FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Monday November 27
Welcome to the Monday 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!
Sunday’s winning tournament line-ups fell just shy of 370 FanDuel points as the consistent formula on the day was stack four Minnesota starters with all five starters putting up 37 or more FanDuel points against the Suns! The strategic fade of Marc Gasol (40-50% owned) for Karl-Anthony Towns (20-30%) worked out well as KAT dropped 51 FD points and the Grizzlies big man managed only 27 in a disappointing performance against a short-handed Brooklyn team!
Over the first 38 NBA regular season slates it has taken 380.1 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!
Over the first 38 NBA regular season slates it has taken 380.1 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 Slate Thoughts:
Normally in Picks and Pivots we jump right into the position by position breakdown but this slate deserves something different as I cannot remember a regular season slate this year with so much unknown! Of the eight games on tonight’s slate, only four have totals/lines released which tells you just how much injury news we are truly waiting on.
Golden State Warriors to Sit Curry, Durant, Green and Igoudala? This is THE news we are going to need clarity on as it literally changes the entire slate as it would make Golden State value the chalk roster build everywhere as they take on the Kings. Igoudala and Durant have legit injury concerns and the fact that this is a home game against the Kings would lead me to believe they are both missing this game as the Warriors should be able to beat this team under almost any circumstance. Draymond and Curry are likely just “rest” days but what better time to do it than tonight and the fact this news came out so early on Sunday just screams to me a full Steve Kerr vacation day which will open up SO MUCH VALUE!
The sample size is obviously small, but if you take these four off the court over the last two years, it is not surprising to see Klay Thompson ($7,000) gets a decent 2% usage bump and sits among the top players with a 28% usage rate and fantay point per minute pf production. In the three games Durant has missed over the last week, Klay has put up 43.8, 43.5 and 37.3 FanDuel points and now if you take Curry off the court too? Come on people, this is the easiest play on the board, just eat the chalk and move on!
If you are familiar with the NBA at all, it probably does not shock you that Swaggy P, Nick Young ($3,000) is the team usage leader with all four players mentioned off the court as he sports a 29% usage rate which is over a 10% increase while logging a fantasy point per minute of production! Young will likely still come off the bench even in this spot but with 6th man Andre Igoudala likely out, it means Swaggy and his high volume offensive attack could be the first man off the bench!
Shaun Livingston ($3,000) would likely draw the start if Curry is forced to miss this game and we have already seen what he is capable of as a starter this year as he took the PG reins when Curry sat out against Orlando and dropped 29.4 FD points in only 20 minutes of action on the back of 16 points and 6 assists.
Omri Casspi ($4,000) should continue to start at the 3 with Durant sidelined and continues to just be a steady value play at SF, putting up 25.5 FD points in his last three starts in place of KD which would easily exceed our target 6.3x value tonight!
Jordan Bell ($3,400) could see another start at Power Forward tonight after his monster coming out performance against the Bulls where he dropped 43.2 FD points in 26 minutes with SEVEN blocked shots.
As you all know by now, Picks and Pivots is a first look column so I do not have this news as I write it at 5AM EST, but needless to say this is THE news we have to wait on tonight. Any/all injuries and/or rest to Warriors players creates immediate value elsewhere and if all four players sit, I think you simply eat the chalk, lock in Klay and three value pieces and move on elsewhere!
FanDuel NBA – Showdown in Philly:
With all the potential value in Golden State, we will have a ton of salary cap room to spend tonight and would be left with James Harden ($11,800) or LeBron James ($12,000) as our debate on top play to spend up on. The Rockets star gets an amazing match-up on paper with the Nets as the Rockets have a massive 122 team total and see the largest projected pace boost of any team on the slate which screams fantasy gold for Harden and his crew! The issue is that the Nets are extremely short-handed as they are already without D’Angelo Russell and look like they may be down Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Allen Crabbe tonight as well which explains why Vegas has this game as a 16 point spread in Houston! As great as Harden is, I would reserve him for use on rosters where you bring it back with Nets players in hope that this game stays close and would fade him as a one-off play!
LeBron on the other hand gets a match-up against a Sixers team in Philadelphia that we await news on whether Ben Simmons will play or not. During my research I came across this article entitled “Aussie Ben Simmons desperate to face idol LeBron James and Cavaliers.” Does this sound like a player that is going to miss this game?
The Cavaliers actually see the third largest pace boost of any team on this slate and we can count on the fact that LeBron is doing EVERYTHING for the Cavs right now as evidenced by his 33% usage rate and 1.5 FP/M over the last two weeks. With all the salary savings we can get with Golden State, the inflated salary for King James becomes far less of a concern and makes him easy to fit in for any format!
At this point in the year we know the Cavaliers struggle versus opposing back-courts and opposing big men as they rank 27th in DvP versus Centers so pairing LeBron with a Ben Simmons ($10,500) and Joel Embiid ($9,700) combo tonight is a fantastic strategy for tournaments as each of these players can give you 50-60 FD points a night and build you an elite cash game floor with GPP winning upside!
FanDuel NBA – Around the League
Clippers versus Lakers: Of the four games we actually have lines on, the Clippers and Lakers stands out as they have a 215 game total and only 4 point spread so this is a “safe” spot to build around early in the day. The Clippers see the second largest pace boost of any team on the slate and what I love about them (kind of like Minnesota), is that they play with a tight rotation due to their injuries and run the starters for major minutes.
In their last game against the Kings, with Danilo Gallinari and Patrick Beverley out, the Clippers leaned on their core three of Blake Griffin, Austin Rivers and Lou Williams as all three played 36 or more minutes and were the only three players to put up double-digit shot attempts! Blake Griffin ($9,700) is a great pivot off Simmons at PF if you want to move away from that game or Simmons is ruled out as Griffin has put up 46 or more FD points in three of his last five games and dropped 49.9 against this same Laker team earlier in the season! Lou Williams ($7,300) is a great pivot off Klay Thompson in the same price range as the man is simply a DFS monster with all these injuries to the Clippers as he is putting up a 30% usage rate over the last two week’s for the Clippers which is second on the team to Blake Griffin’s massive 35% usage mark!
Lonzo Ball ($7,200) on the other side of this game is firmly in play for me in tournaments as without Patrick Beverley on the court, a match-up with Austin Rivers/Lou Williams takes on a totally different tune! Rivers is ranked 67th out of 84 point guards in terms of defensive rating so this is a spot where the Clippers 10th DvP ranking against PG’s may be misleading! We all know Ball is not the best shooter but his ability to rack up assists/rebounds each and every night gives him one of the safer floors and allows for massive upside if his shot is falling. Through 19 games this season, Ball already has three contests where he went for 50+ FanDuel points so we know the upside is there and he comes into this game averaging 40 FD points over his last four!
Nets versus Rockets: Even with this game having a massive total there are a variety of potential elite value plays that could come from this game, especially on the Nets side as they could be down both Crabbe/RHJ tonight. Joe Harris ($4,100) makes for an interesting pivot off Omri Casspi at the same price point as he would draw another start for Crabbe at SF and comes into this game averaging just under 30 FDP per game over his last three contests! With CP3 locked in on Spencer Dinwiddie, it will be up to the Nets wings player to drive the offensive production for Brooklyn, making Harris a great value played locked into major minutes with a high volume of offensive usage!
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: Lonzo Ball ($7,200)
PG: Shaun Livingston ($3,000)
SG: Klay Thomson ($7,000)
SG: Nick Young ($3,000)
SF: LeBron James ($12,000)
SF: Joe Harris ($4,100)
PF: Ben Simmons ($10,500)
PF: Jordan Bell ($3,400)
C: Joel Embiid ($9,700)
Slate Overview: Apologies for those of you who like the normal position by position format in Picks and Pivots but this slate has entirely too many unknowns to go that route today. We simply need to understand how the Warriors are going to play this game against the Kings as a healthy Golden State squad is probably a stay away in this spot but a depleted Warriors squad opens up entirely too much value to pass on! Keep an eye on the news today and adjust as needed! Good luck all!
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!