NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday March 13
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 was ugly from the start and frankly your position relative to the cash line was likely driven by how much exposure you had to two players – Jusuf Nurkic (57.5) and Damian Lillard (56.75) as the only two players to top 50 fantasy points on the night as the highest producers on the slate. What was really interesting to me on this slate was how each of the big three studs underperformed as James Harden (49), Russell Westbrook (44) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (33) all put up games below value for their price points. Basically the slate boiled down to – if you had both Nurkic/Lillard you probably had an exceptional night, if you had only one you were likely in the middle of the pack and if you had neither then you are ready to move on to tonight’s slate.
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 massive eleven game NBA slate which may be exciting for some NBA DFS fans but personally a slate this large this late in the season with so many injuries/rest etc. could be a trap waiting to happen if you cast your net too wide tonight. Of the eleven games on tap tonight we have only two teams (Thunder/Spurs) who are on the tail end of a back to back but we already know of a plethora of injuries we have to track on this slate.
Speaking of the Thunder, they will likely be without Center Steven Adams tonight who was questionable headed into their game with the Kings on Monday and ultimately ended up leaving the game entirely when he re-aggrivated the injury with a nasty fall. Patrick Patterson was the Thunder big man who checked in for Adams so it would seem likely he starts tonight against a Hawks team ranked 29th in DvP and at near minimum price across the industry he becomes an elite value play.
As for the rest of the Thunder, this could be a prime stay away spot as noted by one of my favorite NBA reads – the ESPN NBA Schedule Alert.
"March 13: Oklahoma City at Atlanta | MahScore 8Greetings, Thunder! This is your first — and only — schedule alert game this season. This will mark your fifth game in eight days, your third game in four days and the second of a back-to-back set. You’ll host the Kings, then fly out immediately after — losing an hour along the way — for Atlanta to face the Hawks less than 24 hours later. Atlanta will enter this game with a one-day rest advantage. Oh, and one more thing — we set our clocks ahead an hour March 11. So you’ll lose that hour, then play the Kings and lose another hour on your way to Atlanta. Sweet dreams.."
With so many games to choose from, this would seem like an ideal spot to let others chase guys like Russell Westbrook and Paul George and you could be best served keeping your exposure to a value play like Patterson in an expanded role.
As for their opponent, the Atlanta Hawks, they have already announced that Kent Bazemore will miss the rest of the season which should open up a starting role for Tyler Dorsey at SG who just got the start against the Suns and put up 25 fantasy points in 32 minutes of action. On FanDuel where Dorsey is only $3.8K he makes for a great punt play that should open up significant salary across the rest of your roster.
Other key injuries around the league – Brandon Ingram remains out for the Lakers as they take on the Nuggets in LA which means we should see the Lakers continue their six man rotation which puts every single one of their starters in play for me. This game just happened a few days ago in Denver where the two teams totaled 240 points and Lonzo Ball and Brook Lopez both went for 40+ fantasy points. Lopez has back to back 40+ point fantasy outings and has now gone for 34 or more in four straight and his price remains fair around the industry – on FanDuel especially he may get overlooked at $6.7K at Center with so many other option available so keep him in mind when building your roster.
The Nuggets core in that game should not be overlooked either if you are trying to game stack as four players went for 35 or more against the Lakers just a few days ago. The Nuggets/Lakers game is tied for the second fastest projected pace on the slate with the teams projected to score 15+ points more than their season average with only a 2 point spread.
The best part about this game is that other than Nikola Jokic, the rest of the players are all priced in the mid-range with each player at $8K or lower on FanDuel and all in the $10-$15K range on FantasyDraft. With this being the latest game on the slate, the ownership may not be as high but since we really have no injury news to wait on in that game, I think a game stack here is a viable option with two fast paced teams running consistent tight rotations.
NBA DFS – Core Build:
On slates that are this large, I am not sure there will be any chalk core build tonight and when you consider that 12 of the 22 teams in action see a projected pace boost and we have three games with 230+ totals, there is no shortage of game environments to build around.
If there has been one constant in NBA DFS this season, it has been you stack players against the Suns as their torrid pace and lack of defense makes them the ideal opponent to build around. Tonight LeBron James and the Cavaliers head to Phoenix where they have the highest implied team total (118), with the largest projected point boost and third largest pace boost so yeah, this is a spot you want to target.
With Rodney Hood doubtful and Cedi Osman already ruled out, we should see some of the fringe players like Jeff Green and/or J.R. Smith retain value in this massive pace up spot. With a shortened rotation against the Suns, you would think this would be in all in kind of spot right? You lock in LeBron and then sprinkle in some value plays around him to free up salary and you move on right?
I would not argue with you if you go that route but the Cavs game on Sunday against the Lakers give me some hesitation in going that route as in a similar positive game environment, the majority of the Cavs failed to really stand out. Keep this in mind – over the last 15 games the Suns rank 2nd in pace in the NBA but you know who ranks right behind them in 3rd place? Yes, the Lakers.
If you change the parameters to the last five games, the Lakers actually leapfrog the Suns in terms of pace and the defensive ratings are not all the different as the Suns rank 29th while the Lakers are ranked 19th.
Now I am not trying to tell you that the match-up with the Suns is a bad one – but I am telling you to look at the Lakers match-up from Sunday as a potential barometer for what we see here tonight. Not a single player on the Cavaliers other than LeBron went for over 30 fantasy points while the King himself only got to 50 fantasy points.
The Suns are expected to have all their core players back for this game with Devin Booker, T.J. Warren and Josh Jackson all returning to practice on Monday so the game should stay much closer as a result and you can obviously game stack this spot or choose to build around LeBron but there is some merit to letting others chase this spot which may have a lower ceiling than you would think than just blindly going with “as many players as I can for the team playing Phoenix today.”
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
It seems crazy that a player like Anthony Davis, who is coming off a monster triple-double on his birthday and is in the fastest projected pace game of the night versus Charlotte could be a pivot, but I think with LeBron playing against the Suns that AD becomes the lower owned stud to pay up for tonight.
On his 25th birthday, @AntDavis23 notches his first career-triple double! He goes for 25 PTS, 11 REB, 10 BLK, 3 AST, 3 STL, and 79.7 FPTS, earning him tonight's #FantasyPlayeroftheNight!
— NBA Fantasy (@NBAFantasy) March 12, 2018
Fun fact: Davis is the only player in @NBAHistory with 10 BLKS in a game on his b-day! pic.twitter.com/VhGKfW3XMY
At nearly $13K on FanDuel the sticker shock alone may keep him under-owned but on FantasyDraft at $21.6K I think the price points is reasonable if you are looking to pay up in this range. Over the last 10 games there is no team in the NBA that is playing at a faster pace than the New Orleans Pelicans so there is always merit to building a game stack around AD and you can correlate it with a number of Hornets players that see the largest pace bump on the slate.
These two teams played back in January when Boogie was still on the court and Dwight Howard went off for 22 points, 16 rebounds and 51 fantasy points which puts him in an interesting position tonight at Center on FanDuel where the ownership is going to be largely spread out.
From a pure strategy perspective tonight, I think you could realistically narrow down your player pool to the top three game environments on the board as Cavs/Suns, Pelicans/Hornets and Lakers/Nuggets are the three fastest projected games on the slate and every single game has a total of 230 or more with a single digit spread.
I talk about this all the time on these large slates but you need to narrow down your pool as quickly as you can as casting your night too wide will leave you with hundreds of line-up combinations and no real direction. Also keep in mind, these slates are RIPE for the sharks to break out their fancy line-up builders and mass multi-enter (MME) as the sheer number of line-up combination on an 11 game slate like this are massive. So with that in mind, I would try to limit your focus on the three best game environments and be strategic about your contest selection.
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: Lonzo Ball ($7,800)
PG: Jamal Murray ($6,400)
SG: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($6,800)
SG: Gary Harris ($6,500)
SF: E’Twaun Moore ($4,300)
SF: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist ($3,700)
PF: Julius Randle ($8,100)
PF: Paul Millsap ($6,700)
C: Nikola Jokic ($9,700)
Slate Overview: My advice going into this slate is to be careful. For every reason that the previous days 4 games slate were nights to play light, I could argue that slates like this at 11 games have even more risk of crushing your bankroll.
Let me fill you in on a secret – you are going to love your team today…LOVE IT. You can’t imagine not crushing it with the line-up you have built and you know why….the player pool is freakin massive with the majority of games being pace up spots so get ready for the scores to be high across the board. All it takes is one player in your line-up to miss value on a slate this large and you will be passed quickly by the masses with a jillion other combinations of the same great players you wanted but didn’t make the cut.
My recommendation is to take a stand tonight – focus on a few core games and then simply stop. If some awesome play comes up from the Bulls-Clippers, well bully for them – ignore and stay true to the core you like. If you chase every piece of news today or try to fit in every iteration of plays based off the articles you come across then you will be dead in the water. Play smart tonight – if you are new to NBA DFS I will tell you the last few weeks are exhausting to track with the amount of news you are going to have to monitor so don’t get too aggressive and try to stay disciplined with your bankroll ahead of the MLB season.
Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests acorss FantasyDraft and FanDuel and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!