NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday March 7
Welcome to the Wednesday 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.
Tuesday’s NBA DFS slate was about as simple a slate as I could recall in recent weeks as I knew going into the day my core would be to build around the Clippers and Pelicans and use 1-2 value pieces to make the game stack work. Interestingly enough, the value on an 8 game slate NEVER opened up but frankly it was not going to move me off that game and I am very glad I chose to stick with it.
With a game stack on FanDuel for example that included Anthony Davis (74), Jrue Holiday (56), Tobias Harris (49), Lou Williams (42), Rajon Rondo (36), E’Twuan Moore (33) and Milos Teodosic (20) you started your line-up with 310 fantasy points with two roster spots remaining , setting you up for a nice return across all formats. Overall four of the top 10 fantasy performers on the night came from this game which made the core game stack strategy here quite a successful one on Tuesday night!
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 on this slate:
Welcome to a Wednesday NBA DFS slate where both FanDuel and FantasyDraft have booted the lone 7PM EST game between the Jazz and Pacers, which has by far the lowest fantasy total, and are opting to start their Main Slate at 8PM EST with six games.
If you look at how the slate breaks down we have 3 “early” games at 8PM EST with the other three games kicking off at 10PM EST or later so there is a very real chance we only have news on the first half of the games tonight heading into lock so keep that in mind when building your rosters today!
The first big piece of news we have is around the Chicago Bulls who have received a stern talking to from the league around their “tanking” practices and it looks like healthy players like Justin Holiday and Robin Lopez will now re-enter the rotation which will throw a wrench into the fantasy value boosts we have gotten for the Bulls in recent weeks.
Correction: Can sit 1 healthy player for home games if they so choose. Though based on cooperative dialogue between Bulls, league office, would guess Bulls don’t take this route. https://t.co/jSSyGac8uJ
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) March 7, 2018
Tonight the Bulls will take on the Memphis Grizzlies and here is what we already know about them tonight – they will be without Tyreke Evans, Andrew Harrison, Mario Chalmers and Jarrell Martin is questionable which means a whole day of speculating on which horrendous Grizzlies value we should use.
My take on this game is to just cross it off your list and move on unless you want to use pieces here as “last man in” kind of punts – this slate has entirely too many good game environments to attack to worry about how the rotations in this game will play out.
Outside of this game, the biggest injury news in my opinion is that the Kings will be without Willie Cauley-Stein tonight while Skal Labissiere is questionable which means a whole lot of Kosta Koufus and Zach Randolph. Now, I don’t find this interesting because I want to play these guys – I find it way more interesting because they will be tasked with guarding a certain Anthony Davis ($19.6K) this evening.
On FantasyDraft if that price looks odd, well it is – somehow his price went down $700 after he dropped 75 fantasy points last night and will now take on a Kings team he put up 63 fantasy points against in their last game without Boogie on the floor. On FanDuel where his price has now been raised to $13K I think you can make the case to fade him on a back to back but on FantasyDraft where he is the fourth highest priced player and would only need 59 fantasy points to hit value, I think he is a site specific lock and load! Because of the $13K price on FanDuel, I actually like what it could mean for his ownership as we could see players flock to someone like LeBron James or Giannis Antetokounmpo/James Harden as their high dollar investment which would make paying up for AD a contrarian build on FanDuel.
NBA DFS – Game Stack:
It is interesting how the three highest projected scoring games are all the late starts tonight which for the love of all things means please don’t stack the Bulls and Grizzlies and screenshot your winnings on Twitter at 9:59PM EST. If I know my readers, one of you will do this and Tweet it to me just to bust my chops and I applaud that level of trolling.
The Cavaliers/Nuggets (230), Magic/Lakers (226) and Pelicans/Kings (224) are not only the three highest scoring games but they are also the three fastest projected pace spots so you are going to want your NBA DFS exposure tonight to be heavily back-loaded in terms of the game environments to attack.
Now let me start with a quick disclaimer – unlike last night’s slate I do not think you have to build your core around any ONE game environment tonight as we have three spots I think you can pick and choose your favorite pieces from. That being said, I think the Lakers-Magic game is my favorite spot to be overweight on tonight as this game has by far the fastest projected pace and the Lakers and Magic are projected to score 13 points more than their season averages tonight, getting the 2nd and 4th biggest point boosts on the slate.
With Brandon Ingram remaining sidelined, I simply love this Lakers team right now as you have a legit 6 man rotation that is playing big time minutes and the price points all sit in this mid-range where you can easily stack up this game without any real issue.
Over the last week, with Ingram off the floor it is becoming impossible to ignore the insane usage numbers for Isaiah Thomas ($11.7K) who has a 40% usage rate while putting up 1.3 FP/M and 16, 20 and 21 shot attempts in his last three games. The Magic are ranked 29th in DvP and 28th in Def-Eff as a team this season and the Lakers come into this game with the highest projected team total on the slate so loading up on IT tonight in all formats, especially at his price point, seems like a lock and load!
Kyle Kuzma ($11.6K) is the other mid-range Laker that seems underpriced for his role in the starting line-up as he has played 33 and 37 minutes in the last two games, averaging 11 points and 8 rebounds per contest and allows you to attack Orlando at the SF spot where they rank 27th in Def-Eff this season.
Lonzo Ball ($13.9K), Julius Randle ($14.9K) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($12K) have all seen their prices rise to the point where you need to consider their true upside relative to their price points. Someone like Randle for example has been a cash game staple with 38+ fantasy points in seven straight games but his price is now at a point where you need 40-50 fantasy points to pay it off so there is merit to fading him here and pivoting instead to Kuzma at a cheaper price point.
The Magic side is terrifying to trust because well, Frank Vogel is DFS kryptonite but there is so much upside here and honestly ask yourself – when is the last time you played someone from Orlando? The match-ups for the Magic have been horrendous lately with games against the Jazz, Grizzlies, Pistons and Raptors so there is some recency bias at play here as this has been a team likely off people’s radar for the week or two (if not longer).
Nikola Vucevic ($14.4K) has absolutely dominated Brook Lopez in his recent outings against him, putting up 43, 45 and 53 fantasy points against him over the last three meetings and I love the idea of pairing him with Aaron Gordon ($13.7K) whose athleticism should thrive in a massive pace up game like this one after slugging it out against much slower paced teams over the last few weeks which keeps game log watchers hopefully off his trail!
D.J. Augustin ($9.8K) is an amazing cost-effective pivot off someone like Lonzo here as you can get him for under $5K on FanDuel, which is a $3K discount off Ball and considering the Lakers are giving up the second most FP/G to opposing PG’s over the last 10 games, this looks like an amazing buy-low spot.
My goal is to use this game to mix and match spots across my line-up as the pace of this game should be lightening quick and the key pieces here are rather easy to identify especially on the Lakers side due to the Ingram injury which has resulted in a crazy tight rotation. From a GPP perspective, I like the idea of going heavier on the Magic side with Vic, AG and Augustin as I think they will be over-looked on this slate as their recent run of slow-paced opponents will have likely taken them off people’s NBA DFS radar.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
It may seem odd that the highest scoring game of the night between the Nuggets and Cavaliers is a pivot play for me but honestly these are two teams that are playing rotations that are simply too deep for my liking.
On the Nuggets side, the return of Paul Millsap has basically capped the upside for every other Nugget starter as over the last three games as an example, only Will Barton has been able to exceed 40 fantasy points in a game. Denver is flat-out priced too high for me across the industry considering the lack of upside here and on the tail end of a back to back, I simply think you fade them entirely.
The Cavaliers may be without Tristan Thompson for the foreseeable future but with a fully healthy stable of guards I simply do not want to sort through the Hood-Smith-Clarkson-Hill nightmare here with so many other great guard options on the board. These two teams just met on March 3rd so we have an easy game log to reference and it is interesting to note that only LeBron James ($22.1K) eclipsed 30 fantasy points in that game as he dropped 63 fantasy points on the back of a 25 points, 15 assist, 10 rebound triple-double. LeBron is obviously a great play – he always is – but consider for a second he has not gone for 70+ fantasy points in his last 10 games while The Brow has hit that mark (and then some) in half of his last ten outings. On FanDuel where LeBron is priced for $500 less than AD, I simply find the money to get to Davis and on FantasyDraft where LeBron is priced over $2K higher, I am simply not even considering him.
The one mid-range play I expect will be super popular here tonight is Larry Nance Jr. ($12.4K) who after his massive 22 point, 15 rebound, 48 fantasy point performance will be tasked again with playing Center for the short-handed Cavaliers as Thompson remains out with an injury. Nance not only had a massive game but also put the clamps down on Andre Drummond (further hurting the idea of playing Nikola Jokic tonight) and his price point remains super reasonable considering the upside and guaranteed minutes.
The one tricky part with Nance tonight is that there are so many other PF’s I want to use in the Magic-Lakers game that I would rather take players in an elite game environment at what I suspect will be much lower ownership due to the recency bias of the DFS community when they see the game log for Nance.
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: Isaiah Thomas ($6,800)
PG: D.J. Augustin ($4,900)
SG: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($7,700)
SG: Ben McLemore ($4,200)
SF: C.J. Miles ($3,500)
SF: James Ennis ($3,800)
PF: Anthony Davis ($13,000)
PF: Aaron Gordon ($7,600)
PF: Nikola Vucevic ($8,400)
Slate Overview: My going in position today is to build around AD and the Orlando/Lakers high paced, high scoring game environment and utilize value pieces elsewhere to make the roster build work. With the slate split into three early games and three late games, I would try to focus my “value” on the early games where we SHOULD have confirmation of guys like McLemore for example starting for Memphis rather than roll the dice on punt plays in the later games. With the staggered start times I want to focus my late game exposure only to those I feel 100% confident will play so will focus on the key starters in those games and get my punt plays from the early contests!
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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!