NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday February 6
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s NBA DFS slate was another low scoring slate with a variety of landmines that players needed to navigate asonly two players (Andre Drummond and Nikola Jokic) were able to exceed 50 fantasy points. The one interesting note on this slate was how the late Pacers value changed the slate with Cory Joseph and Lance Stephenson entering the starting line-up due to injuries to Victor Oladipo and Darren Collison. Joseph was the highest owned player (54%) on the slate and was a great example of chalk busting as a super low usage player that had failed to top 20 fantasy points in his only other start on the season and let the masses down on this night with only 15 fantasy points. Admittedly, I used Joseph in my cash games last night but in tournaments I played the fade simply for the ownership and sometimes identifying who you don’t want to play is just as important as identifying who you do want to play!
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 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 tonight!
After an up and down Monday Night in NBA DFS we are back with a potentially high scoring Tuesday slate that kicks off at 7PM EST with the Cavaliers and Magic on FanDuel and DraftKings where FantasyDraft is opting to ignore that game and start their slate at 7:30PM EST so I will say it again – this is a great night to play on multiple sites where you get the staggered start time.
Before we get into today’s slate I simply had to share this tweet I came across from Swish Analytics last night as it related to Andre Drummond’s DFS performance this season – most of us know how impressive Drummond has been but it was somewhat surprising to me that he has been on 38% of the perfect line-ups on slates in which he was playing. The Pistons do not play tonight but this is an interesting nugget to keep stored for future slates!
Andre Drummond has been eligible for 56 @DraftKings contests this season & factored into the perfect LU for said contests 37.5% of the time.
— Swish Analytics (@swishanalytics) February 5, 2018
As of today, that rate currently has him ranked 2nd in the league behind only Harden. pic.twitter.com/MM8500kGqr
We have a ton of injury news to sort through on this slate so let’s dive right in!
- Kyrie Irving is questionable to play tonight against the Raptors which would put Terry Rozier right back into play after he has started three games in a row, playing 32-36 minutes a night and has put up 46, 55 and 25 fantasy points in those outings. At $13.7K/$7K on FantasyDraft/FanDuel, he will likely get over-looked due to the recency bias of his dude and the increased price but outside of a GPP play IF he is low-owned, this is not a spot I want to allocate my salary to. (Kyrie is now expected to play which moves Rozier back to an over-priced bench role).
- Eric Gordon is expected to return for the Houston Rockets as they take on the Brooklyn Nets while the Nets are going to be without Rondae Hollis-Jefferson again and back-up PF Quincy Acy is also questionable to play! If both PF’s are out for Brooklyn it would seem likely they simply shift DeMarre Carroll to the 4 and go with a smaller line-up as they closed with against the Bucks last time out.
Overall, what stands out most to me on this slate is that 11 of the 16 teams in action see a pace boost tonight with the Raptors/Knicks/Hawks seeing the biggest paces decreases against the Celtics/Bucks/Grizzlies which may allow you to cross those three teams off and simplify your player pool!
NBA DFS – The Main Event:
We have a 230 game total tonight that pits the 3rd and 4th fastest paced teams over the last 10 games against each other and it just so happens it features the single most vengeful player in the NBA against his most hated enemy. Telling you to play guys from Golden State and Oklahoma City tonight is not exactly going out on a limb but the thought of fading this game or going too underweight on your exposure could leave you well below the cash line tonight if/when these two teams start racking up the points.
The issue of course with building around this game is that the top end stars are pricey and it is going to force our hand in salary formats to get creative. The question is not so much IF we want exposure here but rather who we want to build around when allocating our salary.
I have been beating this drum repeatedly over the last week and will continue to do so – do not let the Thunder’s season long top 5 Def-Eff rating fool you – this is a completely different team without Andre Roberson on the floor and we have watched the Nuggets (127), Pelicans (114) and Lakers (108) all put up points with ease against their “new look” defense.
People may be tempted to look at the earlier season game between these two teams and try to utilize that to predict player performance tonight but keep in mind that Roberson was active for that game so I am more than willing to write off the Warriors sub par offensive showing in that game.
Russell Westbrook ($20.9K) is the top play in my opinion to pay up for tonight as he put up 65 fantasy points in this same match-up earlier this season and put up 64+ fantasy points in two of the four meetings with the Warriors last year. Over the last two weeks, Westbrook is sporting a 36% usage rate while putting up 1.5 FP/M and when you add in the absolute hatred he has for Kevin Durant, this is a terrifying fade and I would rather just build around Beastbrook and differentiate elsewhere.
Paul George ($14.4K) would be the best secondary option on the Thunder as he is sporting a 30% usage rate over the last two weeks and we have seen his ceiling correlate well with Westbrook in recent games as both players put up 60 fantasy points in the same game against the Nuggets just a few days ago!
Kevin Durant ($18K) and the Warriors largely underwhelmed in the first meeting with OKC this season as no single player put up over 40 fantasy points but KD was able to rack up 54.3 fantasy points in three meetings with the Thunder last year. Klay Thompson ($12.9K) feels entirely too cheap for this spot and this is where the absence of Andre Roberson is going to really shine through in this match-up.
Lastly, I think you can make the case for guys like Draymond Green or Steven Adams who have been consistent 30 fantasy point scorers in this previous match-up but they lack the kind of upside that makes them players who will break the slate if you do not have them.
For my money I would prioritize the Westbrook-KD pairing and stack them with PG and Klay Thompson. You essentially are playing the fade game that Stephen Curry does not go off in this spot but consider he has only went for over 50 fantasy points one time in four previous meetings with the Thunder so there is some merit to fading him and getting all your Golden State exposure with Klay and KD!
NBA DFS – Value Plays:
If you want to stack up the stars in Golden State – OKC then you are going to need to find value plays and thankfully this Phoenix/Lakers game looks like it could be the answer to our DFS prayers!
We already know that Devin Booker is OUT for this game which will open up significant value in the fastest projected game on the entire slate. With Booker off the court the last two weeks, Josh Jackson ($11.3K) is sporting a 35.5% usage rate while putting up 1.25 FP/M and where the masses may move towards a guy like T.J. Warren, we have seen time and time again this year that Warren’s production actually drops with Booker out so you would be better served to take the discount and play Jackson who I believe has the higher ceiling in this game!
On the other side of this game, Josh Hart ($8.8K) looks to be one of the best point per dollar plays on the entire slate as he has taken in his role in the Lakers starting line-up over the last two games, played 34 and 39 minutes and has averaged 38 fantasy points and a double-double in those two outings. At this price point ($5K on FanDuel), Hart is one of the best pure value plays on the board as he is averaging over 6x on this salary in his last two starts and gets one of the best possible match-ups with a Suns team that ranks 28th in Def-Eff as a team!
One spot we should keep an eye on today is the status of Knicks back-up PG, Frank Ntilikina who left the Knicks last game with a knee injury that limited him to only 6 minutes of court time. Trey Burke ($6.4K) stepped into that game and played 20 minutes off the bench while putting up 22 fantasy points. Burke has flashed considerable upside in his short time with the Knicks, putting up 22 or more fantasy points in three of his last five outings, with double-digit shot attempts in each of those games. Assuming the Knicks hold their prized rookie PG out, Burke should see considerable run and he makes for an intriguing low owned tournament play with demonstrated GPP upside!
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: Russell Westbrook ($11,800)
PG: Trey Burke ($3,600)
SG: Klay Thompson ($6,700)
SG: Josh Hart ($5,000)
SF: Paul George ($8,000)
SF: Kevin Durant ($10,700)
PF: Ryan Anderson ($4,200)
PF: Serge Ibaka ($4,800)
C: Bismack Biyombo ($5,200)
Slate Overview: For my money – this slate is all about stacking Golden State-OKC and finding the value plays to make it all fit. There are clearly other great spots on the board as evidenced by all the pace up spots available but if Golden State-OKC stays close, there is simply no other game with the firepower to match it. The 10 point spread for this game may actually keep some of the ownership down but I fully expect a much closer game against two teams playing at top 5 paces in over the last 2-3 weeks. Keep an eye out for value as that is the name of the game today in the hopes we can fit in 3-4 studs from the late night hammer!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests across FanDuel and FantasyDraft and stay tuned to all the latest DFS news and analysis on Fantasy CPR!