NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday October 21
Welcome to the Sunday 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.
With a solid week down in NBA DFS, the common theme nearly every slate, big or small, is that scores are up with winning GPP scores again in the 350 range on FantasyDraft meaning we need 3.5x value in order to really hit it big – just getting 3x value now is basically a minimum cash kind of night so far this season. Even on Saturday night where the Lakers and Rockets ended in a brawl that saw Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo and Brandon Ingram ejected – it happened late enough in the game that it certainly did not impact the cash line too much.
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 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 – Sunday Storylines to set the Slate:
Yes, yes I know it is Sunday which means NFL and all the Fantasy Football hoopla and do not worry, we here at Fantasy CPR have you covered with all the NFL DFS and season long coverage you could want – but we also get a nice four game NBA DFS slate that starts at 6PM EST so go ahead and enjoy some football and get the added bonus of some late day NBA action to play as well!
Russell Westbrook is listed as OUT in the OKC games notes heading into Sunday’s match-up but we all know game notes are not always the most reliable and their had been rumblings from beat reporters that Westbrook would return for this game. Assuming Westbrook is out, we all know the deal by now – Paul George and Dennis Schroder become the prime beneficiaries as both have a 30% or higher usage rate this season although it is worth noting that the FP/M disparity between the two is quite large as PG13 is putting up 1.14 FP/M while Schroder is “only” at .68 FP/M. Back-up PG Raymond Felton has actually had similar high usage (29%) off the bench and been a better FP/M play thus far with 1.07 FP/M in 31 minutes of court time through the Thunder’s first two games.
After a Saturday night beat down where the Rockets handed the Lakers their second straight loss, there are suspensions looming for Chris Paul after he threw punches at Rajon Rondo – the question is, will the NBA act before tonight’s game? If you are new to NBA DFS – let me let you in on a secret – when CP3 is off the court, James Harden becomes nearly un-fadeable with a 42% usage rate and over 1.6 FP/M over the last two seasons. Keep an eye on the news here to see if the NBA acts swiftly before the Rockets tip-off at 9PM EST.
"“Regardless of the results of the MRI on Barton’s hip area, there is a very high likelihood that Barton misses at least a game or two. The old adage when a player gets hurt is ‘next man up’ and that next man seems to be Torrey Craig. Malone, when asked about his confidence in Craig’s ability to fill in for Barton, was emphatic that he is not worried about Craig stepping into a larger role.” – TJ McBride from Mile High Sports"
After seeing Will Barton get carted off the floor for the Nuggets last night, it would seem pretty likely that he misses tonight’s game after admitting he felt something “pop” on his way up for a lay-up. It sounds like Torrey Craig ($6K) is the likely addition to the Nuggets starting line-up and tonight in a match-up against the Warriors, he will likely make for one of the best value plays on the entire slate.
Over the last two seasons, with Barton off the court, both Gary Harris and Paul Millsap see a 1%+ usage bump but frankly there is no “obvious” must-have winner as a result of Barton coming off the floor. We saw the Nuggets once again run their core starters – Harris, Millsap, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray – all 30+ minutes last night and now they have to turn around and play the defending champions on a back to back.
NBA DFS – Core Plays for Sunday:
For a short four game slate, this is going to be an incredibly high scoring one it seems, as the three games we have totals for (OKC not yet out while we wait for Westbrook news) all are between 225-230 so buckle up and expect another high scoring NBA DFS slate.
The Rockets-Nuggets have the highest total at 229.5 and with only a 3.5 point spread this is the kind of high-scoring close game script that we love to target the Warriors stars in. In many ways, this is the exact same script that worked for Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry in their last game at Utah where both players played 37-38 minutes and put up 50-60 fantasy points in a high-scoring four quarter battle. Last year, Curry averaged 46 FPTS in three meetings with the Nuggets while KD averaged 45 FPTS and with both players under $20K tonight on FantasyDraft, you can find a relatively easy path to stacking both in this game.
On the Nuggets side, Nikola Jokic is coming off a massive triple-double last night with 35 points, 12 rebounds, 11 assists and 5 steals/blocks and at only $16.7K, to get a player averaging over 60 fantasy points thus far, I would expect the Joker is a popular target here tonight. Jokic averaged over 41 FPTS in four meetings with the Warriors last season with some extreme high/lows including games of 63 fantasy points compared to a low of 25 fantasy points.
Jamal Murray ($11.4K) bounced back after a tough opening night performance with 26 points, 5 assists and 3 steals/blocks and his price is just simply far too low for the match-up and considering the added offensive burden that will fall on his shoulders with Barton sidelined. The nice part about this game stack is that you can use Torrey Craig’s $6K bare minimum alongside Murray/Jokic/KD/Curry and still have just under $10K per player for the last three spots on your roster.
You can easily expand this stack to include some of the fringe pieces with my favorite being Draymond Green ($12.6K) who has played 32-33 minutes in each of his first two games and after a 38 fantasy point outing (over 3x value) where he put up his usual peripheral heavy stat game ( 9 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals/blocks), he makes for an easy correlation play to the high usage of KD/Curry. Lastly, with Andre Igoudala OUT last game, it was Jonas Jerebko ($6.6k) who saw the biggest boost, playing 23 minutes after only 6 minutes in the opener and responded with 21 fantasy points and more importantly – was on the court in crunch time in a close game.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
I will be honest – I would not have expected a Cavaliers-Hawks game without LeBron James involved would have a 229 total, just .5 point behind the much more glamorous Warriors-Nuggets game but here we are. I think the lack of star power in this game will keep the ownership lower on a short slate which makes this game an interesting pivot stack to build around.
Kevin Love ($15.5K) is coming off a 62 fantasy point outing against his old Minnesota team and is sporting a 31.5% usage rate with 1.3 FP/M as the clear focal point of this Cavs offense while Cedi Osman ($11.6K) has put up 40+ fantasy points per game in each of his first two outings (which would hit 3.5x at this price point) and is the clear #2 option behind Love in his Cavaliers offense. On the Hawks side of this game, Taurean Prince ($13k) is leading the team in usage (32.3%) and FP/M (1.45 FP/M) while rookie Trae Young ($11.5K) is coming off a 40 point fantasy outing with 32 total shot attempts in his first two games. This “core” stack is relatively inexpensive and could be a solid mod-range build if you are looking to go with a more balanced NBA DFS line-up.
I mentioned this in their last game, but we are now two games into the Dave Joerger era with the Sacramento Kings and their near league leading pace (110 which is 2nd in the NBA) is an obvious trend we can expect to continue after being dead last in this metric last season. The Kings ran an extremely tight rotation in their first game but went much more balanced against the Pelicans with only rookie Marvin Bagley III playing 30+ minutes so there is risk in trying to find the “right” plays here if the rotation remains that deep. De’Aaron Fox and Willie Cauley-Stein would be the top targets here, with Fox becoming much more valuable in my mind assuming Mr. Westbrook is out and we get some more Schroder PG defense.
The Clippers are not a team I have had a ton of early season interest in, but Tobias Harris ($14.1K) makes for a solid one-off play after back-to-back 40+ fantasy point outings. Harris is leading the Clippers starting unit with a 27.7% usage rate and 1.13 FP/M and although he will have to tango with the tough wing defense of PJ Tucker, Harris’s mid-tier price point is another strong option if you are looking to build a more balanced build today.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
The sample line-up noted below is NOT a plug and play optimal line-up and is meant to be an illustrative example based off the plays and picks outlined above.
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G: Stephen Curry ($17.9K)
G: Jamal Murray ($11.4K)
G: Torrey Craig ($6K)
F/C: Kevin Durant ($18.7K)
F/C: Nikola Jokic ($16.7K)
F/C: Draymond Green ($12.6K)
UTIL: Alex Len ($8.9K)
UTIL: DeAndre Bembry ($7.5K)
Slate Overview: We will have to watch the NBA DFS news today as the status of Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul will loom large on this slate. At first blush, the Warriors and Nuggets game is the core spot in my mind to build around as the high floor/high ceiling combination of the stars in this game feels un-matched when compared to the player pool in the other games. The Hawks could be an interesting value spot with John Collins and Dewayne Dedmon already ruled out and a plethora of players with GTD tags – thankfully with this being the early game, we should have all the injury news we need prior to lock.
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