NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday October 6

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.

Looking back at Friday Night’s NBA DFS slate we had some obvious top plays at the top of the leaderboard including Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant who were massively owned (and rightly so) but it was the lower owned pivots, especially on the Knicks – like Enes Kanter and our boy Tim Hardaway Jr. who put up big nights at low ownership in nearly every contest.

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.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

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 – Celtics Stars on the Bench

As with any NBA DFS preseason slate, the key is to watch the news to see who is playing, who is resting and what (if any) minutes confirmations we can get ahead of tip-off. We already know that tonight both Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward will sit out against the Cavaliers so expect a heavy dose of the back-ups and a huge bump in usage for the remaining starters who will see court time.

With this being the final preseason game for the Celtics before they open their year on October 16th, this becomes the final dress rehearsal for Boston but without their two top players on the court, what will we really see? Last year in the final pre-season game, Stevens opted to play starters like Irving and Hayward 27-30 minutes so he saw his guys play essentially starters minutes – the question is will he do that again?

My take on the Celtics is to focus in on Terry Rozier ($13.3K) and Marcus Smart ($11K) who played 20 and 26 minutes in their last preseason outing and will likely be the key starters with Irving and Hayward sidelined. Not only should they see the first team minutes but as noted above, they started the second half with the backups so these are the two guys I would look to get my exposure to from Boston on this slate.

On the Cavaliers side of this game you have a much different set of circumstances in that Cleveland still has two more preseason games after tonight so they have significantly more time to get their players minutes.

Take a look at the Tweet above from Joe Vardon of The Athletic who says Kevin Love, George Hill, Kyle Korver and Tristan Thompson could all be out for this game – meaning we have a TON of usage and minutes now to go around!

Rookie PG Collin Sexton ($11.9K) led the Cavs in minutes and FGA in their first game and that was with a full rotation ahead of him in that game – take Love and Hill off the court a player with a 28% usage rate in game one, should see that number sky-rocket tonight. Larry Nance Jr. ($9.7K) becomes a great compliment if you are playing Sexton because Nance’s value comes off non-usage stats – the boards/blocks/steals – and if he draws the start in place of Love, he becomes a great salary saving option on this slate.

NBA DFS – Pacers Stack?

One of the hardest things to do in NBA DFS preseason games is try to extract information from previous game logs – there is so much volatility game to game in this shortened preseason schedule, that hanging your hat on any sort of continuity is really nothing more than a dice roll.

That being said, the Pacers rotations and minutes in their first preseason game against the Rockets are hard to over-look. Indiana basically played a 9 man rotation, with 8 guys playing 20+ minutes against Houston and if that kind of minutes “floor” is going to be there for Indiana than it becomes a spot where you get as many guys as you can!

It all starts with Victor Oladipo ($14.8K) who led the team with 31% usage rate in 25 minutes of court time, and with Thaddeus Young ruled out again, expect another start for T.J. Leaf ($10.8K) who was one of the top fantasy performers in his first outing where he played 33 minutes with 13 points, 12 rebounds, 2 steals and one block. My guess is after being virtually ignored in his last game, that he becomes one of the more chalky options tonight but it may be chalk worth eating. If the core guys are all going to play 20-25 minutes tonight than I have no issue going right back to guys like Myles Turner or Domantas Sabonis, who double-doubled in his last game.

The Memphis Grizzlies on the other side of this game could either be the team that unlocks the slate or the team that ruins it. Memphis is playing the tail end of a back to back after facing Atlanta last night where they played Mike Conley and Marc Gasol around 25 minutes each – you really think they are going to push them or even play them on a back to back in the preseason?

I have not seen any notes about players resting but it would not shock me to see some of the starters from last night, sit out tonight. Outside of the young guys like Dillon Brooks and Jaren Jackson, I honestly do not see me having a ton of exposure to Memphis tonight.

NBA DFS – Battle of LA

The late night hammer on this three game slate features the Lakers and Clippers in a game that I expect will draw the most amount of ownership. The Lakers had guys like Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart all playing 30+ minutes in their last game with Rajon Rondo sitting for rest and the potential return of Lonzo Ball (as noted below), this rotation could get a but more crowded this evening.

As long as LeBron James is going to play 15 minutes a night, he nothing more than a GPP flier and frankly not someone I am looking at in my player pool. I am doubtful that we get point Ingram again tonight with Rondo and Ball potentially back so we could see him back to the 18 minutes in played just two games ago – if people just play the box score, it likely means Ingram goes over-owned and the reality is, with healthy bodies coming back – it is a totally different game environment for Ingram so be careful chasing that performance.

The Clippers played their starters 20-25 minutes in their first game but they also were without Lou Williams who is expected to return tonight. My gut feel is this game becomes really popular but without many players sitting, this could just end up being a jumbled mess of 20 minute performances with no real obvious stand out plays. It is scary to recommend a fade here but if both teams are going to operate at full strength and considering each team has multiple preseason games remaining – I am not sure this is a spot I want to go all-in on especially on FantasyDraft where it is the sole late game and we do not have late-swap.

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and fantasy sports analysis all season long!