FanDuel NBA Picks and Pivots – Tuesday December 5

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 were built around a core group of plays yesterday that were exactly aligned with our Picks and Pivots column as Kemba Walker (54), Darren Collison (45), Devin Booker (63) and Ben Simmons (55) all delivered with big nights and were the core four plays across winning GPP line-ups. The biggest pivot that GPP winners made was to pay up for DeMarcus Cousins (60) at Center over our Enes Kanter (15) and fill in with some elite value plays like E’Twaun Moore (35) who went for nearly 10x his price! Just goes to show you sometimes how close you can be!

Over the first 47 NBA regular season slates it has taken 380.5 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:

Russell Westbrook ($10,700), Damian Lillard ($9,100) and/or Kyle Lowry ($8,500): We have a tidy little three game slate tonight and on slates like this for tournaments it sometimes becomes less about who we do play and more about who we choose to take a stand against.

With that being said let’s start with Lowry and the Raptors who take on the DFS goldmine that is the Phoenix Suns in a game with the highest total by far (224) and the highest projected pace while the Raptors are the only team on the slate to see a pace increase while expected to score nearly 9 points higher than their season average as the highest scoring team on the slate.

Let’s be clear – everyone from Toronto is in play here. The Suns get shredded routinely by opposing defenses and Lowry gets the best possible match-up against a Suns team that is ranked worst in the league in essentially every metric versus PG’s.

All that being said – I am fading the Raptors (and for that matter the Suns too) and I will tell you why! The Suns are playing their third game in four nights – at Boston, at Philadelphia and now at Toronto. At some point the traveling is going to bury this team and although I do not like predicting blowouts, there is a reason this game has a 13 point spread. On large slates like this, you have to find ways to be different so rather than load up on the obvious game stack, I saw we look elsewhere tonight.

If you are not playing Lowry, stacking Russell Westbrook and Damian Lillard feels like a decent consolation prize!

Westbrook on the surface gets a tough match-up with a Utah Jazz team that now has Rudy Gobert back manning the middle for them and the Thunder see by far the largest pace decrease of any team on the slate. The reality is though, Westbrook is under $11k and has put up 60+ FanDuel points in four of his last seven games so on a three game slate you can simply lock in the player with the highest ceiling and raw point ability and move on!

Lillard gets to take on a Washington team that Portland just faced a few games ago where he logged 43 FanDuel points in 40 minutes of action. With John Wall out of the lineup – the vaunted Frazier/Satoransky combination is not match for Dame’s offensive ability and I expect he will likely be the lowest owned of the three point guards tonight as people seem to also over-own Russ and everyone will take the savings for Lowry against the Suns, which makes him a great GPP pivot!

FanDuel NBA – Top Shooting Guard Picks:

Devin Booker ($7,100): Booker comes into this game on the back of two monster outings where he dropped 47 and 63 FanDuel points with a whopping 29 and 32 shot attempts in those games. He now has to travel to his third city in four days and with the game log watchers flocking in droves, I think this is the spot you take a strong stand and fade. Now this is not to say I do not love Booker – if you are playing Lowry/DeRozan then you simply have to bring it back with Booker in the hope the game stays close – but the shooting volume for a jump-shooter like Booker makes me very nervous that tonight is the night his legs simply do not have the same burst and he lets down the masses in a super high owned spot.

Last season against the Raptors, Booker put up 32 and 35 FanDuel points in their two meetings, solid totals for sure but not game breaking amounts you cannot overcome with the right pivot. For as great as Booker is/has been – it is worth noting he also has less than 30 FanDuel points in three of his last seven games. With the amount of mileage the Suns are logging the last 3-4 days, this is my stand of the night and it will either make or break me!

Bradley Beal ($7,600): Remember when John Wall went out, everyone screamed and yelled about the massive 8-9% usage boost that Beal got with him off the court and rostered him at massively high ownership percentages? Well after putting up 12, 17, 30 and 21 FanDuel points in his last four outings – you think people will have jumped off (and on to Devin Booker for cheaper)?

This is the spot for tournaments that I think you jump back on Beal against a Portland team he excelled against in their last meeting (without Wall) when he put up 46.7 FanDuel points on the back 26 points, 7 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks. In his last three games against Portland, Beal has put up 46.7, 38.2 and 42.9 FanDuel points for an average of 42.6 FD points which would exceed 5.6x value at this price point and when you considering his tw lowest scoring outings included John Wall, you can see there is ample upside to be had here tonight!

Alec Burks ($4,800): Seriously, this guy just continues to ball – every – single – night! I have been rostering Burks it seems like every night for the last week or two and jumped off last night solely due to the fact that I liked the Booker/Batum combination more. Burks meanwhile just keeps doing Burks things – racking up 40.5 FanDuel points against the Wizards, marking his third straight game of 38 or more FanDuel points putting him at a FLOOR of 8x the last three games.

The minutes are locked in for Burks and for as long as Rodney Hood (questionable) remains out, the ceiling for Burks remains massive. With all the focus on Devin Booker and DeMar DeRozan tonight at the position, Burks could go under-owned after being only 18% owned last night in GPP’s and has proven he has every but the upside of SG’s priced 3-4k higher!

FanDuel NBA – Top Small Forward Picks:

Paul George ($8,600): When looking over small slates like this one, I try to identify superstar/elite players that may get over-looked. I fully expect that most roster builds tonight will allocate a significant amount of their salary to the back-courts which could lead Paul George to be under-owned at nearly $9k as the top priced SF. On Sunday’s main slate for example, we saw Russell Westbrook at 35-40% ownership while PG-13 was only 20-25% owned which could be a similar ratio on a three game slate like we have tonight.

George has been playing at a high level in recent games with 50+ FanDuel points in three of his last seven contests and game log watchers may see his 20 point dud last time out and opt to save salary at the position. The reality is, PG just had a bad shooting night in that game, going 2 for 17 (11.8%) from the floor, and prior to that had reeled off 35+ FanDuel points in his last leven games so I have no issue paying up for George in this spot as he represents one of the few superstars on the slate that has 50-60 FD point upside and will likely be the lowest owned of all of them!

Otto Porter ($7,000): The best place to attack Portland on the season has been at Small Forward and with the injury to John Wall we have seen Otto Porter become one of the biggest beneficiaries from a fantasy output perspective. Over the last two weeks with Wall off the court, Porter has a 27% usage rate while putting up just under 1.2 FP/M and absolutely dominated in this match-up the last time the Wizards played Portland.

In that game, Porter racked up 51 FanDuel points on the back of 24 points, 10 rebounds, 3 steals and one block after putting 42 FanDuel points in the Wizards last contest versus Portland last season. The upside is very real for Porter in this spot and considering he is priced at the same level as T.J. Warren ($6,800), we could see the ownership reduced/split for those building in this price point!

FanDuel NBA – Top Power Forward and Center Plays:

Power Forward is absolutely the weakest position on this slate and I think it is the one where you can take some punt play risks as the opportunity cost for “swinging and missing” at the position is fairly low. Carmelo Anthony and Derrick Favors are your “high-end” plays at the position and frankly, I don’t see either player putting up a slate breaking score that draws you dead if you do not have them. As such I think paying down at the position is your best bet and you can look to a double-punt strategy which will allow you to pay up across the rest of your roster!

Jerami Grant ($3,700): Nobody every plays this guy but all he does is play solid minutes and perform each and every night! Grant has now played 20 or more minutes in each of his last four games and has hit 6x value (22 or more FD points) in two of those contests! Grant has been a steady play from a point and rebounds perspective but it is his ability to rack up blocks/steals that give him his GPP upside as the games where he has put up 2 blocks and 1 steal are the games he has hit for 6x value making this a spot I think we can go right back to on a short slate like this!

Dragan Bender ($3,500): Even though I am not looking to roster the Suns stars tonight, I think if we play the blow-out angle we could look to some of their bench guys as value fill ins who would seemingly get more run tonight! Bender is interesting to me because he tends to play 20 minutes a night regardless, which gives me a relatively safe “floor” as fart as punts go and we have seem him put up 6x type value when given the run so far this season.

Tyson Chandler ($5,000): Tyson Chandler chalk night? This one scares me to even write but it is hard to argue with a guy priced at this level who is coming off back to back 40 point nights and there is always the risk he gets sat on the tail end of a back to back! The reality is, Chandler is the only one of the “Big Three” for Phoenix that has not gotten a DNP-CD in the recent road trip as Alex Len and Greg Monroe have alternated that designation over the last two games while Chandler has played 28 and 36 minutes. This is the spot to watch for news as any rest of Chandler would open up value for guys like Monroe ($4,500) and Len ($4,300) and with this being the first game of the night we should have that news before lock!

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 ($10,700)

PG: Damian Lillard ($9,100)

SG: Bradley Beal ($7,600)

SG: Alec Burks ($4,800)

SF: Paul George ($8,600)

SF: Otto Porter ($7,000)

PF: Jerami Grant ($3,700)

PF: Dragan Bender ($3,500)

C: Tyson Chandler ($5,000)

Slate Overview: Take a stand tonight and go all in – that is my advice on a three game slate. Either stack up Toronto-Phoenix and hope the fastes pace game stays close enough to crush value or fade it and build around the stars in lower owned spots. Keep an eye out for news as we do have some teams on back to backs which could always mean that value opens up!

Next: DraftKings NBA Picks

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