NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday February 26

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 four game NBA DFS slate was dominated by the stars as James Harden (64) and LeBron James (64) put up the slates highest scores while a pair of Pelicans used OT to their advantage to gain a few more fantasy points as Anthony Davis (53) and Jrue Holiday (60) had big days against the Bucks. Personally for me the move to play Giannis Antetokounmpo (38) as correlation with AD failed to pay off as stars at the same price points (LeBron and Harden) outscored him by near 30 points which was really the biggest difference on a four game slate like this one!

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:

Welcome to Monday and a huge 10 game NBA DFS slate which we need to note starts at 7:30PM EST so you get an extra half hour before lock tonight. From a slate set-up perspective it is interesting to note that 8 of the 10 games start within the first hour of lock so we SHOULD in theory have most of the news we need when building our rosters.

At first glance this looks like it could be a higher scoring NBA DFS night as 8 of the 10 games have totals of 212 or higher, 16 of the 20 teams in action see a projected point increase over their season average and half the teams in action see a projected pace boost. With so many great games to target it is going to take some time to dig through the spots and pick and choose our favorites but we will have no shortage of options tonight -THAT is for certain!

From a news and notes perspective we have a handful of injury spots to monitor today:

Jimmy Butler remains out for Minnesota which will continue to open up value on the Wolves as we saw Nemanja Bjelica ($9K) step into the starting line-up for Butler against the Bulls as he played 32 minutes and racked up 23 fantasy points. Jamal Crawford ($7K) played 27 minutes off the bench and put up 27 fantasy points of his own and either/or can be used here tonight against the Kings as a salary saving option.

In that game versus Chicago you saw the remaining Minnesota starters all really get a nice boost from a fantasy production standpoint as Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Jeff Teague all sported usage rates of 25% or more and each with Teague having the biggest fantasy night with over 50 fantasy points scored. Karl-Anthony Towns ($18K) will be an interesting case today to see how the DFS community treats him as his usage bump without Butler couple with a match-up against a Kings team he has pummeled for 73 and 59 fantasy points in the first two meetings could drive his ownership up. Just be wary of using past stats to guarantee performance as we only need to look back two games for KAT when he played a Houston team he had dominated to the tune of 5 straight 60+ fantasy performances only to deliver 42 and leave his owners disappointed.

The Bulls-Nets game is not one NBA purists will be watching for playoff implications tonight but from a DFS perspective this one looks to be chock full of fantasy goodness with a 217 game total and the fourth fastest projected pace on the board.

On the Nets side it looks like they will be full strength for the first time in weeks as Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Caris LeVert have been cleared to play. D’Angelo Russell ($12.4K) is going to be a lock and load play for me in this spot as the starting SG for the Nets as Russell is one of the highest usage players in the entire NBA – in fact he ranks 5th in the league in usage behind Harden, Embiid, Westbrook and Boogie Cousins. Russell delivered 33 fantasy points in his first start against Charlotte, sported a 28% usage rate and now will take on a Bulls team playing at the fourth fastest pace in the two games since the All-Star Break and ranked 27th in Def-Rating over those two games.

We need to keep an eye on the news around the Bulls as we have seen them outright bench both Justin Holiday and Robin Lopez in both games since the break and they will sit Zach LaVine in either tonight’s game or tomorrow nights contest against Charlotte. If Zach LaVine ($13.4K) he becomes an immediate top play after putting up 35 and 42 fantasy points in his first two since the break.

Cristiano Felicio ($7K) was THE value play in his first game where he dudded but I told you to go right back to him after everyone jumped off and he did exactly what we thought he would in this new role – he played 30 minutes versus Minnesota and put up 22 fantasy points which pays off his salary at this price point and now tonight he gets to face a Nets team giving up the most fantasy points to opposing Centers. Felicio was single digit owned in his last game after being nearly universally owned the slate before and is still essentially minimum priced – do not be afraid to go right back to him tonight against the Nets!

NBA DFS – Core Plays:

If there is one game that stands out on this slate it simply has to be the Pelicans and Suns as it checks all the boxes from a metrics perspective – highest projected scoring game (231), highest projected pace game and the two teams involved are expected to each score 8 points more than their season long average. Over the last 10 games the Pelicans rank first in pace while the Suns rank 4th and we get the added benefit of having two of the bottom 5 defensive rated teams taking each other on tonight.

So let’s summarize – high total, fast pace, no defense – yeah, this seems like a good spot to start tonight!

Anthony Davis ($20.3K) is the obvious top play here and you can argue he is the best play on the slate considering the match-up against a Suns team that is ranked dead last in DVP and Def-Eff this season. The only “concern” with AD is he is playing his third game in four days and is on a back to back coming off a OT game versus the Bucks but this is a guy who is sporting a 30% usage rate night in and night out and has 78 or more fantasy points in three of his last five games.

Jrue Holiday ($15.2K) continues to play at an elite level with 51, 55 and 60 fantasy points over his last three games while putting up 1.5 FP/M over the last two weeks. Building around AD and Holiday in this spot gives you an immense ceiling as a result of the massive pace boost and I would focus my Pelicans exposure on these two. You can certainly make the case for guys like Rajon Rondo or Nikola Mirotic in GPP’s but their inconsistency makes them secondary plays on a slate this size as we have so many other elite plays to choose from that I simply see no reason to take that risk in rostering them.

On the Suns side of the ball this looks like another incredible spot for Devin Booker ($15.7K) who is sporting a 36% usage rate over the last two weeks and has put up 20, 20 and 28 shot attempts in his last three outings. Elfrid Payton ($14.4K) continues to shine with his new team, putting up 30, 39 and 50 fantasy points in the three games since Booker has been back and this is the perfect game environment to target him considering the expected frenetic pace.

If Tyson Chandler is ruled out again we can certainly go back to Alex Len ($11.9K) who is playing major minutes for the Suns and has put up between 34 and 39 fantasy points in each of his last three games that Chandler has missed.

Personally what I love about this game is you can zero in on a small subset of plays with AD, Holiday, Booker and Payton and essentially corner all the usage and upside that this elite game environment has to offer. My going in position today is to build around these four plays and although they are pricey, I think they could pay off in a major way assuming we have the value to make it work. On FanDuel if we lock in these four you will only have $4.6K per remaining player so this is a spot where you will need to monitor the value throughout the day to see if a Stars/Scrubs build is a viable route.

NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:

What in the world has gotten into Trey Burke ($8.8K)? Burke has come off the bench the last two games for the Knicks, playing 26 and 29 minutes and has put up 40 and 44 fantasy points during those outings. What has been most impressive is the usage rate which sits at an incredible 39% rate which obviously is not sustainable but as long as Burke is getting the minutes he becomes one of the best value plays on the board. In the last week, Burke has played the second most minutes of any player on the Knicks (which frankly says more about the state of the franchise than anything else) and tonight in a huge pace up spot against the Warriors, this looks like another great game to target Burke for salary savings with massive GPP upside!

The Atlanta Hawks are not a team I target often but tonight against the Lakers they see the largest pace increase of any team on the slate and will be extremely short-handed as they have already ruled out Malcolm Delaney and Tyler Cavanaugh while Deandre Bembry is questionable and Ersan Illyasova is now off the team and headed to Philadelphia. The Hawks started John Collins at PF against Indiana and gave him 30 minutes of court time but perhaps my biggest takeaway in this game was that Taurean Prince logged a 31% usage rate which was tops on the team. At $4.8K on FanDuel, Prince is a great salary saving option where we need to roster two SF’s after his 28 fantasy point outing last game which would return 5.8x 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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FanDuel NBA DFS – Sample Line-Up:

PG: Elfrid Payton ($7,500)

PG: Trey Burke ($4,900)

SG: Jrue Holiday ($8,500)

SG: Devin Booker ($8,400)

SF: Taurean Prince ($4,800)

SF: David Nwaba ($5,000)

PF: Daniel Theis ($3,700)

PF: JaMychal Green ($4,700)

C: Anthony Davis ($12,500)

Slate Overview: This looks like a fascinating slate that will be high scoring so simply “settling” for punt plays today in hopes they scrape to value may end up really setting you back tonight. If the value is not there to comfortably fit in guys like Anthony Davis then do not be afraid to go more balanced with your roster build – the mid-tier is VERY strong so don’t try to get cute tonight with your builds if the obvious value is not there. Personally I am starting my day with the Suns-Pelicans and Nets-Bulls as my core and will adjust as needed throughout the day especially as we get news around the Bulls plans. Remember – lock is not until 7:30PM EST tonight so make sure you plan accordingly!

Next: DraftKings NBA 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!