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 give you a first look at the day’s NBA DFS slate, including our top picks, plays and pivots, using FantasyDraft pricing as a reference, to help you build your best line-up and win big!
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!
Christmas Day’s NBA slate delivered some big time performances from the days biggest stars as James Harden led all scorers with 68 FD points, proving again that he is a must play for as long as Chris Paul is out of the line-up. The two biggest surprises on the day were the lackluster game from LeBron James (35 FD points) and th monster 31 point, 22 rebound effort for Enes Kanter (60 FD points) who put on a show at the Garden against Joel Embiid (55 FD points of his own) in the early game.
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 – Slate Overview and Must Have Studs:
Welcome back Picks and Pivots readers, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and got to spend some time with family and friends while enjoying some Christmas Day NBA! We get right back to it on this Tuesday with an interesting eight game slate that at first glance looks relatively straight forward and we will do our best to give you a first look, using FantasyDraft pricing as a reference, to help you get your roster builds started!
The thing that really jumps out to me on this slate is the lack of scoring that Vegas expects as we do not have a single team total over 110 and the highest game total currently only sits at 211. From a pace perspective, there are only three teams that see material pace boosts – the Spurs, Grizzlies and Heat, which when you consider they are three of the slowest paced teams in the NBA tells you everything you need to know about how this slate is shaping up!
On Christmas Day we had a stacked slate with the games biggest stars and some of the highest scoring teams in the NBA which seems to be the complete opposite of today’s slate where we have mediocre totals and only one stud on the docket – Giannis Antetokounmpo ($21,300) is the clear top dog no matter what site you play on tonight as he is priced at a 20% premium over the rest of the field.
Giannis will take on a Bulls team today at home after getting his previous game off for rest/ a “sore” knee and would seem like the logical choice to be the raw points leader when this night comes to a close. Over his last five games against the Bulls, he has racked up 35, 57, 59, 61 and 80 fantasy points with the 59 point outing coming just a few weeks back when he dropped 29 points and 16 rebounds against Chicago.
My perspective with Giannis on this slate boils down to this simple concept – he is the most probable player on this slate to have the most fantasy points so as long as we have enough value (and I believe we do) then we simply lock him in and move on!
Because Giannis sits in his own tier, there is no logical pivot point at the top but dropping down slightly and locking in a mini-stack of the Grizzlies 1-2 punch in Marc Gasol ($14.6K) and Tyreke Evans ($15.7K) looks to be the next best option. I could (and will) argue that there is merit to locking in all three of these plays tonight and as there appears to be enough value across the industry to make this three-man stack an elite core build.
No team tonight sees a bigger pace boost than the Grizzlies, who will travel to Phoenix to take on a Suns team that just tangled with a few games ago! In that game, Gasol racked up 13 points, 11 rebounds and 41 fantasy points while Evans logged 23 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists for 44 of his own fantasy points!
What I love about stacking these two is that for as long as Mike Conley is out, you know that stacking Gasol/Evans is going to essentially capture all the usage and fantasy output the Grizzlies have as both players pushing 30% usage rates with 1.1-1.2 FP/M of output. The match-up here is elite for these two tonight and I would make a point to lock in Giannis/Gasol/Evans and look to mix and match value as the core of your build tonight. On a site like FanDuel for instance, you can click the lock button on all three players and still have just under $5.2K per player to fill out a roster in the mid-range on the PERFECT slate for that kind of build!
NBA DFS – Is sunny Florida our one stop shop for value in a game stack?
Looking for some value tonight? The Magic and Heat play a game tonight where it may be easier to list who is playing as opposed to the laundry list of injured players these teams will have on their bench.
Here is what we know – Nikola Vucevic and Terrence Ross are OUT for the Magic, while Aaron Gordon, Evan Fournier and Jonathan Isaac are all questionable to see the floor. On the Heat side, we know that James Johnson, Dion Waiters and Justise Winslow are all OUT for Miami while Hassan Whiteside is questionable.
The sample size is VERY small but without Vuc, Ross, Gordon and Fournier on the court, it is no surprise that the biggest beneficiaries are Jonathan Simmons ($13.4K) and Elfrid Payton ($12.6K) as both players see a 4%+ usage boost in this scenario. My only issue with these two players is that their price point requires essentially 40 fantasy points in order to pay off the inflated price tags and even with the injuries, the Heat defense is still solid and this is a big time pace down spot for the Magic.
Rather than pay up for the Magic, I will look to the true value plays on this team as I believe we have better profit potential targeting guys like Mario Hezonja ($9.8K) and Bismack Biyombo ($7.4K). With Vucevic on the shelf,it was Biyombo who got the start in the second half of the last game the Magic played and I would expect him to get the starting nod again in this spot as a great value option who should see 25+ minutes and has the ability to crush value due to his blocks upside.
Hezonja is the guy I am most looking to utilize here from the Magic however as the price point relative to his upside gives us a fantastic GPP target. Over the last two weeks, we have seen the upside that Mario has, racking up 47, 41 and 30 fantasy points but this is also a player with has shown the ability to dud in the same stretch. The key for me is minutes – in the three games that Hezonja played 30+ minutes he racked up 30 or more fantasy points in each game, but when he played less than that he never got more than 22 fantasy points.
It may seem simplistic but if the minutes are there – the production seems to follow – and with Vuc already out, if we get news that Fournier and Gordon are out again, I see no way Super Mario does not log another 30+ minutes in this spot!
NBA DFS – All the Miami Heat tonight?
On the Miami side of this game we only really need to wait on the status of Whiteside in this case – but I am fully expecting that Whiteside will remain sidelined for this game even after being upgraded to questionable. On Christmas Eve it was reported that Whiteside was “ramping up” his activity including non-contact work and considering that he has been out a month, even if he does somehow play there is almost no chance its with any sort of normal minutes.
If we look at the last game for Miami, with all four of those players out, the Heat ran a tight rotation with seven players logging 26+ minutes of court time. The Magic rank dead last in DvP and Def-Eff as a team this season so stacking the Heat we can attack not only a great match-up but also a team with a significant amount of fantasy output open due to injuries!
Without Whiteside, Waiters, Johnson and Winslow on the court this year, Kelly Olynyk ($12K) leads Miami with 1.15 FP/M of output but it is Josh Richardson ($12.4K) that sees the largest usage bump at 6.5%. Richardson has been on an incredibly hot streak lately, dropping 40+ fantasy points in three of his last five games but keep in mind, those games were without Goran Dragic on the floor and we saw last game with the Dragon back, Richardson had the ball in his hands far less and although he still logged 36 minutes, only got to 22 fantasy points. If choosing between the two here, I am rolling with Olynyk who should get the benefit of an immobile Magic front-court that will have trouble guarding him outside the paint!
With Waiters out, it opens up some significant value at the guard/wing position and we saw Tyler Johnson ($11.2K) draw the start last time out in place of Waiters. Johnson is averaging over 32 fantasy points per game over his last three outings and has seen a 5% usage bump over the last week even with the return of Goran Dragic. The Magic rank 28th in DvP and Def-Eff against the SG position on the season so Johnson makes for another great one-off play or an addition to a Heat team stack here tonight.
Wayne Ellington ($7.4K) is ALWAYS in play as a value target, especially when Dion Waiters is out of the line-up. My man Wayne has played 30+ minutes a night in each of his last four games, jacking up 11, 12 and 16 shot attempts in his last three outings. Ellington is never a sexy play for DFS purposes as he is entirely too scoring dependent for most but it is rare to find a player with this much guaranteed court time and shot volume in the bargain bin. Ellington showed everyone the kind of upside he has when he dropped 28 points and over 35 fantasy points two games ago and in this pace up spot, I think we could see him approach that ceiling again!
Last but not least, Bam Abedayo ($8K) should continue to log 30+ minutes a night for the Heat and we have seen him put up 30+ fantasy points in two of the last three games that James Johnson has missed. At this price point, you are looking at 3.7x value this is a tournament target on FantasyDraft if he were to hit that mark again and with a banged up Magic front court, I see now reason to think the path to GPP value is not viable for Bam this evening!
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 ($15,700)
G: Tyler Johnson ($11,200)
G: Mario Hezonja ($9,800)
F/C: Giannis Antetokounmpo ($21,300)
F/C: Marc Gasol ($14,600)
F/C: Kelly Olynyk ($12,000)
Util: Bam Abedayo ($8,000)
Util: Wayne Ellington ($7,400)
Slate Overview: No matter what site you play on, I think the overall look and feel of this slate is the same. Giannis is the CLEAR top play on the board and I think there is enough value in the Magic/Heat game to make locking him in an easy plug and play. To me, I am looking to start my rosters with Giannis, Gasol and Tyreke and using the Heat as my plug-in stack around them. Miami gets one of the biggest pace boosts, the Magic are one of the worst defensive teams on the board and we get the benefit of a tight rotation! Lock and lock the Heat tonight – good luck all!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!