NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday January 10
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’s NBA DFS slate went according to the plan with Russell Westbrook (60) as the leading scorer but put your hand up if you had Bam Abedayo (50) as the second leading scorer on the night! Ok put your hand down you liar! Most of the top 20 players were “chalky” but the fact that Bam Abedayo, Marreese Speights and Kosta Koufus were all top 20 plays on this specific slate were certainly a surprise and helped differentiate GPP winning teams in a big time way!
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 – Where to start on this slate?
Buckle up kids – we have eleven games in the NBA tonight and it is interesting to note where FanDuel has included them all on the Main Slate that FantasyDraft has opted to start their Main Slate at 7:30PM EST which boils it down to only eight games. The first three games on the slate that are omitted from FantasyDraft (Dal/Cha, Uta/Was and Mia/Ind) also happen to be three of the five slowest paced games on the slate so part of me wants to thank them for eliminating those games from my pool in that game format!
Regardless of which site you play on the overall look and feel of this slate feel similar – we have a TON on material injuries to monitor, a handful of potential blowouts and even with 22 teams taking the court – only four of them see a material pace boost so at first pass there does not appear to be this must have spot to start the day.
The biggest injury news on this slate to monitor is the status of Anthony Davis which interestingly enough probably can be said for any slate he is on, but this time we actually know going in he is questionable to play after leaving his last game with an ankle injury. Over the last two seasons, when the Brow is off the court, you simply fire up DeMarcus Cousins ($20.1K) who has a 40% usage rate and is putting up just under 1.7 FP/M without Davis on the court. The match-up with the Grizzlies may not seem ideal as the Pelicans see the largest pace decrease on the board but that actually favors Boogie in this spot as the Pelicans can be content feeding their big man who went for 60 fantasy points in this spot earlier this season WITH Davis on the court next to him.
With Kevin Durant likely to be back tonight for the Warriors, it takes much of the appeal away from Stephen Curry and makes me look towards Boogie as my one stud to pay up for assuming that the Brow sits tonight!
Speaking of the Warriors, it sure sounds like Blake Griffin will miss tonight’s game again which means a significant uptick in usage and fantasy output for Lou Williams and DeAndre Jordan who see the biggest pace boost on the slate against the Warriors. My biggest issue with this game is we essentially just saw this match-up happen and in fact it was the game Griffin got his concussion and was only limited to 10 minutes. Even without Durant on the floor, the Warriors IN LA ran out to a 27 point lead entering the fourth quarter versus a short-handed Clippers team. With Durant back and this game in Golden State, there is serious potential the stars in this game never see the fourth quarter which puts this as a GPP game stack only spot in my mind.
Another star injury we need to wait on is the status of Damian Lillard against the Rockets – and at this point, we know what to do if Dame sits – you can roll out Shabazz Napier and CJ McCollum who combined for 76 fantasy points last night.
NBA DFS – Is there a must have core tonight?
The more I look at this slate and the options available the less I feel like there is one must have spot to build around tonight as a result of the pricing/match-ups/blowout risks etc. The first player I wrote down and locked in tonight was DeMarcus Cousins and went about the rest of my research as a core game stack around the Pelicans/Grizzlies is not where I want to plant my flag – but should it be?
From a Vegas perspective this game as a mid-range total at 210 and a 1 point spread, but also has the fourth lowest projected pace of any game on this slate. The Grizzlies actually are the team that stands out the most from a metrics perspective as they have the second largest point boost (5.6 points above their season average) while getting the fourth largest pace boost on the slate.
What I love about the Grizzlies from a DFS perspective is that this is a simple two-man show between Tyreke Evans ($15K) and Marc Gasol ($13k) who both have a 30% usage rate this year with Mike Conley off the court while putting up 1.11 FP/M each. In their previous meeting this season with the Pelicans, Gasol had a 31% usage rate (Conley played in that game) while racking up 1.42 FP/M and Tyreke Evans in a revenge spot against his former team held a 30% usage rate while putting up over 1 FP/M.
With Boogie locked in, running it back with Gasol and Evans makes all the sense in the world but should we look to expand on our Pelicans exposure? On the surface this match-up is not one we typically want to attack against a Memphis team ranked top 5 in Def-Eff as a team but we just saw the Wizards back-court of John Wall and Bradley Beal put up 50+ fantasy points apiece against this banged up Memphis team so there some sneaky potential here.
In the last four games that Anthony Davis has sat out, the Pelicans guards have compiled the following fantasy point totals:
Jrue Holiday ($12.9K): 60, 40, 50 and 33 – for an average of 45.75 which would return 3.5x value at this price point.
Rajon Rondo ($11k): 46, 28, 38, 38 – for an average of 37.5 fantasy points which would return over 3.4x value.
The game metrics (total/pace) may not stand out but what does to me in this spot is we have two teams in a close game where the majority of the usage (without AD on the court) is essentially boiled down to five specific players. Sure we could get the random Andrew Harrison or E’Twaun Moore game but I am not going to bother with the fringe pieces here tonight and instead focus on the core five high usage stars in a game stack!
NBA DFS: Pivot Plays:
The Bulls/Knicks game at MSG has yet to release a total as we have some injury news worth monitoring as Michael Beasley and Nikola Mirotic are both questionable to play in this game and it is worth noting that Zach LaVine is scheduled to return to the Bulls this weekend and will likely play 20 minutes off the bench on Saturday. We will not have to worry about his return here tonight but the status of Mirotic will be huge in identifying who we can target from the Bulls wing/front court players!
Kris Dunn ($13.5K) has faced this Knicks team twice already this season, both in the last month, and has racked up 36 and 44 fantasy points in those two outings. The Knicks rank 26th in DvP and Def-Eff against the PG position this season so this is a highly exploitable match-up for Dunn and the price is reasonable enough where he can slide in easily to any roster build!
Assuming Mirotic is out, we can confidently fire back up Bobby Portis ($9K) who was second on the team in usage against the Rockets last time out with a 26.3% usage rate while putting up .9 FP/M and ending the night with 30 fantasy points in 33 minutes of court time.
The injury to Michael Beasley may not seem like much on the surface but outside of Kristaps Porzingis, Beasley represents the Knicks biggest offensive threat and we saw against Dallas when Beasley was out how it impacted the secondary option on New York. Kyle O’Quinn ($7.9K) played 22 minutes off the bench for NY, racking up 38 fantasy points which would be the second time in his last three games he put up 34 or more fantasy points.
One thing I always look for when researching is how teams closed out games and it was interesting to me that O’Quinn checked in with 3 minutes left in the third quarter and never again came off the floor, playing alongside Porzingis as the Knicks closed out a tight game against Dallas. O’Quinn racked up 23 fantasy points alone in that fourth quarter and that late game trust could pay big dividends again tonight is Beasley is ruled out.
O’Quinn was not the only bench player who helped close out against Dallas as Frank Ntilikina ($7.7k) played over 8 minutes in the fourth quarter compared to Jarret Jacks’s 3 minutes and we saw Frank and KOQ dominate the Knicks second team usage throughout this game as they both had 20% usage rates while putting up over a fantasy point per minute of production! In his two previous meetings with Chicago, the Knicks rookie has played 21 and 28 minutes putting up 24 and 21 fantasy points in those games which would put him right at value at this price point!
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: Tyreke Evans ($15,000)
G: Jrue Holiday ($12,900)
G: Kris Dunn ($13,500)
F/C: DeMarcus Cousins ($20,100)
F/C: Marc Gasol ($13,700)
F/C: Bobby Portis ($9,000)
F/C: Kyle O’Quinn ($7,900)
F/C: Frank Ntilikina ($7,700)
Slate Overview: We have a TON of injury news to keep an eye on today but to me, the confirmation of Anthony Davis sitting is the most critical. A Grizzlies/Pelicans stack is absolutely in play with their high usage remaining core and the Knicks/Bulls game could provide some sneaky salary relief if we get the injury news we expect tonight! Best of luck all!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!