NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday November 24
Welcome to the Saturday 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.
Who enjoyed Tim Hardaway Jr. night last night? Come on, we all knew that was coming! The Knicks/Pelicans game was a shoot-out as expected with some of the chalk plays like Anthony Davis and Noah Vonleh having big nights, but it was the pivots – using guys like Emmanuel Mudiay instead of Trey Burke that gave you the biggest advantage within this up pace game environment. Winning GPP scores were well over 350 once against as we had four players go for over 60 fantasy points – Clint Capela, Andre Drummond, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
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 much exposure do you need to Pelicans and Wizards?
This season it has become quite common to see massive game totals on every slate but how often do we have a slate in which the highest Vegas game total is 20+ points higher than any other game on the slate? That is what we have tonight with the Wizards and Pelicans as they basically check off every single box for those who utilize Vegas data:
- Game total opens at 240
- Pelicans (121) and Wizards (119) have the two highest individual team totals on the slate
- The game is expected to be played at the fastest pace on the slate
- This is the ONLY game on the slate that sees both teams getting a pace increase
- Not only do we have a high total but we also have a 2 point spread – high and tight baby
A few things to note in this game – both teams are playing on the tail end of a back to back and it is expected that Dwight Howard will once again miss tonight’s game meaning Thomas Bryant will draw the start at Center.
Anthony Davis ($20.3K) put up 55 fantasy points last night against the Knicks despite missing a significant chunk of the second half after a leg injury forced him to the locker room. There is always risk with using the Brow when he is 100% healthy and even more so when there is the potential to have last night’s injury flare up and we get the dreaded “Anthony Davis is headed to the locker room” tweet.
Assuming AD is healthy, how on earth are the Wizards going to stop him without Howard in the middle? The Wizards went small last night against Toronto but they will not have that same luxury tonight against the Pelicans front court . Go back to Sunday’s game against Portland where Howard was limited to only 7 minutes, and we saw Jusuf Nurkic destroy the Wizards interior for a near triple-double with 13 points, 14 rebounds and 8 assists. Assuming this game stays close – this has the potential for ceiling 70-80 point Brow game.
Update: We have news that AD is officially questionable which should make this slate much more crazy! We all know the drill by now – if AD is out, then the trio of Holiday, Mirotic and Randle become elite plays and all of them are priced as if AD is on the court. Just lock them all in and do not get cute.
Much like I did last night against the Knicks, I will focus my Pelicans core on the key 3-4 players that take up all the usage and fantasy production – meaning it is right back to Jrue Holiday, Nikola Mirotic and Julius Randle, ranked in that order if forced to choose. On the Wizards side, it all comes down to John Wall ($15.7K) and Bradley Beal ($13.8K), who have a 31.5% and 29.1% usage rate on the year when Dwight Howard is off the court.
What I love about this game is you can opt to go all-in and game stack it with the cheaper secondary pieces like Porter/Oubre/Bryant or you can take the approach of going with only the elite plays here and soaking up all the high-end usage in a 2v2 approach using AD/Jrue with Wall/Beal as an example.
The ownership is going to be crazy high tonight on this game but for good reason and if there ever was a game to go all-in on, it may be this one. Keep in mind the Wizards and Pelicans are giving up the 2nd and 3rd most points per game to opposing offenses this season and you are putting the 3rd fastest pace team (Pelicans) against the 6th fastest (Wizards). There is a reason this game has a 240 Vegas total folks – stack it up.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays Galore!
On a night where I expect ownership to be concentrated on the Pelicans and Wizards, it makes seemingly every other game on the board a pivot play. Outside of AD leaving tonight with an injury, I cannot see a scenario where he does not put up a big raw point performance which means if you opt to pivot off him, you better have another stud you think can match him.
Kevin Durant ($18.6K) is nearly $2K cheaper than AD and you have a game environment where the Warriors will see the largest pace boost of any team on the slate as they take on the Kings at home. With Steph Curry OUT and Draymond Green likely to miss another game – the Warriors remain an easy team to break down – you play KD and Klay Thompson ($13K) and move on. As a comparison on tonight’s slate – you can get KD and Klay for a combined total salary of $31.6K versus a cost of $36.4K for Davis/Holiday as an example.
Not sure you want to go to the Warriors, fine – let’s move to the Thunder and Nuggets who despite one of the slower paces games of the night, gives you a game environment that is loaded with stars capable of matching anything you can find in New Orleans/Washington.
Russell Westbrook ($19.6K) is the star to pay up for in this game but unlike the Warriors, I think the secondary stacking options are far greater. You can obviously continue to roll out the perpetually under-owned Paul George ($15.1K) as his price point will likely make folks look elsewhere. Steven Adams ($12.1K) is always a viable secondary option that correlates well with Westbrook but the guy I have the most interest in is Dennis Schroder ($11.8K) who is playing alongside Westbrook as the starting SG and is coming off 47 fantasy points against Golden State and another 31 last night against the Hornets. The biggest news to watch here is the status of Gary Harris who is questionable to play which would be a huge boost to boost Westbrook and Schroder as Denver would be down one of their best on ball defenders.
If Harris is out, it would mean that the Nuggets are forced to rely on Jamal Murray and Monte Morris in the backcourt which would make them an interesting value stack you can pair with Westbrook/Schroder on the other side of this game. The clear top play on the Denver side however is Nikola Jokic ($16.5K) who over the last two seasons has put up 1.64 FP/M with both Harris and Will Barton off the court.
With the slower pace and the volatility of minutes for Denver, this team is nothing more than a GPP pivot in my opinion and if you want to plant your flag with this team then you almost have to run it back with Westbrook and some Thunder pieces.
UPDATE – With news that CP3 will be rested tonight, it adds another star to our player pool in James Harden. With CP3 and Melo off the court this season, Harden has an insane 44% usage rate while putting up 1.9 FP/M. With the news that AD is questionable, you can easily pivot to Harden and make the argument he is the top play on the slate.
Last but not least – Aron Baynes ($6K) was a monster success as a punt play last night and with Al Horford looking unlikely to play again tonight, he becomes a lock and load play once again after dropping 35 fantasy points on the Hawks. Baynes is one of those guys I find myself using as a first man in and then building game stacks around him. On FantasyDraft, you need to have players from at least three teams, so you can lock him in and then build stacks around him with NO/Washington or Denver/OKC with ease. Baynes will likely be far higher owned than the 20% mark he had in GPP’s last night but this feels like a spot where you eat the chalk and move on.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample lineup is not meant to be a Plug and Play lineup and is meant for illustrative purposes only.
Game Stack Build
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G: Jrue Holiday
G: John Wall
G: Bradley Beal
F/C: Aron Baynes
F/C: Anthony Davis
F/C: Nikola Mirotic
UTIL: Kelly Oubre Jr.
UTIL: Thomas Bryant
Slate Overview: Game stacking is not always the best approach admittedly in NBA DFS but when you have a game environment like this Pelicans/Wizards game where the total and pace just blow every other game out of the water, it becomes a spot where go can argue an all-in stack approach.
The nice thing about this slate for GPP play is there are tons of viable pivots with the OKC/Denver game being my favorite and I think you can make yourself an interesting pivot line-up using that game with KD/Klay as I have shown below:
Pivot Build:
G: Monte Morris
F/C: Kevin Durant
F/C: Aron Baynes
F/C: Nikola Jokic
UTIL: Jerami Grant
UTIL Juancho Hernangomez
Two very different builds but I think they both are viable routes on this slate with some common themes. First and foremost, you need to build around stars and whether it is AD/Wall/Holiday or Westbrook/KD/Jokic – I do not think tonight is a night to go balanced. Use the value we have with guys like Baynes or the fringe pieces in these high total games to make the builds work. I will say, this looks like a really fun slate to play GPP’s tonight! Good luck all!
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