NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday March 10
Welcome to the Saturday 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.
That sound you here is the sound of chalk busting everywhere on Friday night as the “obvious plays” in NBA DFS for the most part were better off left outside your roster build on this night. The only chalk play that really panned out on the night was Kevin Durant who was almost universally owned and delivered the slates highest fantasy score with 61 fantasy points. The Pelicans duo of Jrue Holiday and Nikola Mirotic could only combined for 42 points which was lower than the total put up by Brook Lopez alone so yeah this was not one of the better nights for me personally and frankly across the industry if you pivoted away from the chalk at all you probably had yourself a halfway decent 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:
Honestly, can I just start and say this would the ideal slate to take the night off and enjoy some time doing basically anything other than playing NBA DFS? I know you come here to read who you should play and why but I feel like trying to sell you a bill of goods on why this slate is worth putting your bankroll into would be lying to you.
We have a four game slate that is just flat-out ugly with our choice of players coming from the following teams – the Grizzlies, Mavericks, Heat, Wizards and a Magic team basically starting their JV team – getting excited yet?
The highest total on the slate is a 218 game total between the Clippers and Magic but it comes with an 11.5 spread and when you remember that the short-handed Magic could only score 88 points last night against the Sacramento Kings, how do you expect them to hang with a Clippers team who just took down LeBron and the Cavaliers on Friday night?
The Magic should once again be without Aaron Gordon who is in concussion protocol and Evan Fournier who is dealing with a sprained MCL which means another night of Magic chalk value. Last night only one player from the Magic, Jonathan Simmons, was able to eclipse 30 fantasy points while more popular chalk options like Mario Hezonja (21.5) and Jonathan Isaac (16.4) put up massive duds in their spot starts.
I suppose you can make the case that this is a nice bounce back spot with the Clippers playing at the third fastest pace on the slate so the Magic core should see a significant pace boost tonight and if guys like Simmons/Mario are going to play 30+ minutes in that game environment than it is certainly worth going back to them IF they are going to be lower owned.
On the Clippers side of that game, Lou Williams and Sindarius Thornwell entered the starting line-up last night and interestingly enough, LA played an extremely tight rotation with only 6 players logging 20 or more minutes against the Cavs. My concern here is twofold – first this game could and should be a blowout with AG and Fournier on the bench and with the Clippers starters all logging heavy minutes last night this would seem like spot to run a much broader rotation and give the bench guys some run.
My take on this game is you either stack it or you stay away – I just see no reason to force any of these players into your core build tonight.
NBA DFS – Core Build:
If you are not stacking the Clippers/Magic then the only other game with a total over 200 is the Spurs/Thunder and with a 4.5 point spread I suppose this makes for the best game stack/core build on the night mostly by default.
Pau Gasol (right AC sprain) is questionable for tomorrow’s Spurs-Thunder game. Kawhi Leonard (return from injury management) is out. pic.twitter.com/jv79HSky1t
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) March 9, 2018
The Spurs are likely to be without Pau Gasol again in this game and if the Spurs last game is any indication then we could see an extremely tight rotation like they employed versus the Warriors. In that game, all five starters played 28 or more minutes while Danny Green was the only member of the Spurs bench to play over 20 minutes.
LaMarcus Aldridge ($15K) is coming off a 58 fantasy point outing versus the Warriors and is the clear lead dog in usage and FP/M with Gasol off the court as he leads the Spurs with a 31% usage rate and 1.26 FP/M. Kyle Anderson ($11.3K) continues to destroy to put up great DFS numbers against the Warriors with another 40+ fantasy point outing but it is worth noting that he only exceeded 30 fantasy points one time in his previous seven games so this could be a spot where the game log watchers jump on and it makes sense for us to pivot. The one caveat to that – Anderson is at the same exact price point as Jonathan Simmons at SF on FanDuel so he could make for a lower owned pivot if Simmons remains chalky, especially after his good game last night.
Davis Bertans ($8.4K) should draw another start in place of Gasol and considering he put up 32 fantasy points in his last start against OKC, there is merit to using him as a punt play in all formats tonight. Dejounte Murray ($11.7K) and Patty Mills ($8.4K) are locked into major minutes in the Spurs backcourt and Murray went off in this spot against OKC last time out with 45 fantasy points so he makes for a nice mid-range target that you can easily correlate with the Thunder PG on the other side of this game.
Russell Westbrook ($20.4K) on a short slate with no other legit stud is going to be massively owned and I frankly cannot give you a reason to fade a guy who would likely be the highest raw point scorer if we played this slate out 99 out of 100 times. There is enough value on this slate (as a result of it being terrible) that it is easy to afford Westbrook and even though he has failed to top 50 fantasy points in either match-up with the Spurs this season, I think you almost have to hit the lock button.
Steven Adams ($11.8K) and Paul George ($14.6K) are really the only other players on OKC I would even consider at this point and this is more about including them in a game stack then anything else. George and Adams have averaged just under 35 FP/G between them against the Spurs this season so there is a solid floor to be had if building around these two in conjunction with Westbrook.
If you need a punt – then you can certainly use Corey Brewer ($6.9K) who started against the Suns and put up 24 fantasy points but with a much tougher match-up with the Spurs this could be a spot where he is back to putting up single digit fantasy points.
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 ($12,000)
PG: Patty Mills ($4,200)
SG: Dwyane Wade ($4,900)
SG: Ben McLemore ($4,600)
SF: Paul George ($8,400)
SF: Kyle Anderson ($6,100)
PF: LaMarcus Aldridge ($8,700)
PF: Davis Bertans ($3,900)
C: Steven Adams ($7,200)
Slate Overview: I cannot stress this enough – play light or take the night off entirely. This slate is awful – I cannot even pretend like it is worth playing. If you are going to play it, I would stack up OKC-San Antonio in what should allow you a game with a safe fantasy floor while including the upside of the only star on the slate in Russell Westbrook. Enjoy your day and we will see you back here for a better Sunday NBA DFS slate!
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!