NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday January 4
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 slate was a crazy one as the second highest scoring player on a 12 game slate was Raptors back-up guard Delon Wright who dropped 61 fantasy points which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how this NBA DFS played out!
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 – A look back and a two game Bomb Cycle slate!
Before we jump into this massive two game NBA DFS slate, I figure we can take a look back at last night’s slate since we have some time as we are currently preparing for a BOMB CYCLE to hit NJ today. I have never been more excited for a 3-6 inch snowstorm in Northern NJ solely because the name is cool and I enjoy saying it.
So far I think 2018 may be the best year of my life as three days in we got a Boban Marjanovic DFS night! If this is what 2018 has to offer me then my friends, I am ALL IN! In all seriousness, last night’s slate was a big time reminder of how late news can completely alter a slate and force you to reconstruct an entire days worth of research within the 30 minutes before lock. For me the late news that Andre Drummond would be out and fantasy point per minute monster Boban would be starting completely changed the slate for me, especially on FantasyDraft where it is SO hard to find true minimum priced punt plays and you have the ability to roster multiple centers.
Not only did I rush to get Boban in my line-ups, but the late news that Joel Embiid would start was a GPP gift from the God’s as I figured hey- I have to revise my line-ups anyways – lets work The Process in too! Embiid put up 50+ fantasy points at essentially no ownership and Boban crushed value putting up 32 fantasy points as two plays I was completely NOT on at 6:29PM EST became core plays in my roster and the guys I felt most confident about – Jamal Murray and Dejounte Murray completely dudded and could not even get me 30 fantasy points combined.
So what is my takeaway from last night? As always make sure you monitor the news – turn on your Twitter notifications so you can react quickly to breaking news and be flexible in your pre-lock roster builds. Also trust your research – I was on Jamal and Dejounte because the match-ups and underlying metrics supported them as great plays – but there is nothing more constant than variance in DFS so be willing to eat the losses but don’t disregard your research and “write off” a guy because he had a bad game – it happens.
So on to tonight – where we have an awesome NBA slate with two entertaining games full of the games biggest stars but frankly this is an awful DFS slate. You are going to be forced to roster some bench players you want no part of, any value that does open up will become mega chalk and your night will come down to the slightest difference between Superstar A versus Superstar B driving the cash line!
Enough lolly gagging – let’s jump into this two game slate!
NBA DFS – Two Game Slate – All the Studs!
Looking over tonight’s slate we have two of the highest scoring teams in the NBA squaring off against each other as the Warriors and Rockets face off in a massive pace-up game environment where two fast paced teams both see material pace boosts in this match-up!
Chris Paul ($20.1K) was the massive chalk at Point Guard last night and struggled with less than 40 fantasy points against the Magic and now gets a price boost that will certainly make people question whether he is worth the investment. The reality is, Paul struggled from the floor in this game, going 3 for 13 from the floor but still managed 13 assists and 7 rebounds and this feels like a perfect spot to trust the research and underlying metrics and go right back to CP3!
With James Harden off the floor this season, Chris Paul sees an 8% usage increase and has a massive 33% usage rate while putting up 1.8 FP/M and now steps into a significant pace up spot against the Warriors. In order for the Rockets to compete with a fully healthy Golden State, they are going to need a massive game from Paul and if you intend to have Golden State exposure (you should) then running it back with CP3 tonight is a great place to start!
It may seem weird to say this but the Golden State stars tonight actually feel like “good values” relative to the other stars on this slate and I think there is merit to stacking The Big Three tonight from the Warriors. Kevin Durant ($18.5K and $10.5K on FanDuel) is the highest priced Warrior on either site mentioned and is coming off a 60 fantasy point outing against the Mavericks last night where he shot the ball a team leading 21 times in addition to ripping down 12 rebounds.
Stephen Curry ($17.6K and $9.8K) being priced at a discount to Durant and at a lower price than Chris Paul will likely mean he becomes a popular option tonight as players look for any way to save salary on this slate! Curry has returned with a bang putting up 50+ fantasy points in both games since his return from injury and at this price point makes for an elite point per dollar play in all formats.
Draymond Green ($12.1K and $7.8K) feels like the most underpriced of the Warriors stars as he is coming off a 40+ fantasy point game last night against Dallas, just a few days after dropping a 50 burger against the Hornets. At this price point on FantasyDraft, he would only need 36 fantasy points to “hit value” which he has done in two of his last three games (easily) and put up 40 fantasy points against this Rockets team when they faced off earlier this season.
UPDATE – I knew not having a line out seemed fishy early this morning. We just got the news that Kevin Durant is OUT tonight and this immedietly makes Curry a lock play and pushed Klay Thompson into near must play status for me. The last three games Durant missed (and Curry played), Klay put up 43, 43 and 37 fantasy points.
The Oklahoma City/LA CLippers game is the second game in our Thursday double-header and if we are looking for studs, then we have Numero Uno on this slate with Russell Westbrook ($22.1K and $12.5K) being the highest priced player on the slate. Russ has been an absolute monster in recent games, racking up 60+ fantasy points in six straight games prior to his “dud” of only 50 fantasy points last night in 27 minutes against the Lakers last night.
The issue with Westbrook to me is not the price but rather it is the match-up with a Clippers team where the Thunder see a pace decrease and from a slate stagey perspective, I struggle to see the correlation on the Clippers side that makes prioritizing Westbrook a core play for me. Now this is not to say players like Blake Griffin or Lou Williams are a bad play – but salary is a thing in DFS and if I am using them to correlate with Westbrook, then it means I need to pivot away from the higher scoring, faster paced Rockets/Warriors game. On a two game slate, we need to take stands and maybe fading the high-priced stars in the later game is the spot to do so!
NBA DFS – Pivot to Value!
One of the issues with a slate like this where we have SO many stars and not a ton of value is that ANY sort of “good value” is going to become super chalky which is always a reason to consider a fade in GPP’s. The one spot I could see becoming super chalky tonight from a value perspective is the on the wings in Oklahoma City as we already know Andre Roberson is out with an injury and Alex Abrines is questionable with a groin injury that forced him to miss last night’s game. Terrance Ferguson ($6K and $3.5K) is the stone minimum on FantasyDraft and FanDuel and after getting the start last night for OKC and playing 32 minutes and putting up 35+ fantasy points, he is going to be the obvious chalk value that allows you to unlock the studs on this slate!
Considering that this is a player who had no reached double-digit fantasy points but one time in the last two months, there is always logic to playing the fade here but if Ferguson is in the starting lineup, the minutes security alone is worth locking him on a slate where ANY value may be good value!
As I mentioned in the Studs portion of this article, my initial take is to game stack the Rockets and Warriors and there is enough secondary value on the Rockets that makes this strategy a viable one.
The Rockets last night, sans Harden, played essentially a seven man rotation of guys getting 25+ minutes and with the Rockets expected to see the biggest pace boost on the slate, firing up these secondary plays is a great way to save salary and chase upside! Gerald Green ($9k) is priced up but you cannot argue with his usage/volume since joining the Rockets as he has played 27+ minutes in two of his last three games and put up 15 shot attempts last night including 10 three pointers in the Rockets first game without Harden!
PJ Tucker ($8K) and Ryan Anderson ($8.5K) are viable secondary plays that each logged 25-30 minutes last night and we have seen the Warriors go small in this match-ups before which would play perfectly into Tucker and Andersons games. In the first meeting between these two teams this year, Golden State forced Houston to go small, limiting Clint Capela to 18 minutes of court time where Tucker and Anderson played 29 and 33 minutes each so in a similar game script tonight, they make for an interesting way to get exposure here in a game stack while saving salary!
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: Chris Paul ($20,100)
G: Stephen CUrry ($17,600)
G: Gerald Green ($9,000)
F/C: Kevin Durant ($18,500) OUT
F/C: Draymond Green ($12,100)
F/C: Terrance Ferguson ($6,000)
Util: P.J. Tucker ($8,000)
Util: Ryan Anderson ($8,500)
Slate Overview: On a two game slate like this be smart with your bankroll and contest selection. Large field tournaments are pointless in my opinion as the ability to truly differentiate on slates this size are nearly impossible so I will look to play smaller field contests and suggest you do the same! Keep an eye on the news in Golden State and Houston to see if we get any sort of injuries that open up value/usage and enjoy Terrance Ferguson chalk day during this Bomb Cyclone!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!