NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday November 5
Welcome to the Monday 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.
Sunday’s NBA DFS slate was really low scoring as winning GPP line-ups failed to even hit 300 fantasy points so really if you avoided the duds you were likely in a good spot – yeah looking at you Knicks or hey Derrick Rose who was listed as active then it was announced he would not play.
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 Plays:
Before we jump into today’s NBA DFS 9 game slate, one bit of housekeeping – Picks and Pivots will be off the rest of this week for some quality vacation time and thus I will be handing the keys to all our NBA DFS coverage over to our talented staff here at CPR. Do not fret – you can find all our Fantasy Basketball coverage at this link and just go ahead and bookmark it so you can come back each day for all our NBA DFS content across every major site and every game format you may want!
Even though we have nine game on tonight’s slate, it becomes pretty quickly when you first look at this slate that one stands head and shoulders above the rest – as the Pelicans and Thunder play in a game with a 238 total, the fastest projected pace and you get two that see the largest pace boost on the slate.
Russell Westbrook ($19.6K) and Anthony Davis ($19.9K) both sit under $20K and locking them in means you will have roughly $10K/player for the rest of your build but it is games like this one where Stars and Scrubs builds were meant for.
When you step back and look at this slate you will notice four games have totals of 216 or lower which in today’s NBA is equal to the scores put up in some recreation leagues and the only other total we have that is even remotely close is a 220 Golden State/Memphis game with a double-digit spread.
This OKC/NO game is going to be popular but frankly I think it is a must build for your core and it all starts with locking in Beastbrook and AD.
After that it becomes which secondary pieces do you target which typically leads us to Paul George ($16.2K) and Jrue Holiday ($15.3K). With Elfrid Payton out, it means Holiday will be tasked with running the point in this pace up game script and so far this season we have seen Holiday sporting a 29% usage rate and 1.2 FP/M when Elf is off the floor. Holiday has put up 40+ fantasy points in every single game that Elf has missed so the floor is clearly very high here and the pace boost alone gives him ample profit potential on this salary.
I have been all over Paul George every game since Westbrook came back as an elite GPP play as the price point has kept people away every game and we continue to get him at sub 5% ownership every slate. PG13 still has a 28% usage rate while putting up 1.3 FP/M with Westbrook on the court and this is the most obvious two-man offensive attack in the NBA right now as OKC simply runs everything through them. If you look at the numbers, with both Westbrook and PG13 on the court, that accounts for just under 65% of the usage for OKC. So you are telling me I can lock in 2/3 of a teams usage for a squad with a slate high 121 team total that is in a massive pace environment? I am going right back to him again tonight.
NBA DFS – Value Plays:
I am sure you read that first page and thought – wow, this guy must be a NBA DFS genius because he told me to play the four most expensive guys in the highest total on the slate. You probably opened up FantasyDraft and clicked those four names in and gagged at the $7K per player remaining for the last four spot on your roster but don’t go clearing it out just yet – this is a Stars and Scrubs night and I think there is a viable path here.
Stay in that same game and lock in Jerami Grant ($8.5K) who is locked into 30+ minutes a night and just dropped 40 fantasy points on the Wizards on the back of 22 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals. These pace-up game environments are where Grant excels and he makes for an easy value option within this game stack.
On the New Orleans side, with Elf Payton out it means we get some added value and although the obvious beneficiary has been Jrue Holiday, it means someone from the Tim Frazier, Ian Clark and Wesley Johnson trio of punts will grab a start in this game. Frazier got the start two games ago but it was Wes Johnson who grabbed the start last game and it would not shock me to see him garner another as he shadows Paul George on the wing.
If you look at the Pelicans rotations last game, they had a really condensed rotation, with only 8 guys seeing more than 10 minutes of court time with Johnson (21) and Clark (19) being two of them. With both players priced right at $6K-$6.1K – you can lock in both and take the approach of locking in “one player” who costs you $12K in the highest total/pace game of the slate.
Now do not confuse this Clark/Johnson duo for a high-usage punt combination – these guys are stand in the corner and you hope you get there through peripherals but if you are giving me 40 minutes of court time from this duo, it is a risk I am willing to take.
So fun fact – there are actually 8 other games on this slate contrary to what you may be thinking at this point in the article – I actually noticed and even though I mostly don’t care, FantasyDraft requires I roster one player from not this game.
Fine – one player – ok, let’s see.
There are some interesting potential value plays due to some injury situations as my man THJ looks questionable to play tonight which could push Allonzo Trier into more minutes or you could go full punt with Grayson Allen who may once again draw the start for Donovan Mitchell as he played 27 minutes in a spot start last time.
The player I have the most interest in tonight though is Bam Adebayo ($8.4K) who saw 30 minutes of court time and may be forced to start with Hassan Whiteside questionable against the Pistons huge front-court. Bam went for 30+ fantasy points in four starts last season so we know he has the upside and could be a pivot off BOBAN mania at a similar price point.
NBA DFS – Sample Line-Up and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample line-up and slate overview is an illustrative example only and is not meant to be a plug and play line-up.
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G: Russell Westbrook ($19.6K)
G: Jrue Holiday ($15.3K)
G: Ian Clark ($6K)
F/C: Anthony Davis ($19.9K)
F/C: Paul George ($16.2K)
F/C: Jerami Grant ($8.6K)
UTIL: Wesley Johnson ($6.1K)
UTIL: Bam Adebayo ($8.4K)
Slate Overview: I know it is a nine game slate but honestly, I am hoping that the pure depth of the player pool keeps this New Orleans/OKC game just a tad under-owned even though I expect it to still be widely popular. This is one of those spots where I look at Vegas with the high total, I see two teams with the fastest projected pace and two stars in Westbrook and AD capable of breaking the slate and I just want to find a way to make it work. It is do-able with a few punt plays as I have shown and maybe that is too aggressive a stance for you. You can certainly pivot down from PG13 to Steven Adams and save roughly $4K and who knows maybe we will get a few more punt plays throughout the day – this is NBA DFS after all and you never know where “General Soreness” may occur.
That is it for me for Picks and Pivots – I am off to vacation but stay locked on all our Fantasy Basketball coverage all week-long for our great NBA DFS content.
Next. NBA FanDuel DFS Picks for Monday November 5. dark
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