Welcome to the Monday 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!
Sunday’s NBA DFS three game slate was dominated by two Lakers as Jordan Clarkson (59) and Julius Randle (52) were the top two scoring options and the only players to top 50 fantasy points on the slate. The beauty of these two players from a tournament perspective is that the instability of the Lakers rotation drew ownership away from them and allowed you to get a guy like Randle at single digit ownership which on a three game slate gave you all the advantage you needed to take down a tournament!
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:
Let me start this one off simply for all the readers – if you do not intend to keep up with the news today and be around for lock (7:30PM EST for FanDuel and 8PM EST for FantasyDraft) then I would tread lightly on this slate as we have a massive amount of news to monitor that is going to completely change the look of this slate.
Jimmy Butler was a late scratch on Saturday due to a sore knee and ended up missing the Wolves game along with Jamal Crawford which if we get similar news tonight is going to open up a ton of options on the Minnesota side of the ball. If you take both of those players off the court, Andrew Wiggins sees a 6% usage boost, leading the team with a 30% usage rate and we saw him put up 38 fantasy points against the Raptors last game that Butler sat out.
The injury not only boosts the usage of the other Wolves starters but opens up significant value as we saw Nemanja Bjelica ($6k, $3.6K) step into the starting line-up for Minnesota and put up 20 fantasy points over 26 minutes of court time. On FantasyDraft especially where true punt value is so hard to find, Bjelica would be a free square if we get the news he is starting again but keep in mind that this is the last game of the night so we may not have it before lock!
If you want an overview of the Grizzlies injury report, this is about as simple as I can break it down – if you are not Tyreke Evans or Marc Gasol you are either out or questionable to play. I want to like Memphis in this spot as they see the largest pace boost of any team in action against the Sixers but there is so much uncertainty around who will actually suit up that we will need to take a wait and see approach here.
JaMychael Green has already been ruled out for this game which means we could see Jarell Martin ($8.6K, $4K)enter the starting line-up as he took on the majority of the court time for Memphis last game when Green was hurt and played 34 minutes and put up 21 fantasy points. The issue with Martin is that he too is questionable to play as is Dillon Brooks and Mario Chalmers so keep an eye on the news here as we could get some significant value plays on a short-handed Memphis team.
NBA DFS – All the Bucks!
The one piece of injury news we can count on today is that Giannis Antetokounmpo will be out for the Bucks as they take on the Suns which means we should load up on the remaining Bucks players – most notably Khris Middleton ($14.9K, $8.6K) and Eric Bledsoe ($14.6K, $8.3K) who are core plays for me in all formats!
In the three games this year that Giannis has sat out -Middleton has put up 48, 60 and 64 fantasy points while Bledsoe has put up 30, 33 and 47 fantasy points. With their superstar off the court this season, Middleton sports a 35% usage rate which is a 9% increase on his season long numbers and makes for an elite play against a Suns team that ranks 30th in DvP and 29th in Def-Eff as a team!
Bledsoe let us down on Saturday with only 30 fantasy points but in a #RevengeNarrative spot against a Suns team he very much dislikes, I do not see how you avoid the narrative here! These two teams played on 11/22 in one of the three games that Giannis missed so we have some very easy game logs to reference and in that outing, Bledsoe put up 47 fantasy points on the back of 30 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds and 2 steals.
It is not surprising that both of these players high water marks came against a pace up team like the Phoenix Suns as the two combined for 111 fantasy points the last time they played so locking them in as a core duo, regardless of their popularity, seems like an ideal strategy.
The one item to note that differs a bit from Saturday’s Bucks game that Giannis missed is that Malcolm Brogdon ($9.8K) is expected back after missing the game due to personal reasons so getting a player who is locked into 30+ minutes a night in this type of game environment makes for a great addition to a game stack here that will likely be far lower owned than the Middleton/Bledsoe combo.
With so much Bucks exposure in our core I think it makes sense to run it back with the Suns duo of Devin Booker ($15.7K) and T.J. Warren ($12.5K) as we saw the Bucks struggle defensively against the Sixers over the weekend. Both Warren and Booker went for 40 fantasy points a piece in the first meeting between these two and the recent form of Booker in particular is a scary fade. Over his last two games, Booker has shot the ball 23 and 29 times including double-digit three-point attempts in each game while sporting a massive 42% usage rate over the last week so pairing him with Bledsoe/Middleton and Brogdon here allows you to stack one of the highest scoring projected game (213 total) on the slate and attack a game environment with the second fastest projected pace!
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays
It may seem crazy to think of the highest projected scoring game with the fastest projected pace to be the pivot spot but with SO much focus tonight on a Bucks team without their star, the Pelicans and Bulls game may get a bit over-looked. This game has by far the highest projected total at 225 which is 10 points higher than the next closest game on the slate and considering the Pelicans and Bulls rank 24th and 28th in team Def-Eff, we should have no trouble finding fantasy points in a fast-paced defensively challenged game!
DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis are both priced over $19K on FantasyDraft and at identical $11.5K price points on FanDuel which is going to make them tough to fit in especially if we want to load up on the Bucks/Suns plays that have been priced up across the industry. The Pelicans bigs put up 47 and 53 fantasy points respectively against this Bulls team earlier this season but would require significantly more to pay off their price tags tonight. The best play from the Pelicans may actually be Jrue Holiday ($13.4K) who is sporting a 26% usage rate over the last week as the primary ball-handler for New Orleans and has put up 47 or more fantasy points in four of his last five games which would put him right at 3.5x tournament value on FantasyDraft.
The Bulls side without Kris Dunn in theory should be a great spot to target but we saw the Bulls roll out a 10 man rotation where all the players played 18 or more minutes which makes this a spot I am hesitant to build around for DFS purposes. I suppose you could stack up the Holidays and roll out Justin Holiday who played 33 minutes last time out but this may be a spot to let others sort through while you take the guaranteed minutes/production in other spots!
The Wizards/Mavericks game stands out to me with the second highest projected total at 213 as both teams see a projected point boost even though this game projects to be the second slowest on the board. I tend to lean more towards pace than projected points so the polar opposite nature of these metrics gives me some pause in chasing the Vegas total here but keep an eye on this spot as a pivot game stack that will likely be over-looked and if the Vegas money keeps pushing this total up we may want to throw a game stack in to see if we can get a low-owned GPP winner!
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: Eric Bledsoe ($8,300)
PG: Andrew Harrison ($4,700)
SG: Khris Middleton ($8,600)
SG: Devin Booker ($8,500)
SF: TJ Warren ($7,000)
SF: Nemanja Bjelica ($3,600)
PF: Jarell Martin ($4,000)
PF: Mike Scott ($3,700)
C: DeMarcus Cousins ($11,500)
Slate Overview: With SO much uncertainty on this slate, putting together a sample line-up so early in the day is nearly impossible and honestly I was hesitant to even post it because I could see this line-up build getting completely wiped out if someone like Jimmy Butler plays. My early take here is simple – start with the Bucks/Suns and be flexible to news throughout the day – it may be a good day to multi-enter and game stack a few spots instead of going all in on one game but that all depends on how the news breaks – this feels like a crazy slate so get ready folks!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!