NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday January 2
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!
Monday’s winning entries had one thing in common on a four game slate – how much DeMar DeRozan did you have? DD dropped 75 fantasy points which was 20 points higher than the next closest player on the back of an absurd shooting night as he shot 60% from the floor on 30 shot attempts while going a perfect 13 for 13 from the line. Sometimes you simply tip your cap, take your L and move on to the next slate – as someone who had 0% DeRozan last night, you are welcome for my donations!
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 First Look:
If you are starting off the New Year and thinking, hey let me try out this NBA DFS I hear so much about – I promise you, most slates are not nearly as ugly as this one. We have a five game slate on tap and some early injury news we need to highlight as it will determine much of how we attack tonight’s slate.
Damian Lillard ($16.5K) is expected to re-join Portland tonight against Cleveland and considering this is the first game of the night, we should be good to have this news before lock. Portland is coming off an overtime game on Monday where all five members of the starting five played 38 minutes or more so we could have some seriously tired legs in this one! If Lillard plays, he will be the freshest of the bunch and considering that Cleveland is the third worst defensive team on this slate, it makes sense to attack them with an elite talent like Dame!
Austin Rivers is questionable to play which means we can continue to fire up Lou Williams ($14.5K) who is coming off a 59 fantasy point outing against Charlotte and will take on a Memphis team he just dropped 45 fantasy points against!
The Kings will be without both Frank Mason III and De’Aaron Fox is questionable to play which could open up big back court minutes for players like George Hill or Bogdan Bogdanovic. On a five game slate like this, we may be forced to go this route for value although with the unpredictability of the Kings rotations, I plan to do my best to avoid them at all costs!
Isaiah Thomas ($11.6K) will finally make his Cavaliers debut and frankly I cannot wait to see how he plays with LeBron and company. The plan is for IT4 to play off the bench tonight in limited minutes and sit out tomorrow against the Celtics (which would have been the ultimate revenge narrative spot) so this is more of a wait and see option but it will be interesting to see how his presence on the court takes away from the usage of the other Cavaliers players. LeBron has been playing at such an insanely high level so could Thomas be asked to take on more to “save” LeBron for the stretch run?
NBA DFS – One spot to stack:
Looking over this slate, there is one thing that jumped out to me – only three teams are projected to see a pace increase on this slate which in of itself is not that surprising as we have three of the top 10 defenses in action tonight – Spurs, Grizzlies and Portland. There are more teams we will want to cross off our list than actively target tonight which makes landing on a core, a relatively easy thing to identify.
There is one game that stands out as the clear stacking spot and the core place to build around tonight as the Suns and Hawks will tango in a battle of two fast paced teams that cannot play defense – aka fantasy gold! Both of these teams rank in the bottom 5 in DvP and Def-Eff and this game has by FAR the fastest projected pace and highest game total on the board by double-digit points.
As much as I want to stack this game, the reality is that there is really only a small core I am looking to build around due to the concentrated usage and fantasy production of these two teams. Devin Booker ($15.9K) is the premier play on the Suns side as he has come back and racked up 48, 37 and 46 fantasy points in his last three games while shooting the ball 20 or more times in every single game. Over the last week with Booker on the court, he is sporting an absurd 45% usage rate while putting up 1.3 FP/M and against an Atlanta team ranked 25th in DvP versus the SG position, this is the prime spot to pay up for at the guard position.
T.J. Warren ($13.4K) is the clear Robin to Booker’s Batman, but that role still has plenty of fantasy upside as evidenced by his 41 and 33 fantasy points the last two games. The Hawks present an elite match-up for opposing SF’s as they rank 28th in DvP and 30th in Def-Eff against the position so this is a fantastic spot to target Warren tonight.
On the Hawks side, the best play is Dennis Schroder ($13.5K) as the Suns rank 29th in DvP and 30th in Def-Eff in guarding the PG position. Over the last two weeks, Schroder leads the Hawks with a 28.4% usage rate while putting up a tea, high 1.13 FP/M and has put up 36 or more fantasy points in four straight outings.
Outside of this core trio of plays, the Hawks/Suns game should be best used with the secondary/complimentary plays to help you fill out your roster rather than plays you simply have to force in.
Marco Belinelli ($7.4K) is one of my favorite value plays on the slate as he ranks second ob the Hawks over the last two weeks in terms of usage (27.1%) while putting up a FP/M of production. Belinelli has put up 21 or more fantasy points in four of his last five games which puts him right at our target value and he ha flashed his ceiling in rhat recent stretch with a 40 fantasy point outing against OKC.
John Collins ($9.9K) is a point per minute beast – putting up well over 1.1 FP/M over the last two weeks but the issue is that he rarely gets any significant run – playing no more than 25 to 26 minutes a night. I expect most will look to Ersan Illyasova ($10.3K) at the same price point considering his run of 30+ fantasy points in four of his last five which could make Collins an interesting lower owned GPP pivot.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays
It feels weird to put LeBron James ($22.1K) as a “pivot play” as I expect he will be massively owned as the lone superstar on this small slate but the price point is elevated enough where it makes you really have to think whether or not you want to invest this much of your cap in one player as it requires sacrifices across the rest of your roster.
Let’s not bury the lead here though – if you can afford LeBron then you simply do it. Portland may be an elite defense but match-ups don’t matter with LeBron and on a short slate where raw points matter I really don’t want to fade King James in a nationally televised game at home after a road trip where he was vocal about his frustrations about the Cavs play. With IT4 back ont he court tonight, the Cavaliers are going to be fired up so if you can find the salary, just plug-in LeBron and move on.
One strategy point on FantasyDraft – you are required to roster players from a minimum of three teams so even if you want to stack Phoenix/Atlanta you will need a “one-off” play from another game to have a valid roster. I LOVE the idea in this format of locking in LeBron and then stacking Phoenix and Atlanta around him!
If you are looking for a true pivot, there are some interesting plays in the San Antonio and New York game which is a rematch of a battle that occurred just a few days ago. Now I do not intend to chase the 50 burger Michael Beasley dropped last time out against the Spurs, although I expect he will garner some buzz from the game log watchers. The play I am most interested in rostering in this game is Kawhi Leonard ($12.9K) who has seen his minutes tick up from 20 to 26 to 27 and if we are getting 30 minutes of Kawhi at this price point we simply need to jump on. Keep an eye on the news as Kawhi is listed as a GTD since technically this is a back to back (which he has not yet been cleared to play) but the Sprus have not played since Saturday so we should see him on the court tonight!
NBA DFS – Slate Overview and Sample Line-Up
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: Dennis Schroder ($13,500)
G: Devin Booker ($15,900)
G: Marco Belinelli ($7,400)
F/C: LeBron James ($22,100)
F/C: T.J. Warren ($13,400)
F/C: Ersan Illyasova ($10,300)
Util: John Collins ($9,900)
Util: Tyler Ulis ($7,500)
Slate Overview: The more I look at this slate the less I like it honestly. Rather than grasp for plays I am not crazy about, I am finding myself anchoring to a LeBron James plus Atlanta/Phoenix game stack but I will keep an eye on the Kawhi Leonard news as any indication of 27-30 minutes and I think we need to find a way to work him in!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!