FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Saturday November 25

Welcome to the Saturday 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!

Friday’s winning tournament line-ups fell just shy of 380 FanDuel points as we got massive nights from Russell Westbrook (60.7) and LeBron James (71.7) with the best value play of the night being Jordan Bell at minimum price who put up 43.2 FD points in a spot start for Draymond Green against a Bulls team that originally drafted him!

Over the first 36 NBA regular season slates it has taken 379.4 FanDuel points on average to take down a GPP which means on a $60,000 salary cap, we need 6.3x 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:

This Saturday slate just a few days after Thanksgiving is dominated by two massive pieces of injury news that are going to drive our core ownership across all formats as we already know Ben Simmons has been ruled OUT and Kevin Durant remains doubtful to play after missing Friday night’s game!

Stephen Curry ($9,600): Going into Friday’s slate my intention was to fade the Warriors/Bulls game due to the blowout risk but the late afternoon news that Kevin Durant and Draymond Green would be out changed all of that for me and many others.

DFS can be a complex game at times but there are some simple rules that you can follow to make your life easier and one of them is – you play Steph Curry when Kevin Durant is out – end of story. With Durant off the court, Curry sees a 9.2% usage increase leading to a team high 40.2% usage increase while logging an absurd 1.86 FP/M.

In three games without Durant this year, Curry has put up 54.5 FD points per game while only playing 29 minutes a contest due to blowouts in two of those three games but even at this price point you are looking at a “worst case” scenario of 5.6x value with Curry’s 9.6k salary. The game tonight against New Orleans has a 13 point spread so the risk remains in this spot but with the Warriors having the highest team total at 121.8 and a 5 point increase over their season average even without Durant, this is a scary spot to fade entirely!

T.J. McConnell ($4,700): With Ben Simmons already ruled out for this game, we have confirmation that McConnell will enter the starting line-up for the Sixers against the Magic which instantly makes him one of the best value plays on the board! The Sixers have the third highest point total on the slate and the highest projected pace which is a fantastic combination for any point guard in that kind of game environment! McConnell has put up .85 FP/M so far this season and if he is going to get 30 minutes of run against a Magic team with the worst DvP against the position on this slate, he could crush value at this price point!

Russell Westbrook ($10,800): Remember when Westbrook was priced under $10k a few games ago? Yeah, Beastbrook is back and he has rattled off three straight 60 burgers while averaging a triple double over those games and 3+ steals a night! Tonight, Westbrook will face a Mavericks team ranked 23rd in DvP and a rookie PG in Dennis Smith Jr. who is ranked 84th out of 87th qualifying point guards in defensive real plus/minus rating this season!

The Curry or Westbrook pairing with McConnell will likely be a popular high-low strategy but I think a case can be made to pay up for both of the stud PG’s on this slate and look for value elsewhere tonight!

FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks:

Klay Thompson ($6,600): Klay is not a player I normally look to roster due to his scoring dependent nature but with KD off the court, this price point is reasonable if you want to stack the Warriors back-court tonight considering New Orleans ranks 23rd versus DvP against SG on the year. These two teams have already played this season and even with Durant in that game, Klay put up 43 FanDuel points on the back of 33 real life points so there is certainly a case to be made for rostering him today!

Normal Powell ($3,800): With CJ Miles away from the team due to the birth of his child, the Small Forward position is being manned by OG Anunoboy and Normal Powell with essentially an even split as evidenced by each playing 26-27 minutes last night. Powell has been the better FP/M producer as evidenced by hitting nearly 7x value last night with over 25 FanDuel points on the back of 14 shot attempts off the bench for Toronto which was the second most of any Raptors player on the night!

What is interesting to note is that last night it was actually Powell who was on the floor to close out the game against the Pacers, joining Serge Ibaka, DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and Fred Van Fleet for the final 4 minutes of the game! Atlanta, tonight’s opponent, is vulnerable to wing players as they rank 25th in DvP versus opposing SF’s so if Powell is put back into the starting line-up he could be an even better play tonight!

E’Twaun Moore ($4,300): The Pelicans/Warriors game has the highest game total on the slate at 230 so using your fringe/punt plays to get additional exposure here is a great “last man in” kind of strategy. Moore is starting at SF for the Pelicans and the absence of Kevin Durant on the wing makes this a much easier match-up for Moore who has hit 5x value in 4 of his last 8 games and has put up GPP value in 3 of those outings!

FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Plays:

Omri Casspi ($3,300): With Kevin Durant doubtful to play tonight, we get another Omri Casspi chalk night at the same price point as last night! Casspi was over 30% owned in large field GPP’s and frankly you can look at that number and see that nearly 70% of the field missed a free square. There are such things as good chalk and Casspi appears to fit that mold as in the three games Durant has missed this season, he has put up 25.8, 29.1 and 32.1 FD points for an average of 29 FD points which would return 8.8x value at this price point. I see no reason to fade here against a Pelicans team ranked 28th in DvP against SF’s – just lock him in and move on!

Darius Miller ($3,400): One of the things that I loved about the Durant/Casspi news yesterday was that it made my Picks and Pivots value play, Darius Miller, a complete after thought to the field as why would they play him when they could play Casspi at the same price?

Well – I can tell you that I played both of them in every single one of my line-ups on Friday and I will likely do the exact same thing again tonight. Miller was 1% owned in GPP’s as all the ownership went to Casspi but Miller has every bit the upside and for a fraction of the ownership I will continue to ride the hot hand here.

Miller once again played 27 minutes and hit GPP value with 23.3 FD points marking the sixth straight game he has played over 20 minutes and has hit GPP value (6.3x) in four of those six outings.

The double-punt strategy at SF is one I will look to utilize heavily tonight as it is rare we find players in Miller and Casspi that have demonstrated consistent GPP multiplier output and their salary savings will allow you to pay up for multiple studs on this slate!

FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Plays:

Anthony Davis ($11,000): With the salary savings we get at SF/SG in tis roster build, I love the idea of paying up for The Brow again tonight and pairing him with Curry in the hope this game stays closer than Vegas anticipates. This spread seems so odd to me as the spread was 13 points last night against the Bulls and yet Vegas expects the same versus New Orleans? Interesting to say the least!

Davis had his best fantasy game of the season against the Warriors earlier this season when he dropped 68.5 FanDuel points against Golden State on the back of 35 points and 15 rebounds! AD averaged over 60 FD points per game in three contests against Golden State last season (none of which included Boogie for what it is worth) so this is a match-up I think he can continue to dominate and will look to utilize him as a core play tonight!

Joel Embiid ($10,100): One of the reasons I am looking to roster Anthony Davis instead of DeMarcus Cousins is because of Joel Embiid. I absolutely want to get exposure to the Pelicans big men as a correlation with Stephen Curry and although I love Boogie, it is hard to pass on Embiid tonight as my lone Center with Ben Simmons off the court.

With Simmons off the court this season, Embiid sees a 3.5% usage boost and has a team high 38.4% usage rate while putting up 1.63 FP/M. The Process crushed in this match-up last season against the Magic putting up 45 FD points per game in only 25 minutes of court time in each of their two contests so if we can project Embiid for 30+ minutes tonight then we could be getting the highest raw point total at Center for a player that seems under-priced considering the absence of Simmons!

Amir Johnson ($3,700): Without Simmons on the court, the Sixers become my favorite team to target as outside of Joel Embiid they are all priced reasonably considering the added usage boost they will get tonight. Johnson will still come off the bench but that is just fine with me as this is a player who has racked up 24 rebounds, 6 blocks and 2 steals in his last two games while logging 27.7 and 36.1 FanDuel points which would give us 7-8x value at this price point and give us the salary to nab 3-4 studs across our line-up!

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: Russell Westbrook ($10,800)

PG: Stephen Curry ($9,600)

SG: E’Twaun Moore ($4,300)

SG: Norman Powell ($3,800)

SF: Darius Miller ($3,400)

SF: Omri Casspi ($3,300)

PF: Anthony Davis ($11,000)

PF: Amir Johnson ($3,700)

C: Joel Embiid ($10,100)

Slate Overview: With Kevin Durant and Ben Simmons out tonight we have another slate with exceptional value plays that allow us to build a Stars and Scrubs roster relatively easily. From my perspective, writing this at 7am EST, much can obviously change and I will have a keen eye on the SG position to see if any further value opens up today! Good luck all!

Next: DraftKings NBA Picks

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