NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday October 31
Welcome to the Halloween 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 fantasy basketball 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 Picks and Pivots core was built around the Thunder and Clippers and I got the sense throughout the day that outside of Russell Westbrook this game was going to be over-looked. Well after lock I looked at the ownership for guys like Paul George, Tobias Harris, Lou Williams and Danilo Gallinari and every single one was 1% owned in the $25 GPP on FantasyDraft – guess my read was on point. PG13 led the entire slate in fantasy points at 1% ownership while Russell Westbrook was not far behind which gave us a solid core and although Gallo had another strong night, Tobias was the one underwhelming piece in this game stack.
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 – Core Build:
Let’s just cut to the chase here – the Pelicans and Warriors game is going to have a massive total once it is released as we await word on Anthony Davis who has missed the last two games with an injury. It sounds like the Pelicans plan to make a call after morning shoot-around which is great news considering this is a 10:30PM EST start and frankly the AD decision will likely determine how the majority of NBA DFS players attack tonight’s slate.
The fact that the Warriors are at home and getting the largest pace boost on the slate should just jump off the page to any NBA DFS player and any and all cash game rosters needs to start with this Warriors-Pelicans game at the core.
You do not need me to tell you that Anthony Davis, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant are great plays. With Elfrid Payton OUT again tonight, that brings Jrue Holiday ($13.8K) firmly to the forefront of the top guard plays on the slate with a price point that is easy to swallow in any build.
If AD is out, you can go right back to the duo of Nikola Mirotic and Julius Randle or expand the stack with the Warriors secondary pieces like Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
Guys, I love analytics and I love stats – they are just unnecessary here – you shouldn’t need me or anyone else in the industry to tell you this is the game stack of the night and getting as much exposure to it in cash games is the optimal approach and it is a terrifying fade in GPP’s.
You can take a couple different approaches here – work to jam in the trio of high prices stars and go Stars and Scrubs assuming AD does in fact suit up (I honestly think he will). Or you can go with a more balanced roster build and get your exposure through the secondary pieces – you can stack up Jrue/Mirotic/Holiday/Draymond and Klay on FantasyDraft and still have $11.6K per player to fill out the remaining three players in your line-up. Any way you go, I think it makes sense in building around this game in what should be a fast-paced shootout.
NBA DFS – Pivot off the Stars:
Anytime there is a game like the Warriors and Pelicans on a NBA DFS slate that will have the Vegas totals jumping off the page and a superstar stacked game – the masses are going to flock to it and rightfully so. My immediate first thought when I saw that game was, this is going to be an amazing tournament night to just pivot off that game and attack essentially every other star on the slate at reduced ownership.
Rather than look at specific game stacks or positions – I want to look at prices, yes the prices on players who sit in the same range as the Warriors and Pelicans core plays.
Pivot Off AD
LeBron James ($20.2K) is $100 cheaper than Anthony Davis and now has a fully healthy Lakers team to chip away at his usage and production. Last game against Minnesota, even with the whole crew back together – LeBron still put up a 32% usage rate and 1.7 FP/M. If AD is in, LeBron will be the “stud” everyone forgets about as they try to jam AD into their game stacks.
Pivot off Steph/KD
With Steph and KD sitting in this “next tier” of $17K-$18K it likely means that guys like Nikola Jokic, DeMar DeRozan and Blake Griffin get over-looked. My favorite play in this tier however is Andre Drummond ($16.5K) who faces a Nets team he dropped 24/20 (54 FPTS) against earlier this season and who he put 60+ on in two of their four meetings last season.
This Nets team simply has no answer for opposing bigs – we saw Enes Kanter put up 15-15 in 28 bench minutes last game out so a 20/20 spot for Drummond here feels like it has a strong chance of happening when you look at the range of outcomes.
This Nets-Pistons game is a rematch of the opener for both teams where Drummond and Blake combined for 50 points and 28 rebounds and when you consider this game has the second lowest total on the slate, I doubt many look to go much deeper than Drummond or Blake. The Nets and Pistons play at two of the slowest paces (26th and 27th) in the NBA so it is certainly not going to be a spot people go crazy for!
What I like about this spot as a potential game stack is how the pricing works – if you put in Blake and Drummond as an example, you would have just over $11K per player remaining which is perfect because no other player in this game costs more than $12K. On the Pistons side it ends with those two honestly as both players have 30% plus usage rates and are the only two members of Detroit putting up over a FP/M.
The Nets side is really where it get interesting and I think you can make a case for 3-4 “value” plays. The Nets got their doors blown off by the Knicks last game so do not go too crazy looking at the game log or box score since many of the core guys get far less than their usual run. The one thing that did stand out to me though was how much run Rondae Hollis-Jefferson ($10.1K) got off the bench. RHJ played 27 minutes and accrued over 30 fantasy points and I wonder if tonight is the night Kenny Atkinson gets him back at PF over Jared Dudley especially with Blake/Drummond coming to town. I could see rolling out a mini-stack with RHJ and Jarrett Allen ($10.4K) who put up 17/10 for 39 fantasy points the first time these two teams met.
NBA DFS – Just keep Pivoting
If the Pistons/Nets game doesn’t quite entice you – and frankly, I cannot blame you – what about the Jazz and Timberwolves? This is a game with a 224 total and a 2.5 point spread – high and tight as they say. My guess is that most will look to pivot with the Lakers/Mavericks if they choose to go away from the Pelicans/Warriors which makes this Jazz/Wolves game an intriguing pivot off the pivot – is that a thing? Whatever this is my column and I can make up words.
Minnesota is a bottom 5 team on the season when it comes to defensive rating and also happens to be in the top 10 in pace while the Jazz are not far behind with the 13th fastest pace in the NBA this season.
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On the Utah side of things, Derrick Favors is questionable which means we could see another night of Jae Crowder in the starting line-up. Looking back at their last game against Dallas that Favors sat out, the Jazz played a super tight rotation with every single starter logging 30+ minutes.
The three guys I would focus on here if stacking are Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell and Ricky Rubio in a #RevengeGame against his old squad. Last season this trio had significant success against Minnesota:
- Gobert – 30, 34 and 58 FPTS
- Mitchell – 33, 36 and 46 FPTS
- Rubio – 30, 42 and 44 FPTS
The big question on the Minnesota side is around Andrew Wiggins who is officially questionable to play even after being cleared on Monday to return before sitting out. Karl-Anthony Towns and Jimmy Butler are the clear top plays from the Minnesota side in any sort of game stack while Josh Okogie ($8.5K) would make for an elite value play if Wiggins does miss this game tonight. Okogie has started the last three games for Minnesota – putting up 13, 29 and 35 fantasy points in those games and has clearly carved out a role in this Timberwolves rotation regardless of when Wiggins comes back.
UPDATE – Jimmy Butler and Jeff Teague are both OUT.
With the news that Butler and Teague will be out and and Wiggins (officially a GTD) sounding like a “go” – this changes some things on both sides. First and foremost on the Utah side you are now removing the single best defender on Minnesota team that was already ranked 25th in defensive rating WITH him so every single Jazz starter should get a massive boost. I was already on Mitchell, Rubio and Gobert but I think you can extend it now to Joe Ingles as well.
We saw in the lone game Butler sat out earlier this year against the Mavericks, that Dallas put up 140 points where guys like DSJ (32), Doncic (43) and DJ (51) all had big games so I think there is enough fantasy goodness to go around here and with the Jazz being such a concentrated rotation, I think all four starters could get there tonight.
On the Minnesota side – its all KAT. It simply has to be – if you are stacking this game you almost have to run it back with him because who else honestly is keeping it close? Derrick Rose is going to be super mega chalk and its sickening to think that in 2018 we want to play D-Rose chalk but he shot the ball 21 times the last game Butler missed and that was in a game Teague/Wiggins played. The fade makes all the sense in the world with his likely spike in ownership but the play within a stack is a near must.
One name that may seem crazy is Gorgui Dieng ($6K) – yes the back-up PF for Minnesota who is stone minimum priced on FantasyDraft. Did you know that Dieng is averaging over 18 fantasy points per game – his average production is 3X – and if you take out his lone stinker against Toronto, he is actually averaging over 20 fantasy points per game which would give you 3.3x at this price point. Dieng has hit at least 3x in 6 of is 8 games this season and my guess is nobody scrolls down that far in the player pool to find him.
Slate Overview: Listen – its Halloween – we want to be scared right? What better way than to full on fade the Pelicans-Warriors late night hammer! This is a GPP idea only but if everyone is going to work to jam that game in – just fade it – this is a seven game slate with a plethora of stars in other spots that will be essentially ignored across the board tonight with everyone trying to get as many Pelicans/Warriors as possible. Go on – get crazy!
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