NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday March 21
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 a wild one as the late scratch to Jrue Holiday (flu) pushed the entire field towards Anthony Davis who sent DFS Twitter into a flurry activity when he went to the locker room before halftime with an ankle injury and was questionable to return. Ultimately he came back in the second half and put up 55 fantasy points as the 6th highest scorer on the night, just a few points behind teammate Rajon Rondo who dropped 58 fantasy points with Holiday on the sidelines.
Interestingly enough only 7 players put up 50+ fantasy points on this night with James Harden (60.5) leading the slate in terms of raw points with the biggest surprise being Dennis Schroder (58) who lit up the Utah Jazz for 41 actual points as the second leading fantasy scorer on the 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:
Tonight we get an 8 game slate which kicks off at the usual 7PM EST and although we have a ton of injury news to sort through we also have some big totals out early with four of the games showing totals of 221 or higher at the open.
First off, the injury news with perhaps the biggest piece of information being the status of Jrue Holiday (flu) who if he was out again tonight would push the masses right back to Anthony Davis and Rajon Rondo as the Pelicans even on a back to back and on a rare three game back to back to back due to the earlier season “rainout” in the Smoothie King Center, need to win every game they can down the stretch as they sit just one game out from falling to the #8 seed and are only 3 games from dropping out of the playoff picture entirely.
The Pelicans are not the only team in the midst of a scheduling nightmare as ESPN.com points out with their awesome Schedule Alert article which has TWO games flagged tonight.
"March 21: LA Clippers at Milwaukee | MahScore 8Salutations, Clippers! You’ll be playing your fifth game in seven days, your third game in four days and the second of a back-to-back set here, which also marks the second of a four-game road trip against Eastern Conference foes. You’ll play the Timberwolves in Minnesota on March 20, then head out immediately after for Milwaukee to play the Bucks the very next night. The Bucks, meanwhile, will enter this game with a one-day rest advantage."
"March 21: Toronto at Cleveland | MahScore 8This game is televised on ESPN … and it might get ugly. Sorry, Raptors. You faced three teams that were on schedule alert this season, and now it’s time that you face those same obstacles. Oh, and you’ll do so while playing LeBron James … in what will be your fifth game in seven days, your third game in four days and the second of a back-to-back set. You’ll play in Orlando on March 20, then head out immediately after for Cleveland — a fairly long flight, mind you — to face the Cavaliers the next night. The Cavaliers enter this game with a one-day rest advantage."
Now the one caveat here is that DeMar DeRozan did sit out last night so there he was able to get some added rest here for Toronto and the Cavaliers even with Kevin Love back, look like they will still be a bit short-handed. Kyle Korver is out due to the death of his brother and Larry Nance Jr. remains out but both Rodney Hood and Tristan Thompson have been upgraded to questionable.
This game has the highest total on the board at 226, a one point spread and the third fastest projected pace so building around LeBron James and his four consecutive 70+ fantasy point outings is a logical place to start your builds here tonight.
Also in what may be my favorite narrative of the year – we get Jordan Clarkson, fresh off his hot take that Dinosaurs were pets for large humans and now he gets to play the Raptors of all teams. If you do not play the Dinosaur Narrative here well then I do not even know what we are doing here anymore people.
NBA DFS: Core Build:
As we head down the stretch of the NBA DFS season I am just going to continue to beat the drum of playing teams that have EVERYTHING to play for and ignoring the ones who do not.
The Clippers and Pelicans are probably the two best teams from a pure standings perspective as they sit 2-2.5 games out of the playoff picture and we can be assured they are going to push their core guys hard every single night. With the Clippers on the tail end of a back to back and playing the Pacers, I would much rather build my teams around the Nuggets tonight who get an elite match-up against the Chicago Bulls.
The Nuggets have the highest implied team total on the slate with115.5 which is nearly 7 points higher than their season average and this is perhaps the easiest team to figure out minutes in the entire NBA right now, which feels crazy to say considering this team is run by Mike Malone.
Even in a double OT game last time out versus Miami, they stuck to a seven man rotation with all five starters playing 43-47 minutes while only Devin Harris and Mason Plumlee logged any significant minutes off the bench.
I think you can make the argument tonight for every single one of the Nuggets starting five tonight but if forced to choose I would roll out the trio of Nikola Jokic ($17.4K), Jamal Murray ($13.4K) and Will Barton ($13.1K).
The reasoning here is simple – this trio is where the majority of the usage is landing on Denver as over the last week all three players have a 25%+ usage rate with Murray leading the pack at 31% and all three players are putting up a FP/M or more of production.
Now this is not to say guys like Paul Millsap ($12.4K) or Wilson Chandler ($10.6K) are bad plays but I would use them as secondary options tonight just as a result of their usage being so low within this offense. Over the last week, with Gary Harris out, the two players are putting up less than .8 FP/M each and the usage at 20% and 14% just sets off some red flags for me in terms of locking them in as must play.
This match-up with a Bulls team, ranked 29th in Def-Eff on the season, combined with the fact it is an absolute must win, puts the Nuggets at the top of my list tonight and even though there is a 9 points spread – I think you can almost ignore that tonight. The fact that this game is in Chicago, should in theory keep this game closer and the added benefit of the Nuggets having an off day before a Friday game in Washington should ease fears of them taking the starters out early.
I hesitate to quote game logs with the 2OT game skewing the numbers but it is hard to envision Jokic not hitting 60+ fantasy points in this spot as he has done in two of his last three games and we saw the upside of Barton (45) and Murray (39) last time out against the Heat. Fantasy points/game logs aside – there is no trio of players on this slate in my opinion that are set up for success at reasonable price points considering the circumstances – guaranteed major minutes, must win and awful opposing defense – yeah I am all in tonight!
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
As I mentioned in the open, it is tough to avoid this Cavaliers and Raptors game (Dinosaur Narrative aside) as it has the highest total on the slate and frankly with so much value tonight, I think prioritizing LeBron James ($21.3K) should be step 1 in all formats tonight.
Unfortunately tonight we do not get the FanDuel free square of Kevin Love at $3.5K but he remains reasonably priced on FantasyDraft at $12.4K which is the same price as Paul Millsap so there is some pivot potential here within the same roster builds.
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Love played 25 minutes in his return against the Bucks and racked up 18 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 blocks and if we get any sort of confirmation that the minutes “restriction” will be lifted and we see 30 minutes or so, I just don’t see a reason to move away from him here tonight. What really stood out to me was the shot attempts (second on the team) and the fact he had a 29% usage rate (again second on the team) so there is a very real mini-stack here with LeBron and Love that allows you to corner the majority of the usage and FGA from the Cavaliers.
As much as the injury news related to Jrue Holiday impacts the stars on the Pelicans in AD/Rondo, the secondary pieces for me are where the real value lies and there bargain price points are one of my favorite paths to a LeBron/Jokic line-up tonight.
Ian Clark ($6.8K) is in play regardless of how Holiday feels as this is a player who has played 30+ minutes in three of his last four games with 20-24 FP per game. What really stands out to me with Clark is his rotations as we saw last night it was Clark playing alongside AD in the fourth quarter and in fact Clark played the final 17 minutes of that game, checking in at the 5 minute mark of the 3rd Quarter and never coming out!
E’Twaun Moore ($8.2K) is locked into major minutes and just like Clark was on the floor for every single minute of the 4th quarter last night. Cheick Diallo ($7.3K) continued to show that when he gets 20+ minutes he flat-out crushes with a 10 point, 14 rebound double-double and has now put up the following four FP totals in the game she has played 20+ minutes – 26, 26, 33 and 40. The upside here is just of the charts considering the price point he gives you the rare combination of upside and salary relief to make a stud like LeBron fit in easily.
Slate Overview: I will say it every night but keep it simple. The Nuggets simply have to win – legit must win territory against the Bulls and their starters all play 30-40 minutes a night – lock in 3 of them at least (more if you want) and move on. Personally my roster builds tonight will start with LeBron and three Nuggets and then mix and match in some of the Pelicans plays.
Best iof luck in your NBA DFS contests across FantasyDraft, DraftKings and FanDuel and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!