NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday November 23
Welcome to the Friday 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.
Happy Black Friday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with food, family, friends and football and a big thanks to all my Fantasy CPR crew that pumped out tons of great NFL DFS content for Thursday’s Thanksgiving slate. We are back tonight with a big 12 game slate, similar to the monster Wednesday night slate we just had where cash lines in GPP’s were well over 300 and winning GPP scores on FantasyDraft pushed past 350 fantasy points!
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 – How many Pelicans can we stack?
We have another massive slate tonight in NBA DFS and anytime we get a slate this large, my goal is to narrow my player pool as best as I can and try to find the best game environments to attack.
If you step back and look simply at Vegas data (totals/line) and pace projections, it is tough to overlook what the Pelicans-Knicks could provide in Madison Square Garden. This is a rematch of a game that was played just a few days ago on November 16th so we have some very clear game logs/box score to reference in an effort to forecast how this game will play out.
Let’s start on the New Orleans side, as we already know Elfrid Payton remains out for the Pelicans. Anthony Davis ($20.7K) destroyed this match-up just a few days ago with 43 points and 17 rebounds on his way to 77 fantasy points – sporting a 31% usage rate and 1.88 FP/M. AD is the most expensive play on the slate for good reason and my guess is that the high total and “ease” of looking at his game logs against the same opponent will make him the popular spend up on this slate.
In that same game we saw Jrue Holiday (49), Julius Randle (38) and Nikola Mirotic (31) all put up solid fantasy days and that is the beauty of this Pelicans squad when it comes to DFS – we know basically where all the fantasy points and usage will come from. Randle has been on a tear in his most recent games, putting up 49.3 fantasy points per game in his last three outings which would exceed 3.6x at this price point.
The story with Randle all year has been the same, his minutes are more volatile coming off the bench but he is an elite usage and FP/M play on the Pelicans second unit. In his last three games he has played 81 minutes off the bench, with 32 of those minutes coming when AD comes off the court and that is when Randle has gone off – to the tune of a 31% usage rate and 2.3 FP/M. You can stack all four of the Pelicans core plays here and still have over $9.3K per player on FantasyDraft for the rest of your roster so this is a viable strategy in cash games and GPP’s considering they have the highest total and one of the fastest projected paces on the slate.
NBA DFS – Time for the Timmy Shimmy:
The Knicks have been a team I have avoided over the last week or so as the rotations for David Fizdale’s club have been entirely too inconsistent and honestly, my hesitancy to use the Knicks has cost me money the last week as they have been providing high ceiling fantasy output on a nightly basis. Tonight they get the second highest point and pace boost on the slate and although I am scared this is the game we all jump on and they tilt us – the spot is one I cannot ignore at first glance.
You guys know the drill by now – this team runs through Tim Hardaway Jr. ($13.8K), a player who it seems like people are finally coming around on (outside of my CPR team that I have brainwashed since opening night). THJ is among the top 15 players in the entire NBA in usage rate, sitting between guys like Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, DeMar DeRozan and Kawhi Leonard and that has been my point from Day 1 – you are getting a player who has elite usage on a team with no other options who remains priced in the mid-tier all year-long.
THJ has been the one constant for this Knicks team, putting up 45+ fantasy points in 3 of his last four games including against this same Pelicans team he will take on tonight. My guess is that THJ gains some serious ownership tonight as a result of his recent run – keep in mind he was only 4% owned the last time these teams met which was on a smaller 7 game slate AND his price was $1.3K cheaper.
Playing THJ in a Knicks stack is always the easy part – its figuring out the other pieces that makes this team so much harder. The last two games, Fizdale has gone with a Kanter, Vonleh, Hezonja, THJ and Mudiay starting five and when you consider that this team just went into Boston on Wednesday and beat the Celtics, my guess is the same starting unit and rotations apply tonight!
Enes Kanter ($12.1K) has double-doubles in two of his last three games and is one of the few players in this price point who has 50+ fantasy point upside. Kanter has gone for 50+ fantasy points in two of his last nine outings and with AD on the opposite side, Fizdale will need Kanter to match-up with the Pelicans size in this one.
Noah Vonleh ($8.3K) is coming off back to back double-doubles with 45 and 41 fantasy points against tough defenses in Portland and Boston while playing 30 and 36 minutes in those games. The price point has not caught up to the production you are getting here – it is just that simple.
Trey Burke ($8.9K) has become a force off the Knicks bench. In the last four games, Burke has a massive 36.6% usage rate in 112 minutes off the bench while putting up 1.4 FP/M and just dropped 59 on the Celtics. The ownership will likely be high here which makes him someone I would avoid as a one-off play but will absolutely have him in a game stack build.
Emmanuel Mudiay ($7.7K) will likely be the forgotten man in this game despite the fact he is starting for a team in a great game environment. Mudiay has failed to hit 20 fantasy points in 4 of his last 6 games but if you are looking for a pivot off Trey Burke, this could be the way to do so in this game. When these two teams played a few days ago, Mudiay put up 35 fantasy points in 22 minutes of action, good for 1.56 FP/M and a solid 25% usage rate. Mudiay is basically the leverage play off Burke as these two rarely play at the same time and Fizdale has shown the rotations over the last few games where they are direct subs for each other. If everyone chases after Burke, then play Mudiay for a cheaper price tag who put up 35 fantasy points in the exact same spot and actually outscored Burke in that game.
In the last four games, only four players have played 100+ minutes for the Knicks – THJ, Kanter, Vonleh and Burke – which is where I would focus all your energy on when building around this volatile team. The price points of the “Core 4” make them an easy correlation with the pricier plays on the New Orleans side and let me tell you, there is no better way to burn off those Thanksgiving Day calories than rocking some Timmy Shimmy tilt on a Friday Night!
NBA DFS – Value and Pivot Plays:
If you want to spend up for the AD’s of the world, you are going to need some value and the Miami Heat look like the team that will unlock that for us on this slate.
We already know the Heat will be without Goran Dragic, Tyler Johnson and Dion Waiters and we have injury tags for both Hassan Whiteside and Rodney McGruder. All this means we have a ton of usage up for grabs in a favorable match-up against the Chicago Bulls!
The Heat were down Dragic/Johnson on Tuesday and we saw them lean on McGruder and Whiteside for 30+ minutes so if they were to miss tonight’s game as well, this Heat team becomes real short-handed REAL quick.
Josh Richardson and Wayne Ellington are going to get all the back-court minutes they can handle regardless of the status of Whiteside and McGruder but if McGruder were to miss it would mean a bump for bench forwards like Justise Winslow and James Johnson.
Whiteside has only missed one other game this season, against Detroit, in which Bam Adebayo ($7.4K) stepped into the starting lineup and played 29 minutes on his way to 31 fantasy points. If Bam can put up that kind of line (11/8/4 steals and blocks) against a front line like the Pistons have, imagine what he can do to a Bulls team ranked 28th in FPPG allowed to Centers this season.
If you look at this slate as a whole – there are a couple of interesting notes that can help us narrow down our player pool.
- Three games have double-digit spreads with some serious blowout risk:
- Toronto with Kawhi healthy against the Wizards disaster
- Bucks at home against the Suns
- The Sixers at home versus the Cavaliers
- We have three games with projected paces under 100 possessions:
- Rockets/Pistons
- Nuggets/Magic
- Spurs/Pacers
If you avoid the potential blow out spots (which frankly all seem logical to get ugly) and you cross off the slow-paced game scripts, this becomes a much more manageable six game slate.
The two pivots I see on this slate off an Anthony Davis based line-up exist with two great 1 v 1 match-ups of stars. Kemba Walker versus Russell Westbrook and Damian Lillard versus Kevin Durant. What I like about both of these “mini-stacks” is you can swap them in for guys like AD/Jrue and still be able to fill in around them with the secondary pieces of the Knicks and Pelicans which gives you a different build off those who look to a more traditional game stack.
We have news already that Al Horford is unlikely to play against the Hawks which makes Aron Baynes ($6K) an elite punt play tonight. In the last 10 games that Al Horford has missed (all last season), Aron Baynes has gone for 20+ Fantasy Points in 8/10 games, averaging 25 FPTS/game and has games of 34 and 48 fantasy points with Horford out. If you need a punt, this is where I would start.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample lineup is not meant to be a Plug and Play line-up and is meant to be illustrative only.
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G: Jrue Holiday
G: Tim Hardaway Jr.
G: Trey Burke
F/C: Anthony Davis
F/C: Noah Vonleh
F/C: Julius Randle
UTIL: Enes Kanter
UTIL: Bam Adebayo
Slate Overview: If after stuffing your face with Thanksgiving Day treats, you feel a bit like this OKC fan pictured then maybe you need a fast pace NBA DFS game stack like the Pelicans and Knicks to help burn off some of those calories. Even with a 12 game slate tonight, I think when you start to peel away the potential blow-outs and the slow-paced games you really can make this a more manageable player pool. The Pelicans and Knicks have that perfect on paper combination of fast pace, high total and competitive spread (7 points and the game being in NY) which makes it the ideal game stack and the price points correlate so well as you have the high-priced Pelicans stars with the cheaper Knicks core. If you want to get a little different in GPP play – take the same sample and swap out AD/Jrue for Lillard/Durant or Westbrook/Kemba (that one takes some massaging elsewhere but it can work). This would give you a similar look and feel but you are swapping out your stars in hopes the “Non-Brow” studs on this slate can match his performance at a fraction of the price and ownership. Enjoy this slate and all the Black Friday craziness!
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