NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday December 28
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 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!
Wednesday’s winning line-ups were dominated by the studs on the slate as the four highest priced players on the slate happened to also be the four highest scoring plays. We got some unexpected value during the day with the news that Victor Oladipo would be out which made Lance Stephenson (46) and Bojan Bogdanovic (41) elite value plays that soaked up the available usage in a big way for the Pacers!
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 – Guard Overview:
Let’s start at the top with James Harden ($21,600), the most expensive player on the slate, who gets a road match-up with a stingy Celtics defense. The breakdown for me is simple – if Chris Paul remains out, then you simply play The Beard in every line-up you can. Paul is a game time decision so hopefully we get news before lock on his status as we all know that Harden gets a massive usage and fantasy point bump with CP3 off the court.
In the last three games, Harden has put up 68, 71 and 73 fantasy points and even at this price point, there is already ample elite value that makes plugging in Harden an easy decision. The decision will get a little harder if CP3 is ruled in but keep in mind that with CP3 on the floor and Clint Capela off (ruled out for this game), Harden still has a 40.4% usage rate while putting up 1.42 FP/M so he as long as the value holds, I have no issue allocating salary to Harden who will still be at the top of the leaderboard from a raw point perspective.
One of the reasons we can easily pay up for a stud like Harden tonight is that we have elite value plays at the PG position that not only open up ample salary but have clear starting roles with massive upside! With the injury to Reggie Jackson, we can confidently fire up Ish Smith ($9,600) who will take over the starting PG spot for the Pistons and even with a slight price boost across the industry, remains frankly too cheap.
With R-Jax and Avery Bradley both out, Ish will have all the minutes he can handle in the back-court and considering he has put up a FP/M of production this year with Bradley/Jackson off the court and has a clear path to 30+ minutes, he looks like a lock to crush value tonight. The expanded role itself is enough to roster Ish but the match-up makes him a near must play as he will take on a Magic team ranked 30th in DvP and 26th in Def-Eff versus the PG position!
The sites had the opportunity to price up Ish, but they did not have the chance to adjust the price on Tyus Jones ($6,400) who looks primed to re-enter the starting line-up for Minnesota tonight after an ugly leg injury to Jeff Teague last night. Jones started three games earlier this year for Teague and dropped 30, 41 and 51 fantasy points in those three starts. We all know that Minnesota runs their starters for 30-35 minutes a night so anytime we can get a Timberwolves starter for near minimum price then we simply need to lock him in and move on!
NBA DFS – Top Guard Pivot Plays
On a site like FanDuel, the Jones/Ish combo is an easy plug and play but on FantasyDraft where we can roster more than two PG’s, I love the idea of running back my Ish Smith play with Elfrid Payton ($12,500) of the Magic. We already now the Magic will be without Nikola Vucevic and Aaron Gordon remains questionable – the biggest question mark is probably the status of Evan Fournier who returned last game rather unexpectedly but now is questionable again with a sore foot. Elf has actually been rather solid lately with 31+ fantasy points in four straight with a near 70 point outing against the Wizards which shows his upside. If all the other Magic players are out tonight, Elf sees a 5% usage boost and would make for an easy correlation play with our Pistons exposure!
On FanDuel where you are forced to roster two shooting guards, I have a hard time moving away from James Harden at SG, but on FantasyDraft I think you can make the case to pivot off The Beard IF Chris Paul us ruled in. Damian Lillard ($16,500) represents a near 25% price drop off Harden and after missing two games is a full go for tonight’s game against the Sixers. No team on tonight’s slate sees a bigger pace boost than Portland as this Sixers/Blazers game is projected to be the fastest pace game on the slate so we will want some exposure as the late night hammer!
The Sixers/Blazers faced off earlier this year and Dame dropped 43 fantasy points in that outing and prior to his injury had put up 50+ fantasy points in four of his last nine games. The Sixers struggle to defend opposing guards, especially with limiting damage from beyond the arc so this is a great game environment for grab Dame as others may be slow to go back to him after a two game injury break!
NBA DFS – Detroit Stack City?
No team looks better from a pure stacking perspective in my mind tonight than the Detroit Pistons as the injury to Reggie Jackson opens up value and usage in an elite environment against the Magic. As a team the Magic are DEAD LAST in DvP and Def-Eff, ranking last in the league in DvP versus opposing PG’s and PF’s and are ranked 28th/29th in Def-Eff against the SG/SF positions.
Basically, the Magic are awful at defense and if you wear a Pistons jersey then I likely will have exposure to you tonight! With Reggie Jackson and Avery Bradley both out tonight, every single Pistons starter sees a usage bump and FP/M increase so stack up the Pistons tonight as they see the second largest pace boost on the slate!
Andre Drummond ($17.5K) is one of the more underrated beneficiaries of the injury to Reggie Jackson as over the last two seasons he actually sees a usage and FP/M boost when Ish Smith is on the floor with him. Drummond has struggled to put up monster outings the last two years against the Magic but every single one of those games had Nikola Vucevic on the floor and with Vuc out, I could see the Biyombo/Speights duo getting into foul trouble and struggling to slow down Drummond in this spot. On a one Center site like FanDuel, I could also see Drummond being over-looked with other elite centers on the board so he makes for an intriguing low-owned pivot.
Tobias Harris ($12.1K) comes into this game after 38 and 41 fantasy point outings in his last two games and has one of the best individual match-ups of any players on the Pistons tonight. Tobias sees a 5% usage bump with Bradley and R-Jax off the floor and sees the largest increase in FP/M output of any player on Detroit which makes him a great mid-range target tonight!
Anthony Tolliver ($7.4k) had started the previous two games for Detroit prior to last game when the Pistons opted to go small with Luke Kennard entering the starting line-up and my hope is they go back to Tolliver again tonight. In those two starts, Tolliver played 30 and 35 minutes, racking up 20.2 and 25 fantasy points which would put him right at target value at this price point.
One of the benefits of playing on a site like FantasyDraft is we can roster multiple centers and I think this is the perfect slate to do so. As much as I love Drummond as part of a game stack, it is hard to ignore the upside that Joel Embiid ($18,000) has in this late night match-up against a Blazers team he dropped 49 fantasy points against the last time he played them!
From a slate strategy perspective – I love the idea of stacking the Pistons/Magic game, which is the first game on the slate and then putting in a Dame/Embiid combination to give you exposure as the late night hammer!
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: Ish Smith ($9,600)
G: Tyus Jones ($6,400)
G: Damian Lillard ($16,500)
F/C: Joel Embiid ($18,000)
F/C: Andre Drummond ($17,500)
F/C: Tobias Harris ($12,100)
Util: Elfrid Payton ($12,500)
Util: Anthony Tolliver ($7,400)
Slate Overview: The Magic/Pistons game is where I am starting my builds tonight and the fact it is the lone 7PM game means we should have all the injury news and notes well ahead of lock to help us make the correct decisions! The status of Chris Paul will determine how I attack James Harden tonight but there is some merit to dropping down and using the salary savings to get more exposure to the late night hammer in the fastest paced game of the night – Sixers/Blazers!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all your DFS and fantasy sports new and analysis!