NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday November 27
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 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.
The point totals on Monday night’s NBA DFS slate was without a doubt some of the highest I can remember all season as winning GPP scores were well above 400 and cash lines in simple double-ups were 350-360 which are tournament winning totals on most nights. With a 90 point outing by James Harden, a 78 point effort by Kevin Durant and “only” a 65 point game from Anthony Davis, this night was dominated by the studs and in fact, the winning GPP line-up in the $25 Pick and Roll had all three players in a Stars and Scrubs type build.
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 – Let’s Start with the Studs:
Looking over this five game slate at first glance, the first thing I notice is that we have no game with a total higher than 220 (as of this writing) and only two teams, the Heat and Nuggets, see any material pace increase. We are becoming so used to see massive 230+ totals and pace increases across the board which has generated massive NBA DFS scores like we saw last night – but tonight’s slate feels like a bit more of what we have seen in previous seasons were a 220 total was an all-in stack spot.
The second thing you will likely notice as you dive into this slate is how loaded Forward/Center are and how awful the Guard positions look which makes this the ideal night to play on FantasyDraft in my opinion as you can take advantage of their roster flexibility and load up on a roster of Forward/Center plays.
If you want to play on FantasyDraft for fun – we have been doing a Picks and Pivots Free league each night which you can join here.
After a night where the stars dominated the slate, I figured let’s learn from recent history and start our slate breakdown with tonight’s stars and how to prioritize them.
LeBron James ($19.7K) is the highest priced player on this slate by a relatively wide margin (over $2K) which leaves him in no man’s land when it comes to today’s roster construction as there are no logical pivots in the same price range which makes me interested to see where his ownership comes in at. Will people blindly click the price tag on a slate without AD, Giannis, Durant, Harden etc or will they opt to take the savings and drop down?
It feels like more often than not this year the buzz around the industry has been to fade LeBron and in a game tonight against Denver where the Lakers see one of the largest pace decreases and are expected to score nearly 10 points less than their season average, I could see that narrative continuing tonight.
However, as we saw last night with Harden, Durant and AD – having that stud as the anchor in your line-up when they have that ceiling game will drive the cash line and if you went more balanced and fading the studs, you had no chance. For as “human” as LeBron seems this year with far less must play buzz than a star of his caliber typically garners, he has still gone for 60+ fantasy points six times this year which is good for 1/3 of this games and it includes a 67 fantasy point triple-double against this same Denver squad back on October 25th.
Andre Drummond and Blake Griffin sit at identical price points of $17.4K versus the Knicks in a game with the highest total we have so far at 220 and picking between the two will likely be one of the first choices you make tonight. As much as I respect the game of Blake Griffin, if you are forcing me to choose, I am going to side with Drummond who feels far too cheap considering his production this season. Drummond needs to get you around 50 points to hit “value” at this price point – care to guess how many times he has gone for 50 or more in his 17 games this season? Go ahead, I can wait.
I am sure you guessed something like 5-6 times which would be reasonable but it has actually been a whopping 9 times so far this young season. So said another way – Drummond has gone for 50+ times in more than half the games he has played meaning you essentially have better than a 50/50 shot that Drummond is going to 50+ on any given night and with a weak Knicks front-court, I think he makes for a core play in all formats tonight.
NBA DFS – Under-priced studs:
If we start our builds with LeBron and Drummond as an example, we may think to go towards the mid-tier now and build our secondary pieces but there is this “second-tier” of studs that we would be foolish to skip over as two player in particular feel well under-priced considering their recent level of play.
Marc Gasol ($15.9K) and Mike Conley ($14.5K) have a tough match-up against Toronto tonight but this is actually a slight pace up spot for Memphis against a Raptors team playing at a top 10 pace in the NBA over the last 10 games.
Gasol steps into this game in elite form, putting up 50+ fantasy points in four of his last five outings with a 1.35 FP/M rate of production over the last two weeks. Conley leads the team over the last two weeks with a 30% usage rate and has put up 50+ fantasy points in three of his last four games (OK I kinda cheated, one of those games was 49 but we can round here right?)
If we lock in a core four of LeBron, Drummond, Gasol and Conley we still have roughly $8K per player for the last four spots in our line-up and you have 4 players that you can easily argue get you 50-60 per player.
We already know that the Pacers will be without their star tonight in Victor Oladipo which gives the rest of the Pacers a clear boost in usage and fantasy production and becomes one of my favorite paths at first glance to building around 3-4 studs on this slate. Since leaving after only 4 minutes against the Hawks back on November 17th, we have a five game sample size of what life looks like without Dipo, and there are not only some elite value plays but some under-priced stars we can build around.
Domanatas Sabonis ($12.5K) leads all Pacers with a 1.5 FP/M of production since Oladipo went down and has put up 38, 41, 45 and 46 fantasy points in four of the five games that Dipo missed. Sabonis, much like Conley and Gasol feels far too cheap for his recent run of production and you could argue that he allows you a fifth start to build around with 40-50 point upside.
NBA DFS – Value Plays:
I mentioned earlier that guard was gross on this slate and I think outside of Mike Conley, my expectation is I will opt to spend my salary for Forwards and Centers and go bargain hunting at the guard spots tonight.
The big news to watch is the status of Gary Harris who missed last game and pushed Torrey Craig ($6K) into the starting line-up against OKC where he responded with 36 minutes of court time, 8 points, 10 rebounds and 3 steals/blocks which was good for 27 fantasy points at minimum price. So yeah, let’s hope Harris sits again tonight!
Kevin Huerter ($6.1K) has taken over the starting SG role for the Hawks, moving Kent Bazemore to a bench role and has hit/exceeded value in two of his last three games as he begins to take on an expanded role. Huerter is a guy I would normally have looked at as a scoring dependent option but his last game against Charlotte where he put up 19 fantasy points stood out to me considering he took only TWO shots in that game and got to value with 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals. If Huerter can continue to rack up the peripheral stats with 20-25 minutes of court time, he could make for an elite source of value tonight.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($6.7K) is a potential pivot off either of these previously mentioned punts as he seems locked into his 25 minutes per game off the Lakers bench and has gone for 21+ fantasy points in three of his last four games which would exceed 3.1x value at this bargain price point.
The Suns have been utilizing rookie Mikal Bridges ($6.8K) in the starting line-up and although the production has been slow to develop, the talented rookie is coming off a season high in minutes at 34 and any time I can get 30+ minutes from a punt play, I am going to have interest.
This list is certainly not exhaustive and with this being the NBA, we will certainly have more value surface throughout the day but I think the takeaway here is that we have roster paths tonight where you can get 4-5 stars/studs and fill it in with a few punt plays who have 25+ minute floors with 30+ minute ceilings depending on how things break and that Stars/Scrubs approach could be highly profitable here again tonight.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – the sample lineup shown below is not meant to be a Plug and Play lineup and is meant for illustrative purposes only.
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G: Mike Conley
F/C: LeBron James
F/C: Andre Drummond
F/C: Marc Gasol
UTIL: Domanatas Sabonis
UTIL: Mikal Bridges
Slate Overview: This is looking like a slate for me where I prioritize the handful of stars that I believe can carry my team across the cash line and have the game by game upside to put up tournament winning nights. There is enough value on this slate where paying up for 1-2 high-priced studs is quite easy and the second tier of stars like Conley/Gasol and even Sabonis to a degree have ceilings which far exceed their current price points. Assuming we get the value to break the right way (looking at you Gary Harris), there could be some exceptional punt plays that make this build fit into your cash game and GPP lineups. Good luck all!
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