NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday January 3
Welcome to the Wednesday 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!
Tuesday was a nice bounce back spot for Picks and Pivots as our core plays also happened to be the highest scoring plays on the slate. Devin Booker (53) was the slates highest scorer as the fast paced game environment between Phoenix and Atlanta turned out to be the fantasy goldmine everyone was looking for! LeBron James (52) put on his usual high scoring show but it was Kawhi Leonard (49) who was a big difference maker in GPP’s at sub 20% ownership who played 31 minutes and had his best fantasy outing since returning from injury!
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:
We have a massive twelve game slate to break down today so sorting through all the news and noise will be critical to help up isolate the games and players we want to target when starting our roster build today – Let’s get it started!
Spurs and Sixers: Let’s be clear – I have no idea who is going to play in this game as I write this article at 5AM EST but it is going to be a key spot to watch for value as the day unfolds. On the Sixers side, the news is simple – Joel Embiid is doubtful to play which would make Dario Saric ($13.9K) an elite play once again! Saric has racked up 42+ fantasy points in three straight games and has put up 43 or more fantasy points in three of the last four games that Embiid has missed. I will continue to fade Ben Simmons who is way overpriced on FantasyDraft ($17K) but on FanDuel he is only $8.6K which is quite tempting. Although he had a nice game against Phoenix and racked up over 50 fantasy points, that was aided by six blocks/steals in a fast pace game environment against the Suns and today see the polar opposite as they have the largest pace decrease on the board against the Spurs.
On the Spurs side – just keep an eye out here and react. San Antonio is on the tail end of a back to back so my guess is that we see 2-3 veterans sit out. Kawhi Leonard played 31 minutes last night and feels like the prime candidate to sit on the back to back here and I would expect we see veterans like Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili get the same treatment. It sounds like Danny Green will also be shut down for a few days so the value is going to be there for the Spurs and for me it starts with Dejounte Murray ($8.7K).
This year with Parker, Manu, Kawhi and Green off the court, no player see a bigger usage boost than Murray who gets a 6.3% usage increase and leads the team with a 27.9% usage rate while putting up 1.2 FP/M. With this game being a 7PM EST tip-off, we should have all the news we need here before lock!
Other News and Notes: Victor Oladipo remains out once again for the Pacers which means we can continue to roll out Lance Stephenson ($12.9K) who has been priced up for his expanded role but remains a high ceiling GPP play. We just saw what wings can do against the Bucks as DeMar DeRozan dropped 70 fantasy points on this team and after Lance put up a dud last game we could see reduced ownership as people balk at the price point!
NBA DFS – No Harden, No Problem:
Let’s not bury the lead here – the biggest news right now in the NBA/DFS is that James Harden will be sidelined for up to six weeks with a hamstring injury which means the Rockets just lost a player with league leading usage that the rest of the Houston roster will be forced to make up for. I was very interested to see how the sites adjusted the pricing for the Rockets not just because of the injury to Harden, but because their first “Post Beard” match-up is against one of the worst defenses in the NBA – the Orlando Magic. The Magic rank dead last in DvP and Def-Eff as a team so this could not be a better spot to attack the Rockets remaining players and the sites in my opinion did not adjust the pricing aggressively enough to entertain a fade.
If we take Harden off the court this season, it is not surprising to see the biggest beneficiaries are Chris Paul ($17.4K) and Eric Gordon ($12.5K). CP3 sees a massive 8% usage boost, a 0.5 FP/M increase and leads the team with 1.78 FP/M of production with Harden out and will take on a Magic team ranked 30th in DvP and 24th in Def-Eff guarding the PG position. Gordon meanwhile sees a 7.6% usage bump and leads the team with a 34.7% usage rate with Harden out and gets an equally advantageous match-up with a Magic team ranked 28th in DvP and 27th in Def-Eff.
The fact that the Rockets are projected to see a pace boost AND have one of the highest totals on the board, only one point below their season average, tells you that in this match-up the absence of Harden has minimal impact and just makes plays like Paul and Gordon a must in my opinion.
On the other side of this game, I love the idea of running it back with Aaron Gordon ($14.4K) who over the last week with Nikola Vucevic out, is leading the team with a 30% usage rate while putting up 1.12 FP/M. Gordon has played 30+ minutes in three straight games since returning, putting up 55 and 39 fantasy points in his last two outings while shooting the ball 22 and 20 times in those two outings. That is simply insane usage/volume for a PF who in those games has shot 19 three-pointers! This is a great spot to correlate and build a mini-stack here in what should be a fastest paced and highest scoring game of the night!
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
No team on tonight’s slate sees a bigger point boost than the Denver Nuggets who are expected to score over 7 points more than their season average while seeing one of the biggest pace boosts of any team in action as they take on the Suns. I will say, I have some concerns with the Suns being on a back to back and playing three games in four days and now having to travel to Denver to play in the altitude so I will likely avoid the inflated prices on guys like Devin Booker and T.J. Warren but I do think we need to have some exposure to the Nuggets side here.
Jamal Murray ($12.5K) was the first player I looked at in this match-up and for those of you who read Picks and Pivots know that I have a bit of a Jamal Murray DFS problem. Bias aside, this is the perfect spot for Murray who will take on a Suns team ranked 29th in DvP and 30th in Def-Eff guarding the PG position. Remember when this was a time share in Denver? Yeah – that is OVER and this job is all Murray’s who has played 40+ minutes in back to back games while shooting 20 and 23 times in those games. Murray is coming off a 50 fantasy point performance in his last outing and has put up 33 or more fantasy points in four straight games. The price point is basically set for the floor of his recent performances as he would only need 37 fantasy points to “hit value” and with 20+ shot attempts against the worst defense in the league versus PG’s, this is the spot for a Murray ceiling game and massive profit potential on a price that is far too low!
Speaking of under-priced, Hassan Whiteside ($12.3K) gets the Kawhi Leonard treatment for me tonight as he has ramped up his minutes in the three games since returning from injury as he has played 17, 20 and 28 minutes in those games. Even with the reduced minutes, Whiteside has managed to put up 32 fantasy points per game over his last two outings and tonight will take on a Pistons team he put up 20 points, 12 boards and 43 fantasy points against in his last meeting against them. This is a spot where I want to jump on one game early before the price adjusts to “normal minutes” with the Heat down key players again tonight – Dion Waiters and Justise Winslow – we can expect Whiteside to see a roughly 4.5% usage bump as he has put up a 28.5% usage rate with a team leading 1.4 FP/M with Waiters and Winslow out this year.
With the injury to Jeff Teague, it has been Jimmy Butler ($16.1K) leading the offense for Minnesota as he leads the team with a 34% usage rate while putting up over 1.3 FP/M in the last week with Teague off the court! Minnesota gets a significant pace boost tonight in a match-up against the Nets and the added benefit of facing a Brooklyn team that has struggled to contain opposing wing players this season. Butler has put up 45 or more fantasy points in five of his last six outings including 50+ in two of his last four games and makes for an elite play tonight at a mid-range price point!
In the same game, I will keep going back to a Nets value play on FantasyDraft that seemingly will never get a price increase. Quincy Acy ($6K) is minimum priced yet has hit GPP value (3.5x) in three of his last five games while playing between 17-22 minutes a night for Brooklyn. Keep an eye on the minutes news for Jahlil Okafor ($6.1K) as Kenny Atkinson has confirmed Okafor will re-enter the Nets rotation tonight after not seeing any action since his Nets debut where he played 22 minutes on 12/15 against the Raptors. If Okafor were to get 20+ minutes against the Minnesota bigs tonight he would be an intriguing GPP option in large field tournaments!
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.
More from FanSided
- Cardinals Rumors: Surprise extension, Dylan Carlson-Yankees link, Rays trade idea
- USWNT vs. Vietnam: Key takeaways before they take on the Dutch
- NFL rumors: 49ers trending toward contract drama with defensive star
- Steelers avoid any camp drama with latest roster move
- MLB Rumors: Potential Braves reunion, Lance Lynn no-trade clause and Orioles deadline intentions
FantasyDraft Sample Line-Up:
G: Chris Paul ($17,400)
G: Eric Gordon ($12,500)
G: Jamal Murray ($12,500)
F/C: Jimmy Butler ($16,100)
F/C: Aaron Gordon ($14,400)
F/C: Hassan Whiteside ($12,300)
Util: Dejounte Murray ($8,700)
Util: Quincy Acy ($6,000)
Slate Overview: On a slate this size my goal is always to walk into the day with a select core of plays I want to build around and then look to adjust as the news breaks. With the injury to James Harden, I plan on locking in Chris Paul and Eric Gordon and running it back with Aaron Gordon as a core trio in my builds. In my opinion, guys like Murray, Butler and Whiteside are simply priced too low relative to their ceiling and assuming we get the value we need (looking at you Spurs), it should be easy to make this build work tonight!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!