NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday October 30

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 slate was one of the chalkier slates so far this season as the injury news to Giannis, Kawhi and AD left guys like Kyle Lowry, Khris Middleton, Eric Bledsoe, Nikola Mirotic and Julius Randle all over 50% owned in the $25 FantasyDraft Pick and Roll GPP. Ultimately the winning builds had many of these plays, including some popular value guys like Ersan Illyasova and Pascal Siakam proving that eating the chalk can work sometimes. At the top of the leader board was a variety of low-owned pricey studs (as most went more balanced), leaving guys like LeBron James and Karl Anthony Towns at only 10-15% owned.

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 – Core Build:

After a big Monday NBA DFS slate I was fully expecting to see a 3-4 game slate tonight but was happy to see a solid 8 game slate where every game will have started by 8PM EST and every single game having a single-digit spread!

What is interesting about this slate is we lack the monster 230+ game totals we have so frequently seen in the NBA this season as the Cavaliers and Hawks have the largest game total at 226 followed by the Rockets/Blazers and Clippers/OKC at 224.5.

The Thunder and Clippers game is the one right off the bat that I have the most interest in building around as we have two team with a highly identified core that takes much of the guesswork out of building your NBA DFS rosters.

Russell Westbrook ($18.7K) has yet to have that monster game since his return from injury, averaging just over 50 fantasy points per game over his first three contests but digging deeper and every thing looks the same as we have seen in previous years as Westbrook has a 34% usage rate while putting up 1.52 FP/M. As long as the price point for Westbrook is under $20K on FantasyDraft, I am going to buy on Westbrook as he is one of a handful of NBA DFS players capable of single-handily breaking a slate and with a high total and only a 2 point spread, this feels like the perfect spot to pay up for him.

One of the reasons you can build around Westbrook easily is that we should have some serious value on OKC tonight with Steven Adams and Nerlens Noel both questionable to play. The guy I have the most interest in is Jerami Grant ($8.4K) who entered the starting line-up against Phoenix and has now played back to back 30+ minute games for OKC. The Thunder could be forced to go small tonight with Adams/Noel are out which means we could see a front court duo of Grant and Patrick Patterson. Over the last two seasons, if we look at the scenario where Westbrook is on the court and Adams is off, Grant has shown just under a FP/M of production (0.92 FP/M in 300 minutes of court time) while Patterson is far lower (0.6 FP/M) so I would limit my exposure to Grant here.

Running it back with the Clippers, who see one of the largest pace boosts on the slate, feels like a great mini-stack and with a limited group of players who have fantasy production, this becomes an easy team to breakdown.

Tobias Harris ($14K) and Danilo Gallinari ($12.4K) are the top two plays here from LAC and both should find success against a Thunder team without strong interior defense assuming Adams is sidelined. These two teams played once already this season and Harris (50 FPTS) and Gallo (35 FPTS) had strong games with both players sporting 30%+ usage rates with both having 1.3 FP/M worth of production so you can go right back to both players in their mid-tier price ranges.

Lou Williams ($10.5K) is the wild card here – a player priced far too low based off his track record and one whose usage and volume tell us that better days should be ahead. Now game log watchers will see he has not topped 30 FPTS in a single game this season but how often can you find a player in this price range with a team high 30% usage rate with a FP/M of production.

Put simply – if Lou can FINALLY get the minutes, there is massive profit potential to be had. The minutes have been limited the last two games as the Clippers blew out the Wizards and Rockets, but what is encouraging is the shooting touch has returned for Williams – shooting 50% plus in each of his last three games. It all comes down to minutes but if Williams can get 25-30 minutes here tonight with his usage/volume – he could be one of the best point per dollar plays of the night/

NBA DFS – Rockets without Harden:

With James Harden and James Ennis out again tonight for the Rockets against Portland, we should see the same unit that they rolled out against the Clippers which found Carmelo Anthony and Eric Gordon sliding into the starting unit.

Even though the Rockets got beat down by the Clippers we saw the starting unit essentially forced to carry the full load as every starter played 30+ minutes in that game and outside of Chris Paul ($17.2K) the prices on Houston remain quite affordable.

CP3 was one of the highest owned players on the slate in Harden’s first game out and although he got the minutes, he certainly did not deliver the production with under a FP/M and only 33 FPTS on the night. Now the price at $17.2K is going to require 50-60 FPTS to pay this off and I wonder if last game will leave CP3 a bit under-owned as a result.

We actually have some data to pull from in recent history here with CP3 facing Portland without James Harden as it happened on January 10th of last season. In that game, CP3 went off for 37 points, 11 assists, 7 rebounds, 3 steals and 70 fantasy points – reminding us the kind of upside he has when The Beard is off the court.

Eric Gordon ($11.7K) and Carmelo Anthony ($10.4K) are both in play again if they are going to get 30+ minutes with double-digit shot attempts but Gerald Green ($7.7K) may actually be the best secondary play here after putting up 28 fantasy points, leading the team in usage (31%) and FP/M (1.22) against the Clippers last game.

The Rockets just gave up over 130 points to the Clippers and are now ranked 27th in the NBA in defensive rating so this could be a prime spot for another 60+ fantasy outing for Damian Lillard ($17.6K) who has two such outings over his last three games.

With the high total and the Harden injury news, I could see this becoming the chalky game to go back to as you can very easily build a Lillard/Paul mini-stack with the Rockets value plays like Melo, EG and Green around it. If you try that five man core on FantasyDraft, it leaves you with $11.8K per player for the last three spots on your roster which is more than enough to fill a strong team.

NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:

Whenever a superstar player is out in NBA DFS, the immediate and usually correct reaction is to lock in the next “star” on the team much like we discussed with Harden and CP3. As anyone who plays NBA DFS knows, when Russell Westbrook is out, it means you play all the Paul George you can handle but what happens when the star returns? What I have noticed with PG13 specifically, is he has been less than 5% owned in each of his last two games with Westbrook back and with a price point near $16K, it makes all the sense in the world as the profit potential feels slim when he is priced based off his early season, Westbrook-less performances.

With Westbrook on the floor this season, PG13 has a solid 27% usage rate with 1.2 FP/M – certainly a viable play on any night but the price is going to keep people away. As much as Westbrook is a usage monster, he cannot shoot the ball 100 times a night which is why you are still seeing PG13 put up 15 and 22 FGA in his last two games.

For the same price point, you can play guys like John Wall, Andre Drummond and Nikola Vucevic who get the simple benefit of not having to play with Mr. Westbrook but if we can continue to get a talent like Paul George at 5% ownership or less, I think he is worth a GPP play on any given night.

Sticking with the Thunder – my guess is most will go into this day with Steven Adams and Nerlens Noel crossed off their player pool but my recommendation would be to build rosters with them in it and just note it off to the side. We saw Noel drop 52 fantasy points in his spot start for Steven Adams so suffice to say there is serious upside here if Adams sits again.

The Thunder had a non-contact practice on Monday that Adams was involved and considering this was just “calf tightness” that left him out of the last game, I would not be so quick to just cross him off your player pool. Adams had put up between 37-48 fantasy points in each of his first four games this season including a 17 point/18 rebound game against this very same Clippers team which amounted to 43 fantasy points.

The Clippers have put up 133 and 136 points in their last two games against the Wizards and Rockets, teams that rank 25th and 27th in defensive rating so far this season so they have the ability to put up points in bunches and you combine that with a OKC team playing at the 4th fastest pace in the NBA since Westbrook came back and you can see why I like this game as a shootout stack.

Update: Keep an eye on the Kings injury report heading up to lock as we got news this morning that De’Aaron Fox is questionable with a back injury and Iman Shumpert is OUT on the 2nd leg of a back to back. If Fox sits – Frank Mason III and/or Yogi Ferrell become elite punt plays and Justin Jackson could re-enter the starting line-up for the Kings as we did the last time Shumpert missed a game.

NBA DFS – Sample Line-Up and Slate Overview:

Please note the sample line-up here is not meant to be an optimized Plug and Play line-up but rather an illustrative example based off the logic laid out in the article. 

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Clippers-Thunder Game Stack:

G: Gerald Green

G: Russell Westbrook

G: Lou Williams

F/C: Jerami Grant

F/C: Tobias Harris 

F/C: Danilo Gallinari

UTIL: Steven Adams

UTIL: Paul George

Houston-Por-OKC stack:

G: Gerald Green

G: Damian Lillard

G: Chris Paul

F/C: Jerami Grant

F/C: Nerlens Noel

F/C: Carmelo Anthony

UTIL: Eric Gordon

UTIL: Russell Westbrook

Slate Overview: For me, my player pool early on is laser focused on the Portland/Houston and OKC/Clippers games and as I mentioned, I wanted to build some lineups with Noel/Adams included in the event they play so I have some ideas heading into the day of builds with them included. With both games having high totals and close spreads, they give you the perfect game environment to build around and there is enough value to easily pay up for the stars in both games. Good luck all!

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest NBA DFS and Fantasy Basketball news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings each and every day.