Welcome to the Tuesday edition of NBA DFS 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 NBA DFS 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 across FanDuel and Fantasy Draft while breaking down our PlayLine strategy!
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!
Monday’s winning DFS line-ups were built around Kevin Durant (72.25) who was aided by an extra frame in the Warriors/Lakers game as the late night hammer went into OT and helped carry teams built around this game stack well above the cash line! On one of the most extreme Stars/Scrubs slates I can remember this season, Durant was the king of the stars and the top play to pay up for!
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 go position by position to help you identify the best slate strategy across your NBA DFS line-ups.
As always, we will look to update our final lineup thoughts 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!
NBA DFS – Three Game Slate
Looking over this three game slate, the sites did a tremendous job of pricing across the board which will really make you think about how you want to approach your roster builds. Rather than go position by position tonight, I think going game by game makes more sense in the context of helping you identify how you want to build your rosters tonight!
Kings at Sixers:
The first game of the night also happens to be my least favorite and one where I think we simply utilize it as a “fill in” spot rather than a game to build our core around. On the Philadelphia side, you get a Sixers team playing three games in four nights, on the tail end of a back to back and a team coming off a OT game on Friday so there is a very real chance we get some tired legs here. Now let’s add in the fact that this game could be a blow-out and you quickly start to sour on allocating your precious salary cap to any of the Sixers stars.
The one player that does make some sense is Joel Embiid as a contrarian “pay up” option who after resting on Monday will be the “freshest” of all the Sixers starters and gets an exceptional match-up against a Kings team that ranks 30th in DvP and 29th in Def-Eff against the Center position. The issue with Embiid is that this is a massive pace down spot for the Sixers as they see the biggest pace decrease of any team on the slate and paying up for him means you are not going to have the salary for the other “must have” stars. In large field tournaments, I could see him as a low owned pivot for which stud you anchor your roster to and that alone makes him quite intriguing on this slate as anytime we can get Embiid at low ownership, especially on a three game slate it is worth a shot if you are multi-entering.
One of the other reasons I dislike this game as even if you want to pay up for Embiid, there is almost NOTHING on the Kings side I want to run it back with. Sacramento plays a million guys a night, the output is largely spread out and they play at a snail’s pace. The one guy I have some interest in tonight is Kosta Koufus, especially on Fantasy Draft where he is $6,400 and we get the added benefit of using him at a F/C or Utility position.
As an aside, tonight looks like a great night to play on Fantasy Draft as the roster flexibility on a platform like that will be critical as the pricing makes it where finding ANY value is going to unlock a ton of roster potential. On FanDuel, I am not sure I want to “waste” my Center position for example on Koufus as the opportunity cost there is massive. If you want to try Fantasy Draft tonight, check out my referral link and get 10% rake back when you sign up using this code!
Koufus being priced at 6.4K on FD would only need 19.2 points to hit our target 3x value but one quick look at the game logs will show he has hit or exceeded 22 FD points in each of his last three games which puts him in GPP target range of 3.4x value. Koufus is playing 20-25 minutes a night and will be absolutely needed against the Simmons/Embiid duo tonight for the Sixers so fire him up on FD if you need a salary saver (believe me – you will).
NBA DFS – Pelicans and Wizards:
Now we get into the real choices tonight as our second game features the game with the highest projected pace and four key stars we can look to pay up for! Without giving away too much in the next game, Cavs-Bucks, we have two key games we can look to stack as our core and I will say that both sites did an exceptional job of pricing.
If you want a Beal-Wall-Boogie-Cousins four man stack it will leave you essentially the exact same remaining salary per player on both sites as a LeBron-Love-Giannis-Middleton stack would!
The question becomes which game are you going to anchor yourself to as I truly think you need to go all-in on one of the two games and simply roll the dice tonight. Trying to hedge with both games will likely leave you a minimum cash position and frankly, I’d rather draw my line in the sane and big one of the two games to choose from.
The appeal in this game is that we have the highest projected pace of any of the three games and the Wizards see the second largest pace boost on the slate. From a pure match-up perspective, John Wall and Bradley Beal will take on a Pelicans team ranked 22nd in Def-Eff at defending the PG position and 29th at defending the SG position so there is massive upside to be had here and the price points at just a tick below the other “studs” on this slate so there is some significant profit potential to be had.
On the Pelcians side it all comes down to DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis and I simply have NO IDEA how the Wizards are going to even remotely attempt to stop them. The Marcin Gortat, Mike Scott, Markieff Morris, Ian Mahimi quartet is going to have no chance at slowing these two down and when you consider they are priced at a relative discount to LeBron/Giannis tonight across both platforms, they have the ability to be the better point per dollar plays.
Outside of the big four, this is actually the better game in my opinion to attack the fringe pieces. On the Pelicans side, everyone will flock towards the big guys but it is worth noting that this New Orleans team has essentially landed on a tight 8 man rotation which means we have a concentrated pod of minutes and usage which is super valuable on this slate.
E’Twaun Moore is one of the best mid-range plays on the board tonight as he is locked into 35+ minutes a night, having played 35 or more minutes in each of his last nine games and we have already seen his upside as he has put up 34 and 45 FD points in two of his last three games which would put him in 4-5x range on a site like Fantasy Draft where he is only $8K!
Jameer Nelson is going to be a lock for me tonight as the top value play on the board at near minimum priced across the industry. It is clear that Rajon Rondo is being phased out of the rotation and as a result Nelson is getting more and more run, having played 23, 29 and 30 minutes in his last three contests. At his bare minimum price point across both Fantasy Draft and FanDuel, he only needs roughly 18 points to hit value and considering he has put up 19 and 20 fantasy points in his last two games he makes for a great salary saving option that actually has some stability!
Kelly Oubre is the final piece of the puzzle here from the Wizards side as it appears Otto Porter will miss tonight game again after not practicing yesterday. The Pelicans rank 28th in DvP against the SF position so this is a solid spot for Oubre who remains fairly priced across the industry and should be in line for minutes in the high 20’s, low 30’s!
NBA DFS – Cavs Versus Bucks:
The Main Event tonight – LeBron and Giannis. As I noted on the previous page, the decision is going to be which game stack core are you building around and although the Wizards-Pelicans spot is solid, it is tough to pass on the raw point upside that LeBron and Giannis provide on a three game slate!
The nice thing about choosing this stack is that we can essentially boil this game down to 4-5 plays we actually want, unfortunately you are going to need to pay up to get them! LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo are the two highest priced plays on both platforms tonight and will likely be the most popular pairing for roster builds. I do not need to inundate you with stats/metrics – if we played this slate 100 times, I would think these two would be the top raw point scorers on 90 of those slates – and frankly fading these two on a nationally televised game (NBA TV) seems like a terrifying proposition.
The secondary plays are rather obvious, especially on the Cavs side as Kevin Love feels under-priced relative to his upside as he absolutely crushed in this match-up the last time they faced off, putting up 32 points, 16 rebounds and 63 fantasy points! On the Bucks side, Khris Middleton will take on a Cavs team ranked as one of the worst teams defending the SG position and he steps into this game in elite form, having racked up 38 or more fantasy points in four of his last seven games including a 50 burger against the Bulls.
Outside of this core and maybe Eric Bledsoe on FanDuel where he is $700 cheaper than Middleton (he is priced $600 more on FD) there is very little to like here so if you are attacking this game I think you stick to the core four or look to the other spots on this slate!
PlayLine Plays: Tonight is an AWESOME night to play on PlayLine as we have so many stars to choose from and they did a great job of stacking them all in their million dollar perfect line tournaments tonight. If you have not tried out PlayLine yet – head over there and give it a shot in tonight’s FREE contest for a potential $1M prize
NBA DFS – 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.
Fantasy Draft Sample Line-Up ( Cavs/Bucks Stack)
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G: Khris Middleton ($12,900)
G: Jameer Nelson ($6,600)
G: E’Twaun Moore ($8,000)
F/C: LeBron James ($22,100)
F/C Giannis Antetokounmpo ($21,000)
F/C: Kevin Love ($14,200)
Util: Kosta Koufus ($6,400)
Util: Kelly Oubre Jr. ($8,700)
FanDuel Sample Line-Up (Pelicans/Wizards Stack)
PG: John Wall ($9,500)
PG: Jameer Nelson ($3,700)
SG: Bradley Beal ($8,400)
SG: Tony Snell ($3,600)
SF: Kelly Oubre Jr. ($4,600)
SF: Darius Miller ($3,500)
PF: Mike Scott ($4,500)
PF: Anthony Davis ($11,200)
C: DeMArcus Cousins ($11,000)
Slate Overview: Today is simple – which core four stack are you building around? Pick the game you want to stack around and find the secondary pieces to make it work. Take a stand and go to battle and hope your game is the one that shoots out!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!