NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday November 28 – Stack it Up!

Welcome to the Wednesday 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.

After a night on Monday where we saw NBA DFS winning GPP scores push well over 400, Tuesday was the polar opposite as winning scores in many cases did not even reach 300 fantasy points. No single player scored more than 50+ fantasy points with Domanatas Sabonis and Marc Gasol ending the night as the top two raw point scorers, while some of the “big-ticket” spends like LeBron James, Andre Drummond and Nikola Jokic were all held around 30 fantasy points on one of the lower scoring nights we have seen in some time.

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.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

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 – 10 Game Slate:

Remember that high-scoring Monday NBA DFS slate where scores pushed 400 fantasy points? Well at first glance, we could have another one of those on our hands with a massive 10 game NBA DFS slate and a huge player pool to sort through which includes which includes 5 games with 227+ game totals, 6 teams with 117+ team totals and multiple top-tier studs involved that could break the slate as they did on Monday.

In addition to the high Vegas totals, we also have some very clear blowout risk as five of the seven games we currently have Vegas totals/spreads for have double-digit spreads which makes sorting through the player pool even more daunting!

There is really no sense starting anywhere other than Pelicans-Wizards as it literally checks off every box when you are trying to find the ideal game environment.

• Highest total (241)
• Close spread (NO -6)
• Fastest projected pace (109)
• The ONLY game on the slate where both teams involved see a pace boost
• We have the third fastest pace team taking on the sixth fastest pace team and the 2nd worst team in defensive rating versus the 4th worst

This game kind of just happened on Saturday but AD missed that game so I would not go too crazy game log watching – ya know since the best player in the game was not there – but this feels like one of those “can’t miss” spots that even on a 10 game slate becomes a hard fade.

You do not need me or anyone else in the industry to tell you this is an amazing game stack and the first stop in your core build. We already know Dwight Howard is OUT for this game which means Anthony Davis ($20.3K) should get every single thing he wants inside as the Wizards just allowed Clint Capela to get 17/14 and 4 blocks in the same spot.

Jrue Holiday ($15.7K) is a great play in a vacuum and he has shown the ability to go for 50+ in games against Philly, Toronto and Chicago where AD went off as well so you can argue that they both have ceiling game potential in the same contest. John Wall ($17K) and Bradley Beal ($14.7K) become the clear “run back” plays in any game stack as the two highest usage plays on the Washington side of this game and if you want to stack all four on FantasyDraft, you still have over $8K per player for the last four spots on your roster which makes this a viable route with value. I wonder if folks will look at the game over the weekend and see that Wall only got 42 FPTS and Jrue only got to 34 and make the case to fade them – will be interesting to see how people talk about this game throughout the day.

You can fill in your roster with some of the secondary pieces here like Nikola Mirotic or go to Otto Porter, Kelly Oubre or Markieff Morris on the Washington side and I would argue every single one is a good play and you could opt to fade the studs in this game and lock in all the fringe pieces while getting your studs from other games which would be a contrarian approach (and a risky one). Otto Porter ($11.5K) flourished in the meeting with New Orleans over the weekend, finishing with 49 fantasy points and is averaging over 38 FPPG in the last four games with Howard off the court.

The easy answer is stack this game every way you can. I am willing to listen to pivot plays and contrarian ideas all day long – it is what makes NBA DFS so great – but at the end of the day do we really need to get cute? There is no reason to fade this game in my opinion other than ownership and with it being a 10 game slate that should work in our favor as the player pool will get more spread out. Maybe we just ignore the other 9 games and find a way to stack this spot.

NBA DFS – Building around a Pelicans/Wizards Stack:

When I started Picks and Pivots, I swore that I would never make this column another NBA DFS “Best Plays” article – simply going position by position and listing the best plays. Now there is value in those formats and tons of great writers do it very well, but my approach has always been to think through slates with you guys and help you see roster construction paths that jumped out to me at first glance. With that context, rather than simply saying “Stack the Best Game of the Night” – let’s dive into how we actually can do it.

If you are going the route of simply planting your flag with New Orleans and Washington – it all starts with AD/Jrue and Wall/Beal which leaves you over $8K per player for the last four spots and if you choose to cram in Otto Porter, the last three spots limit you to only $6.9K per player. So let’s see if we can find a path using this 4-5 man core where we feel good about our roster.

One of the biggest injury questions we have coming into this slate is the status of Orlando Forward Aaron Gordon who left the Magic’s last game against Golden State due to a back injury after only 22 minutes and is officially questionable to play tonight. Jarrell Martin ($6.2K) started the only other game this year that AG missed against NY and responded with 27 minutes and 25 fantasy points but that looking back at the Golden State game, it was very clearly Jonathan Isaac ($7.2K) who got the direct run for Gordon, playing 30 minutes including coming in for AG when he left the game midway through the 3rd Quarter and outside of a one minute break (where Martin came in), stayed on the court the entire rest of the game. The match-up is tough, but if we are looking for “fill-in” pieces in the  bargain bin, you need to prioritize those with paths to 30+ minutes.

Speaking of 30+ minutes – Wilson Chandler ($6.9K) has played 30+ minutes in four straight games and has gone for 22+ FPTS in two of those games. Tonight against the Knicks he gets the #RevengeNarrative after being traded away as part of the Carmelo Anthony deal from New York. The interesting punt here could be the Knicks Damyean Dotson ($6K) who went from 4 straight DNP’s to rumors of being on the trade block – to this last night.

Forget the game log and the box score – take a look at the game flow last night for the Knicks and Pistons. Dotson checked in 2 minutes into the second half for “starter” Mario Hezonja and NEVER LEFT THE COURT. When Dotson has been on the court this year he has produced and you wonder if Coach Fizdale will roll him back out there tonight instead of pretending to use Hezonja. Any time you play the Knicks bench player roulette, you are taking some serious bankroll risk but at minimum priced, I will be interested to see what Fizdale says to the media about Dotson’s performance last night

There is risk with a guy like Dotson but you can look to balance it with “known” minutes like Chandler or Isaac assuming AG is out and take your 20-25 points (3x value) and simply move on and let the Pelicans/Wizards do the heavy lifting.

NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:

The goal of these sample line-ups is never meant to give you a plug and play line-up, it is meant to give you illustrative examples of how you can build a line-up. On a ten game slate there are so many ways you can go, but to me it all starts with the Pelicans and Wizards and finding a way to make it work.

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G: John Wall

G: Jrue Holiday

G: Bradley Beal

F/C: Anthony Davis

F/C: Otto Porter Jr.

F/C: Jonathan Isaac

UTIL: Damyean Dotson 

UTIL: Ryan Arcidiacono

The easy part here is simply clicking on the Pelicans/Wizards guys and cramming in as many as you can into your builds. The more difficult decisions come with how you fill in the rest of your build and this is where the benefit of a 10 game slate comes in as we will surely have injury news that opens up avenues to punt plays which unlock the slate. Assuming AG sits, you get a clear path to 30+ minutes for Isaac and you can take a “safe” 30 minutes from a guy like Arcidiacono who has played 30+ minutes in each of his last 5 games. This is one of those slates where my initial goal is to lock in the five man stack of Pelicans/Wizards and use the day to sort through the 2-3 filler value plays that work best.

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest NBA DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and Draftkings.