NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday December 21
Welcome to the Thursday 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!
Wednesday Night’s slate was a good one for Picks and Pivots as we anchored our build around the Lakers/Rockets, ignored the blow-out risk and were rewarded with a 122-116 Lakers win. James Harden was the play of the night, scoring 71 fantasy points while 23% owned in tournament play and Kyle Kuzma at only 11% was the second highest scoring play on the entire slate at 58 FD points!
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 – Five Game Slate
Of the ten teams in action tonight, eight of them see either a neutral pace match-up or a pace decrease so to say this is an ugly slate may be a bit of a understatment. Rather than go position by position on this slate, I think it makes sense to go through the games and outline strategy as there are some games/players frankly we can cross off our list entirely (yes I am looking at you Spurs and Jazz).
Let’s not bury the lead here – this slate is LeBron James ($22.9K on FantasyDraft and $12.3K on FanDuel) or bust. There is no player priced remotely close to LeBron on this slate so I think you need to take your stand either way – you are either all in on LeBron or you completely fade him – there is no in between.
My take is that LeBron on a short (ugly) slate like this is a must play as he steps into this game with 60+ FD points in EIGHT STRAIGHT GAMES. Look over this slate, who else has the raw point upside that LeBron has – who is the logical pivot that you are going to feel good going to battle with on this slate in hopes they can even come close to matching LeBron?
The argument I think most will make on this slate is that the Cavaliers/Bulls game in Cleveland has big time blow-out potential as the Bulls are playing on the tail end of a back to back and we have an 11 point spread at the open. This is certainly a logical argument, and one many people made last night in the Rockets/Lakers game but playing the blow-out angle in DFS can be a losing battle as we saw last night as sometimes simply attacking the best plays/game environments is all we need to do and we can block out the Vegas lines!
The Cavs/Bulls have played twice already this season with the Cavs winning both games by 7 and 12 points and LeBron has played 35 and 37 minutes in those contests so I am not at all worried about his minutes in this game. With LeBron locked in, I think it makes sense to have some correlation plays and run it back with the Bulls on the other side!
Kris Dunn ($13.4K/$7.8K) and Justin Holiday ($11.4K/$4.9K) make for a great stacking option at the guard positions and an elite way to target the most vulnerable aspects of the Cleveland defense. Dunn is playing at an elite level right now, putting up a near 30% usage rate and 1.2 FP/M over the last two weeks while racking up 42+ FD points in four of his last seven games! Dunn’s stability and high usage make him a cash game core play and he has demonstrated 50+ FD point upside which makes him a great correlation GPP target in a mini game stack here.
Holiday on the other hand is way more volatile but the price is simply at a point where it is tough to pass on it considering his high volume shooting/scoring upside. Holiday has put up 32 and 37 FD points in his previous two meetings with the Cavs, which considering his price point on FanDuel, would give him a “floor” of over 6x in this match-up. The price on FantasyDraft is much more fair relative to his output so he is not as much of a must play on that slate but considering his 30+ minute role and scoring prowess, I love the idea of attaching the Cavs with SG’s where they rank 24th in DvP this season.
Last but not least in the game is Kevin Love ($15.2K, $8K) who just continues to rack up top-tier fantasy games each night at a reasonable price point. Love steps into this game with 40+ FD points in three of his last four games and has averaged nearly 40 FD points against the Bulls this season. The Bulls rank 23rd in DvP against the Center position so stacking Love/LeBron and the Bulls guards could be a great GPP core tonight!
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
The tricky part about this slate is that there are more teams I want to avoid then attack! Consider for a moment we have 5 teams (half the slate) in action tonight that rank in the top 10 in team DvP so when you line that up to all the pace decreases means we have a lot of potential landmines we need to avoid.
One of things I do when I look at slates is to see if there are any games I can just cross off and tonight honestly has too many of those! The Spurs/Jazz game has by far the lowest pace and we already are seeing the value dry up as we will have guys like Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and Derrick Favors on the court tonight which takes away the only avenue to finding plays here tonight and that was with punt value.
The Knicks will have to take on the best defensive team in the league in Boston (1st in DvP and Def-Eff) and the Sixers will take on a Raptors team ranked 7th in DvP and 4th in Def-Eff but first in the NBA as a defensive unit over the last month. It may feel like we have to target players in these games but maybe we are better off just fading entirely.
So where does that leave us? Frankly the best spot on the board may be the Memphis Grizzlies who see the biggest point AND pace boost on the slate and will take on a Suns team ranked 30th in DvP and 29th in Def-Eff.
The nice thing about Memphis is this is essentially a two man show as Marc Gasol ($14.6K/$8.3K) and Tyreke Evans ($13.7K/$7.8K) are the dominant offensive forces on this Grizzlies team. Over the last two weeks, Gasol and Evans both have usage rates north of 30% while no other player on the Grizzlies is over 25%! The price points are reasonable enough where you can easily pair them with LeBron James which makes them even more valuable from a roster build perspective and this trio will be at the core of my builds tonight!
I would not normally go past Gasol/Evans from a DFS perspective but a match-up with the Suns makes the fringe starters like Dillon Brooks and Andrew Harrison who are playing 25-30 minutes a night and their punt price points make them a nice way to fill out your roster around a more expensive core while still attacking an elite game environment.
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The one spot I want to keep my eye on tonight is in Phoenix as at some point Greg Monroe will need to break out of this DNP cycle and my hope is that the tail end of a back to back is where he gets unleashed. With the Suns playing three games in four days, I would fully expect Tyson Chandler or Alex Len to get the night off which would open Monroe up as an elite value play especially on FantasyDraft where he is priced at only $8.8K and I can play him along side guys like Gasol or Love.
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.
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FantasyDraft Sample Line-Up:
G: Tyreke Evans ($13,700)
G: Kris Dunn ($13,400)
G: Justin Holiday ($11,400)
F/C: LeBron James ($22,900)
F/C: Marc Gasol ($14,600)
F/C: Greg Monroe ($8,800)
Util: Dillon Brooks ($7,200)
Util Andrew Harrison ($7,800)
FanDuel Sample Line-Up:
PG: Kris Dunn ($7,800)
PG: Andrew Harrison ($4,300)
SG: Tyreke Evans ($7,800)
SG: Justin Holiday ($4,900)
SF: LeBron James ($12,300)
SF: Josh Jackson ($4,300)
PF: Bobby Portis ($5,000)
PF: Trevor Booker ($5,200)
C: Marc Gasol ($8,300)
Slate Overview: I have to be honest – there is more that I dislike on this slate than I actually want to play. With so many pace down spots and elite defenses on this slate, I am simply not going to force in guys like Ben Simmons or Kristaps Porzingis going against elite defenses when that also likely takes me out of the running for the few guys I REALLY want.
To be clear, I am starting every build with LeBron James, Marc Gasol and Tyreke Evans on this slate and will utilize the Bulls guards as a strong correlation to my LeBron exposure. I am not looking to move off that core as it gives me arguably the two best game environments to attack on this slate so I am happy to let others try to force in higher priced plays in mad match-ups.
On PlayLine tonight, I actually think you take a strong stance and project the key players (outside of LeBron) to underperform relative to their season long match-ups in hopes that people play the “names” and not the match-up.
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!