NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday February 23

Welcome to the Friday 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.

Happy Friday All! I hope you had a great first night back in a high scoring NBA DFS night as we saw some of the games biggest stars put up monster nights as both Stephen Curry and Joel Embiid went for over 70 fantasy points on the night. The biggest GPP difference maker on the night was Bobby Portis who exploded for 53 fantasy points with 38 minutes off the bench as it was him and not chalk Cristiano Felicio (only 12 minutes of court time) who put up the big time numbers in the Bulls front court. The Bulls rotation is going to be one to watch as we move forward as they flat-out benched both Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday but still found a way to run a 9-10 man rotation!

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.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

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 our first big NBA DFS slate after the All-Star Break with 11 games on tap and interestingly enough we have more teams (12 of the 22 in action) that see a pace decrease than we have teams that see a pace boost. This actually can work to our advantage on a slate of this size as we can work to eliminate games and zero in on a more manageable core of games and players.

It looks like we will have a few injury returns tonight with perhaps the most notable being Lonzo Ball who although he is officially questionable to play has been practicing in full and has been targeting this first game back from the break for his return from injury. It is going to be very interesting to see how Ball slots into the rotation here as we have seen Josh Hart logging 30+ minutes a night in the starting back-court and now has to deal with 20-30 minutes of Isaiah Thomas off the bench.

This game against the Mavericks on the surface is very interesting as it is the second fastest projected pace game on the slate and we see both Dallas and LA projected to score 6-7 points more than their season averages, the two largest point increases of any of the 22 teams in action. Keep in mind that these two teams played just before the All-Star Break in a 130-123 shootout so there SHOULD be fantasy goodness to build around here.

In that game the Lakers played with essentially a seven man rotation as everyone except Josh Hart was able to put up 25+ fantasy points. The key here for me is going to be watching the status of Ball and listening to see what (if any) minutes restriction he will be on but I would not be shy in getting some significant exposure to this game.

On the Lakers side, Julius Randle ($13.7K on FantasyDraft and $7.3K on FanDuel) has been locked into 30+ minutes in each of his last three games with 40+ fantasy points in two of his last three games including a 44 point fantasy game against this very same Mavericks team. In fact in his two games against Dallas this season he has put up 43 and 44 fantasy points which would return 3.2x value on FantasyDraft and 6x value on FanDuel.

The Dallas side in my opinion is a great foundation to build around as they provide a solid cash game floor which you can balance with some higher upside/riskier plays in GPP formats. Harrison Barnes ($12K, $6.8K) has put up 30 and 32 fantasy points in the previous two games against the Lakers and can be easily paired with Dwight Powell ($11.9K, $6.7K) who has logged 33, 36, 33 and 33 fantasy points over his last four games for a steady cash game floor at reasonable price points. J.J. Barea ($10.1K, $6K) should continue to log material minutes in the starting unit for Dallas and is coming off one of his best games before the break where he put up 19 points, 13 assists and 49 fantasy points against the Kings.

My perspective on this game is that we can use it as a secondary component in our lineups as we get a high pace environment, close spread (4 points) and two teams with significant pace boosts that just put up big time crooked numbers when they faced off before the break. I would stop short of a game stack here just because I do not see this being a spot where we get massive DFS scores but rather a game where we see a handful of players with 30-40 fantasy point games.

NBA DFS – Core Build:

If there is one game that jumps off the page to me tonight it is the Clippers-Suns which has by far the fastest projected pace as both teams in action see some of the largest pace boosts on the slate. Over the last five games, the Suns and Clippers rank 7th and 8th in pace of play and the Suns rank dead last in defensive rating which when you add it all up supports the fact that this game has one of the highest totals on the night.

On the Suns side of this game, as it typically does when it comes to Phoenix, the DFS choices begin with Devin Booker ($14.7K, $7.7K) who returned before the break playing 36 minutes against the Jazz and racked up 41 fantasy points. In his first game alongside Elfrid Payton ($14.6K, $7.5K), Booker had his usual 38% usage rate, excelling alongside his new teammate and fresh off his three-point contest win.

Payton meanwhile may have taken a backseat in terms of usage (under 20% alongside Booker) but continued to excel with his new team as he dropped a triple-double (13 points, 12 assists and 11 rebounds) and has now put up 39, 45 and 50 fantasy points in his three games since joining the Suns.

The Suns look like they will be without the services of Tyson Chandler tonight (doubtful to play) which could mean we get another start from Alex Len ($9.4K, $4.5K) who started the last game before the break against the Jazz, logging 37 minutes, 14 points, 7 rebounds, 4 blocked shots and 3 steals which make him an excellent value play on FanDuel with the increased scoring for blocks/steals.

The Clippers are coming off a game last night versus the Warriors so there is always some back to back risk here but a match-up against the worst defensive team in the NBA makes the risk WELL worth it in my opinion. In their game last night the Clippers, who were without Avery Bradley, went with a tight rotation as six players logged 28+ minutes of court time.

Lou Williams ($13.6K, $7K) is one of my favorite plays on this slate even though I usually do not want to target jump shooters on the tail end of a back to back it is simply too hard for me to pass on his upside here in this spot. Lou Will continues to dominate the usage as he comes off the bench, sporting a team high-high 27% usage rate last night against the Warriors and with his steady 30-ish minutes a night and consistent 30-40 point fantasy performances I think you can lock him in for cash games and tournaments across both sites tonight.

The rest of the Clippers are more mix and match kind of plays based off your roster build as all of Austin Rivers, Tobias Harris, Danilo Gallinari and DeAndre Jordan are in play for me as is Milos Teodosic if Bradley is ruled out again tonight. The Suns rank in the bottom three in defending the PG, SG and PF position so I think you simply try to find a way to mix in as many of the Clippers starters here as you can.

Jordan is playing at an exceptional level lately putting up 42, 45 and 60 fantasy points over his last three games and we just saw Rudy Gobert drop 14 points/17 rebounds against Alex Len in the game right before the break. The price is reasonable on all members of the Clippers as Jordan is the highest priced play at $8K on FanDuel so you can easily stack this entire roster in the best match-up on the slate so I would use them (and the Suns guards) as your core build in all formats tonight!

NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:

The Minnesota/Houston game is another juicy one on this slate as it has the highest projected game total at 226 and a ton of stars to choose from. If there is one player worth paying up for tonight it is probably Karl-Anthony Towns ($17.2K, $9.7K) who has absolutely destroyed this match-up against the Rockets as he has failed to fall below 60 fantasy points in any of their match-ups over the last two seasons. During that stretch he is averaging 65 fantasy points on the back of 31 points, 17 reboundsand 3 blocks/steals per game and has just put up 62 and 64 fantasy points against this same Houston team over the last month. It is crazy to think you can just “lock in” 60 points from KAT tonight but considering this is a 2 year, 6 game sample size, I think he becomes one of the safest studs to pay up for!

It is crazy to think that Tomas Satoransky ($10.1K, $6.5K) is one of the best PG plays on the board and honestly it has taken me a while to come around on him. Yesterday I heard a alot of sharp people in the industry talk about him but was hesitant to pull the trigger with Tim Frazier expected back. The other thing that has made me hesitant with Satoransky is that he has such an insanely low usage rate failing to top 20% in 10 straight starts but the production is at the point where we simply have to take notice and tonight we may have to jump on at these price points.

Satoransky has played 34+ minutes in four straight games, racking up 30, 43, 37 and 38 fantasy points in that time at an average of 37 fantasy points which would provide GPP multiplier value at 3.66x on FantasyDraft and just under 6x on FanDuel. If you are looking for a one-off cheap guard tonight, he is putting up minutes/production that simply outpace hisprice point and he makes for a great play in all formats!

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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PG: Elfrid Payton ($7,500)

PG: JJ Barea ($6,000)

SG: Devin Booker ($7,700)

SG: Lou Williams ($7,000)

SF: Harrison Barnes ($6,800)

SF: Danilo Gallinari ($6,300)

PF: Dwight Powell ($6,700)

PF: Mason Plumlee ($4,600)

C: Julius Randle ($7,300)

Slate Overview: For an eleven game slate you would think I would find more spots to love but honestly, I do not. As I mentioned, 12 of the 22 teams in action see a pace decrease so rather than sort through these sub par game environments, it makes sense to build around the two fastest pace games on the slate with the four teams that get the biggest projected point boost as well – Clippers, Suns, Mavericks and Lakers. The best part about these four teams is that the price points are reasonable across the industry so you can go with a much more balanced roster approach while still building around players with GPP winning upside (Booker, Williams, Elfrid etc). Good luck tonight!

Next: DraftKings Euro League Basketball DFS Picks!

Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests across FantasyDraft and FanDuel and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!