NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday February 1
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 Night’s NBA DFS slate was relatively low scoring and for the most part the chalk plays won the night as three of the highest owned players (Terry Rozier, Joel Embiid and Dwight Howard) also finished among the top 7 fantasy scoring options! The key pivot that made the biggest tournament difference was moving off the highest owned player in Damian Lillard and instead to his teammate C.J. McCollum who went off for 50 real life points and 62 fantasy points which more than doubled the output of his chalky backcourt partner. This was a great example of where you didn’t need to go “off the board” to find the pivot but rather you could attack the same advantageous Portland backcourt match-up and simply go with the lower owned options knowing that they would not correlate and in this case where McCollum was red-hot, Lillard simply deferred to him offensively.
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:
For a five game slate where only ONE game has Vegas information (welcome to the pre trade deadline NBA) this is actually a pretty fantastic slate and with so many similar games to target, this looks to be a great one to mix and match your exposure. Of the ten teams in action, seven of them see a projected pace decrease while not one team sees a projected pace boost of more than 1.5 possessions. What this means to me is there is not going to be some “must have” exposure spot which in theory should spread out the ownership and allow us to pivot off the chalk plays today in tournaments as we keep our eyes and ears on the buzz around the industry today.
Let’s start with the most important piece of information and player on this slate – James Harden ($21.1K), who is coming off a 102 fantasy point performance in his last game out against the Magic. So clearly today’s match-up with the Spurs is not as juicy as the one against the Magic but the truth is, you are not playing Harden because of the match-up, you are playing him because of the potential circumstances. We already know Trevor Ariza is OUT for tonight while Chris Paul and Eric Gordon are both questionable with an injury. If all three players are out of action tonight we can look at a guy in Harden who sports a 45% usage rate and puts up 2 fantasy points PER MINUTE with those guys off the court. Read that again and think about what that means if we assume Harden plays his usual 35-40 minutes – you are looking at 70-80 fantasy points just off his average metrics with those guys out. With this game being the National TV game we should have all the injury news we need here early on and if the Rockets remain short-handed I simply see no way you can fade Harden on a short slate like this one.
The other big piece of injury news that will certainly create buzz today is the status of Eric Bledsoe who is doubtful to suit up against Minnesota tonight. The obvious plays that would seem to benefit here are Giannis Antetokounmpo ($19.9K) and Khris Middleton ($13.3K) who are coming off 64 and 43 point fantasy games in their last outing that Bledsoe essentially missed (he only played 2 minutes before leaving with his injury). The interesting thing to note here is if you take Bledsoe off the court and put Giannis and Middleton on, they really don’t see a material change in production over a significant ample size (447 minutes) as Giannis sees only a 2% usage boost and 0.04 FP/M increase where as Middleton actually sees his production go down (-1.5% usage and -0.04 FP/M).
Now I am not going to tell you that either guy is a bad play especially against a Minnesota defense that ranks 24th in Def-Eff as a team but this could be one of those cases where everyone rushes to the “beneficiaries” when a guy is out under the assumption that they benefit greatly when the reality is, the underlying numbers say they are essentially the same plays. The reason I bring this up is that I expect the Giannis/Middleton duo will be highly touted today and will be written about a lot and part of the reason is that in DFS, content writers will focus on what is relevant for that day and it would be irresponsible of them or I to ignore this major news. What it sometimes leads to however is that the buzz grows on these guys as a result of them being written up and talked about everywhere and it could make for an interesting GPP pivot due to ownership.
NBA DFS – Is there a core build tonight?
The more I look at this slate the more I believe there is not one spot we simply HAVE to build around as you can easily make the case that three of the five games tonight are in play as game stacks.
The Wizards/Raptors game is the only one we have Vegas information for right now as it starts with a 215 game total and 3 point spread and is projected to have the fastest projected pace of any of the games on this five game slate. We would not typically think of these teams as “fast-paced” but it is interesting to note that over the last month that both teams rank in the top 10 in pace with the Raptors (6) and Wizards (9).
It always interests me to look at the pace trends in the NBA as we are conditioned in many ways to look at season long numbers and think about fast-paced teams like the Suns or Nets or are ranked 14th and 20th in pace over the last month and we may overlook a team like Toronto that has not traditionally been a fast paced squad.
Kyle Lowry ($14.5K) is a player I want to like in this spot especially with a Wizards team that will be without John Wall, but the price feels entirely too high for his recent production. In order to pay off this price, Lowry would need 43 fantasy points, a number he reached only three times in the last month and we have seen his shot volume steadily drop recently putting up between 10-14 FGA per game over his last four outings. DeMar DeRozan ($14K) is not usually a player that DFS tournament players rush to roster but I think its fascinating he comes in at a cheaper price point on FantasyDraft than his backcourt mate Lowry where on FanDuel he is priced at $1k more!
DeRozan over the last two weeks is leading the team in usage with a 32% usage rate and has put up 18 or more FGA in each of his last three games while putting up 7-8 assists per contest. The issue with DeRozan from a DFS perspective historically has been his lack of peripheral stats but this season he is averaging a career high in rebounds and three pointers made. In order to pay off this price tag, DD would need 42 fantasy points, a mark he has hit in six of his last 15 games (40%).
On the Wizards side of this game we already know that John Wall is out as he has been for the last two games so we can get a recent sample size data set to see how it has impacted the remaining Wizards starters. In the last two games, Bradley Beal ($16.9K) has led the Wizards in usage with a 24.9% usage rate while Otto Porter ($13.4K) has led the team with 1.16 FP/M but frankly the prices, especially on FanDuel where they are priced at $7-$8K may lead me to look elsewhere.
My favorite play from the Wizards is actually Markieff Morris ($12.3K, $5.7K) who has put up 35-36 fantasy points in three straight games while playing 30, 37 and 37 minutes in those contests. At this price point, especially on FanDuel, an “average” game from Morris would exceed 6x value!
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays
One of the most important things in DFS is being active in using Twitter to follow news and find interesting DFS minds that help you uncover helpful nuggets in your research. When the news broke that Andre Roberson would be sidelined for the rest of the season, most NBA fans knew this would be a blow to their defense but this tweet below was honestly mind-blowing to me on the impact it has the on Thunder’s team defense.
Westbrook, George, Carmelo, Adams all on the floor together this season...
— Micah Adams (@MAdamsStatGuy) January 28, 2018
Def rating with Roberson: 96.6
Def rating without Roberson: 114.5
One man causes a 4 man rotation to go from worst to first defensively.
Major blow to OKC defense.
Seriously think about that swing for a second and anyone simply looking at defensive metrics for the season would not truly appreciate the impact this has on OKC and how it should affect our treatment of opposing offensive players.
This OKC-Denver game is one I wanted to aggressively target as my core today but I will admit – the fact that this does not have a spread/total is a little odd to me – what news are we exactly waiting on? We know already that Mason Plumlee will be out for this game which means we should see expanded run for guys like Darrell Arthur and Trey Lyles who make for interesting punt PF options. Arthur got the start last game but it was Lyles who saw more minutes off the bench and considering their match-up with Carmelo Anthony, this is an ideal spot to attack the Thunder.
Speaking of the Thunder, Carmelo Anthony ($11.9K) returns to Denver tonight for the second time this season and it is interesting that in the first meeting in his old stomping grounds, the Thunder seemed to make a concerted effort to feed him the ball as he led the team with 41 fantasy points in that outing!
Back to the Nuggets though – this is Picks and Pivots after all and we just got done telling you how bad the Thunder defense is without Roberson – so you know I am going right back to guys like Jamal Murray ($11k) and Nikola Jokic ($14.5K). Both players seem fairly priced for this match-up as Murray has put up 33 fantasy points in back to back games while Jokic has put up 43 or more in five of his last six outings which puts them right at target value with upside for more tonight!
UPDATE: The line and totals are now out for this game (still seems odd they waited) – but we have a 214.5 game total which is tied for highest on the slate and a 1 point spread. Love this spot for stacking tonight – high scores, close spread – let’s do it!
As trade discussions involving Memphis Grizzlies guard Tyreke Evans intensify, front office plans to sit him out until a deal is completed, league sources tell ESPN. He'll start sitting vs. Pacers tonight. Trade deadline is next Thursday.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 31, 2018
Last but not least – we know now Tyreke Evans has played his final game as a member of the Grizzlies while they work out trade options so I expect Memphis will be a popular value spot tonight and for the foreseeable future. The one player that really stands out to me is Wayne Selden ($7.4K and $3.6K on FanDuel) who has played 30 minutes in back to back games and dropped 37 and 26 fantasy points which would absolutely destroy 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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- NFL rumors: 49ers trending toward contract drama with defensive star
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FanDuel NBA DFS Sample Line-Up:
PG: Jamal Murray ($6,800)
PG: Tim Frazier ($4,400)
SG: James Harden ($11,500)
SG: Wayne Selden ($3,600)
SF: Dillon Brooks ($4,000)
SF: Paul George ($8,200)
PF: Carmelo Anthony ($6,200)
PF: Markieff Morris ($5,700)
C: Nikola Jokic ($9,500)
Slate Overview: For a five game slate we sure have a lot of unknowns tonight but this looks like a great GPP slate because of the multiple routes to stack. My initial goal heading into the day is to watch the CP3/Gordon news which would affect how “all-in” we need to be on Harden and watch for the OKC-Denver news as the lack of spread and total leaves me a bit skeptical that all parties will take the floor tonight!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!