NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday January 17
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 night’s NBA DFS contests came down to how much Anthony Davis did you have as he went off for the second straight game with 75 fantasy points and now has back to back 75+ point fantasy outings! Devin Booker (69), Nikola Jokic (67), Jimmy Butler (57) and Damian Lillard (51) rounded out the top five as each played dropped 50+ fantasy points on a high scoring DFS night centered around the games biggest stars!
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?
We get a ten game NBA DFS slate tonight which kicks off with one game at 7PM EST on FanDuel while FantasyDraft has opted to go to a nine game slate at 7:30 PM EST ignoring the Wizards-Hornets game.
The Warriors-Bulls game has the highest implied game total at 229.5 and the fastest projected pace but the ten point spread reflects the blow-out risk of a game we just saw play a few weeks back where the Warriors won by 50 points! The biggest news for me in this game is the status of Draymond Green who is questionable to play which would make Jordan Bell ($8.7K, $4,3K) a lock and load play for me in a revenge spot against the Bulls team that traded him after drafting him. Jordan Bell revenge narrative is real as we saw the Warriors give Bell the start the last time these two teams played and Bell responded with 43 fantasy points on the back 7 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 6 blocked shots. With the Warriors being such massive favorites it would not surprise me to see them rest Draymond and if they do, fire up Bell in all formats as an elite value play!
The Thunder/Lakers game has the second fastest projected pace on the slate however we are waiting on Vegas lines/totals as a result of some injury news on the Lakers side. Lonzo Ball missed practice yesterday and looks unlikely to play today which means Tyler Ennis will craw the start. Interestingly enough, the last time these two teams met, Lonzo Ball was also injured so we have an easy game log to look through in the interest of replicating this script.
In that game, the Thunder won by 37 points which resulted in the Thunder “Big Three” all playing 28 or fewer minutes. Russell Westbrook ($21.3K) is the highest priced player on the FantasyDraft slate but I would actually be more inclined to move down to guys like Paul George ($13.6K) or Carmelo Anthony ($12.2K) if I am looking to get exposure to the Thunder side of this game. OKC gets the biggest pace boost on the slate so the game environment is elite but the blowout risk with this game in OKC is very real and you may be better off spending your salary on the other side of this game.
In addition to Ball, Larry Nance Jr. is questionable for this game tonight and when we take those two players off the court over the last month we see that Julius Randle ($11.5K) leads the team with a 26.8% usage rate and 1.3 FP/M. Randle is NOT a cash game option but he makes for an elite GPP play due to his massive upside as he has put up 43 and 49 fantasy points in two of his last four games.
On FanDuel Jordan Clarkson ($3.9K) is one of my favorite plays he gets a nice usage and production boost with Ball off the court. In the last six games that Ball has missed, Clarkson has put up 15, 18, 28, 12, 36 and 31 fantasy so there is signficant upside here and on FanDuel where we need to play two SG’s, he gives you a great salary savings option with clear 6x upside.
NBA DFS – Game Stack of the Night:
The Pelicans and Hawks have the second highest game total as of this writing (220) and the third fastest projected pace with only a 2 point spread so we could see the Pelicans in another close game after back to back OT performances against the Knicks and Celtics.
Anthony Davis ($20.1K, $11.7K) is playing out of his mind right now with 74 and 85 fantasy points in his last two games and has now played 40+ minutes in three straight games. Part of me wants to run screaming in the other direction as the thought of Anthony Davis playing 40+ minutes in back to back games and in four straight will likely make his body self-destruct and I already know the Twitter notification is coming mid-way through the first quarter with “Antony Davis has headed to the locker room” but I am not sure how you can fade him right now.
If this were any other match-up the Davis and DeMarcus Cousins ($19.7K, $11.9K) fades would make perfect sense but this game literally checks every possible box from a game stack perspective as we have a high total, high projected pace and a close Vegas spread. As I mentioned yesterday, one thing I do each day is look at the match-ups and the opposing team defensive ratings and today that view just screams game stack as the Pelicans and Hawks are two of the three worst teams on the entire slate in terms of Def-Eff.
I understand the logic behind a game theory fade as the recency bias will drive up ownership but on a slate this large we have enough value to easily fit in both of these guys and build a game stack here. If you look at the Pelicans recent box scores and game flows, you will see a team running their core 4-5 major minutes every night which makes them even more interesting against a Hawks team ranked 28th in DvP and 26th in Def-Eff this season. Jrue Holiday ($12.8K, $7.8K) has put up 48, 54 and 49 points in his last three games and operated as the primary ball-handler against the Celtics down the stretch of that game which means he could draw the Hawks PG defense and the price point feels like we still have room for profit potential.
Ian Clark ($6.2K, $3.6K) is a prime example of where digging through game flows becomes an important tool in DFS research as even though his recent game logs will show 31, 25 and 26 minutes played in his last three it does not tell the full story. Clark checked in with 2 minutes left in the third quarter of the game last night and NEVER LEFT THE FLOOR AGAIN. In fact, Clark started the OT session along side Holiday while Rajon Rondo sat on the bench. Clark operated as the team’s shooting guard which gave him the ability to space the floor and let Holiday operate as the team’s PG which gives them both a massive boost in this spot tonight and his salary open up SO MUCH for you on both sites tonight!
The Pelicans stack is easy(ish) to identify but finding the guys on the Hawks you want to run it back with is much more of a challenge as frankly outside of Dennis Schroder ($14K, $7.8K) I don’t have a ton of interest in building around the secondary pieces in Atlanta. Schroder is the entire Hawks offense as evidenced by his 46 shot attempts over the last two games while putting up 40 and 54 fantasy points.
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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FanDuel NBA DFS Sample Line-Up:
PG: Dennis Schroder ($7,800)
PG: Ian Clark ($3,600)
SG: Jrue Holiday ($7,800)
SG: Jordan Clarkson ($3,900)
SF: DeMarree Carroll ($5,000)
SF: Wes Johnson ($4,000)
PF: Anthony Davis ($11,700)
PF: Jordan Bell ($4,300)
C: DeMarcus Cousins ($11,900)
Slate Overview: On large slates like this I try to block out the noise and isolate the handful of games environments I want to target and simply focus my research on those spots. On tonight’s slate over half the teams in action see a neutral pace to their season average or a pace decrease which means finding the teams we want to target is a bit easier. The challenge is that the teams that have the highest totals and projected paces (Warriors/Thunder) also have the biggest blowout risk which keeps leading me back to the Pelicans and Hawks as the game to build around. I may be over simplifying the slate and going all in on the Pelicans could mean my night id over early when we AD gets a hangnail in warm ups but I am going to play the hot hand here in a game that features two of the worst defenses in the NBA!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!