NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday October 3

Welcome to the first 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 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. 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.

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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.

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As always, we will look to update our final lineup thoughts throughout the day 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 – Preseason Overview:

Welcome back NBA! To be honest, I was planning to wait to roll out some NBA Picks and Pivots until the Regular Season but I got the bug yesterday to dip back into the NBA Preseason DFS and well, I am hooked. I normally play lightly in preseason but I can tell you that in my experience, playing even a little, gets you prepared for the regular season in a way that has proven to give me an immediate boost once the regular season starts.

Once we get into the NBA Regular Season the format of Picks and Pivots will be a bit more robust as we will go through position by position and use FantasyDraft pricing as a reference, but in the preseason I am going to look more game by game and give you some news and notes on how you can build your line-up on sites like FanDuel or DraftKings which offer you preseason NBA DFS.

NBA DFS – Knicks and Nets:

Of the four games on this NBA DFS slate, this one may be my favorite spot for stacking and building around as we should get some high usage and high pace of play from the two New York teams. We already know Brooklyn plays at one of the fastest paces in all of the NBA, ranking 6th last season and with essentially the same coaching staff and core group of players returning, we can likely expect many of the same outputs.

The Knicks on the other side are a team with a new coach and a plethora of new young players so it is interesting that in their first preseason game they played at one of the fastest paces of any team so far this preseason – a far cry from their 15th ranked pace of play last year.

If you are playing NBA DFS preseason – my biggest piece of advice – get on Twitter and start following beat reporters – it is the MOST critical piece of the puzzle in sorting out news up to lock.

With Rondae Hollis-Jefferson unlikely to play tonight, the Nets could roll out some interesting combinations and we know Kenny Atkinson can be frustrating with his rotations and the use of his bench but there are a few guys I would focus my attention on.

Caris LeVert has gotten rave reviews this preseason being called “un-guardable” so I am interested to see how they utilize him in the offense this year. If you are playing Brooklyn, to me is always starts with D’Angelo Russell, a player with a team high 30% usage rate last season which was 13th in the entire NBA last season. This kind of usage from a player in a up-tempo offense can be gold for NBA DFS and I would look to pair D-Russ and LeVert in their first and only preseason action in front of the home crowd.

The Knicks will be without Kristaps Porzingis and we will need to see if Courtney Lee suits up after missing the Knicks opener, but let’s be clear – this Knicks squad is all about the young guns. Kevin Knox was a force in his first NBA action, putting up 13 points and 10 rebounds in 26 minutes, leading the team in minutes and shot attempts.

If you are new to NBA Picks and Pivots – be prepared for a barrage of Tim Hardaway Jr. love – it is without rational approach or analytics – I play him on every slate and you will hate him as much as Jon Lester by the end of this season.

In all seriousness, with Porzingis on the shelf and usage monster Michael Beasley off in LA with LeBron, this has the potential to be a massive fantasy year for THJ. Looking at last years numbers, if you took KP and Beasley off the court, Hardaway saw a near 7% usage increase, leading the team with a 31.9% usage rate while putting up over a fantasy point per minute. Although his minutes were limited in game 1 – if we can get confirmation of 20+ minutes tonight, then I will be firing up my boy the very first chance I get.

NBA DFS – Slate Overview:

Even though the Nets and Knicks are my favorite spot tonight, it is tough to ignore the upside of a game involving the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls are one of those teams I love to see in NBA DFS as this was a bottom three defensive rated squad last season that played at a fast pace – basically the perfect game environment to stack around. The issue last season was this team was quite awful so keeping games close was a tougher task but with Kris Dunn fully healthy, Jabari Parker in the fold alongside guys like Zach LaVine, Justin Holiday and rookie Wendell Carter Jr., there is a ton of talent we can roll out from this Bulls team.

No team on this slate played at a faster pace so far this preseason than the Bulls, scoring 128 points in their opener against the Pelicans and as you can see in the quotes from The Daily Herald – this is a specific effort from the coach down, to run, run, and run some more.

"“I think he said he wants us to have 100 possessions per game,” Portis said after the Bulls beat New Orleans 128-116 in their preseason opener Sunday. “I think we’re a high-tempo team, push the ball. No matter if they score the ball or not, coach wants us to get it out and get it up early; take early shots.”"

Few takeaways from this Bulls team from their game one performance – you had 9 guys playing 20 or more minutes with 5 players putting up double-digit shots including Bobby Portis, Jabari Parker, Zach LaVine, Antonio Blakeney and Justin Holiday. Portis specifically is interesting as he had a near 37% usage mark with a team-high 19 FGA’s.

The LA Clippers are expected to be without both Lou Williams and Milos Teodosic tonight in their match-up against the Minnesota Timberwolves who will continue to be without Jimmy Butler while they look for a trade partner, which means we should have some usage available with these higher volume players on the sideline.

Karl-Anthony Towns is arguably the top “big spend” on this slate after his 12 point, 6 rebound, 2 block performance in the opener against the Warriors. The Clippers no longer have guys like Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan inside and now instead are rolling out guys like Marcin Gortat in the middle – this looks on paper to be a great spot for KAT and although he is pricey, the preseason affords you enough value to easily spend up on someone like him.

As I mentioned, beat writers are critical to follow and there is none better and more DFS friendly than Rod Beard. As you can see in the tweet, the Pistons are expected to limit their starters minutes so do not go chasing Andre Drummond or Blake Griffin tonight.

Slate Overview: For me, my goal is to lock in KAT as my high-dollar spend and stack up the fast-paced plays from the Knicks/Nets and Bulls on tonight’s slate. I will do my best on Twitter @2LockSports to pass along any additional information as it comes across!

Best of luck in your NBA DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!