chandler ($4,300): If you are not opting to pay up at Small Forward then I think punting the position is the ideal way to go tonight and focusing on the Nuggets/Nets game for value is my preferred route.
As I mentioned, this game has the highest total and highest projected pace so we know there will be fantasy goodness that comes from the players in this spot. The biggest question initially with a double-digit spread is can the Nets keep this game close enough for the stars to hit value? One of the ways to protect yourself from that risk while still getting exposure is to utilize the value plays like Crabbe and Chandler.
In the first meeting between these two teams last week, Wilson Chandler had his best game of the year, racking up 33 FanDuel points on the back of 18 points, 5 rebounds and 2 steals and in a similar game environment, I see no reason he cannot replicate getting to 7-8x value tonight!
Crabbe entered the starting line-up last night for the Nets and with the injury to RHJ, it is likely that Crabbe becomes the defacto #2 scoring option on this Nets squad. Crabbe has played very well over the last two games, hitting 6x value in both games, putting up 25.8 and 31.7 FanDuel points and tonight if RHJ sits as I expect he will, he will be forced to shoulder even more of the offensive load!
FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Plays:
To this point in the article, I have opted to save salary in almost all instanced, paying “up” for Kemba Walker and D’Angelo Russell at just over $7k so we have a ton of salary left to utilize and I plan to do so in the frontcourt tonight!
Ben Simmons ($9,300) and Kristaps Porzingis ($9,800): One of the reasons I opted to fade LeBron/Giannis tonight is that I believe we have other high-end players with similar 50-60 FanDuel point upside at price points $2k cheaper than those stars and Simmons/KP are the exact kind of guys I mean.
Porzingis is simply playing at another level right now and has exceeded 52 FanDuel points in five of his last six games. With Kemba Walker as one of my core plays tonight, I love the correlation of using KP on the other side of a sneaky high scoring/fast paced game that I expect will be largely ignored tonight.
With Joel Embiid, Markelle Fultz and Jerryd Bayless off the court – tonight in Utah is the Ben Simmons show! With those players off the floor, Simmons sees a 5% usage bump, putting up 30% usage and 1.35 FP/M as the main playmaker for the Sixers and has put up 50+ FanDuel points in three of his last four games. The match-up tonight with the Jazz front-court will surely scare some away but Simmons is one of those rare talents in the NBA who can hurt you in so many ways and we saw James Harden at reduced ownership just destroy this very same Jazz squad.
Nikola Jokic ($9,500): The price point is starting to get to where you have to think about The Joker now but with 50+ FanDuel points in two of his last three games and a match-up against a Nets team that is ranked 25th in DvP to opposing Centers (who he just dropped 48.8 FD points against) the upside is simply too high to ignore for a Nuggets team with the highest implied total on the slate!
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: Kemba Walker ($7,400)
PG: Frank Ntilikina ($4,300)
SG: D’Angelo Russell ($7,300)
SG: Dwayne Bacon ($3,800)
SF: Allen Crabbe ($4,300)
SF: Wilson Chandler ($4,300)
PF: Kristaps Porzingis ($9,800)
PF: Ben Simmons ($9,300)
C: Nikola Jokic ($9,500)
Slate Overview: With a ten game slate tonight, we have a variety or roster builds we can look towards but the more I look at the slate the more I like the idea of staying under $10k at each position as I believe guys like KP, Simmons and The Joker have the upside we need to cash without having to pay the top end prices for guys like LeBron/Giannis.
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!