NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday November 30
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.
Thursday Night’s NBA DFS slate was not a profitable one for me and many others as the late news that Marcin Gortat would play left us with a big fat zero from Boban Marjanovic who was 30% plus owned in GPP’s and crushed what was shaping up to be a promising Stars/Scrubs night as Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard and Domanatas Sabonis, the core 4 studs I aimed to build around in Picks and Pivots, all went for huge scores as the top raw point plays on the night.
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 – Eleven Game Friday Night Slate:
After a three game NBA DFS slate on Thursday, opening up to an 11 game slate on Friday Night may feel a bit daunting but this looks like at first glance to be a slate where you can start crossing games off and focusing on the best game environments.
The first thing that jumped out to me was that of the 22 teams taking the court tonight, a whopping 15 of them are seeing a neutral or negative pace game environment which covers nearly 70% of the player pool.
What is even more interesting is that of the 7 teams seeing a pace uptick, 6 of them reside over 3 games – Oklahoma City/Atlanta, Miami/New Orleans and Philadelphia/Washington which also happen to be the three largest totals on the board with all of them at 227 or higher.
So with that context, can we simply narrow our player pool to these three games where we get the largest pace boost and expect point production per Vegas? I think we can and in today’s Picks and Pivots, that is the route I intend to take us down.
First Stop: Philly
Any time the Washington Wizards are on a slate, the opposition becomes one of the best stacking spots on the board as they rank 2nd to last in the NBA in defensive rating while also being the 6th fastest pace team in basketball. Now add in the fact that Dwight Howard will undergo surgery to correct his backside injury and this becomes a team that has simply no interior defensive presence.
In the last six games that Howard has missed, the Wizards are giving up 50+ rebounds per game to the opposition which is the most of any team in the entire NBA and now here comes Joel Embiid ($19.7K) with a streak of six straight double-doubles as the league leader in rebounds so far this season. This is what the kids call a “smash spot.” Embiid is a core play for me on this slate and considering that we get a “discount” off guys like Harden, Westbrook and AD on FantasyDraft, he may end up as the best “value” of all the high-end guys.
What this also means for guys like Ben Simmons and Jimmy Butler is that they lack any sort of rim protection which puts them both in play and you can round out any stack here with a cheap play like Wilson Chandler who is locked into 30+ minutes a night. As much as I like Simmons/Butler, Chandler is probably the guy I will end up running alongside Embiid as at $7.2K, you are getting a player who has hit 3x value in 3 of his last 4 games and has the minutes stability to make for a great last man in kind of play.
On the Washington side, in the last seven games that Howard had missed, it has been the John Wall show for the Wizards as he is sporting a 33% usage rate while putting up 1.3 FP/M and we have seen teams with attacking guards like the Nets, have significant success going after the interior of the Philly defense. Bradley Beal can either be used as a stack piece or a pivot off Wall as he has put up 40+ fantasy points in four of his last five games and makes for a great cash game play.
Beal being priced at $15.1K means he needs 45 fantasy points just to hit value and if you look at his game logs, he is basically now priced for his ceiling. Wall on the other hand has profit potential left at $16.5K as he has gone for 57 and 65 FPTS in two of his last five games so in GPP’s I would run back any Embiid teams with Wall.
The real “value” may be in the front court as Otto Porter Jr. and Markieff Morris have both been the biggest beneficiaries with Howard on the shelf and we even saw Kelly Oubre Jr. rise from the dead against the Pelicans after a series of up and down outings. All three forwards have been putting up a FP/M+ in these most recent games with Howard out and we saw two games ago against New Orleans that all three forwards could get there in the same game. I would prioritize Porter/Markieff here over Oubre but am fine if you land on him as a cheaper option in a game stack.
Update: With Otto Porter ruled OUT and Jeff Green Questionable, Markieff and Oubre become near lock plays and it may mean more minutes for punts like Austin Rivers as well.
NBA DFS – Stop #2 – Pelicans and Heat:
With a 229.5 game total and 3 point spread, the Heat and Pelicans offers another elite stacking spot with high-end studs and some value options as a result of injuries. It all starts with Anthony Davis as the prime target here who may end up being the priority spend if Chris Paul is able to return and cut into the elite recent run by James Harden.
We normally think of the Miami Heat as this slow-paced squad but they are actually ranked in the top 10 in pace this far in the NBA season so the fact that the Pelicans, the third fastest pace team in the NBA, sees a slight pace boost should give you confidence in attacking the Pelicans here.
Tim Frazier is going to be a popular value option after his starting role against the Wizards last game where he racked up 12 points, 12 assists, 6 rebounds and 2 steals and as long as he gets 30+ minutes, I have no issue playing him where you need value but temper expectations and be careful of chasing game logs on a slate this big with someone like Tim Frazier.
The Heat side of this game generally feels more like a fill-in spot for my roster rather than a core part of my build due to the volatility of the Heat starters. Hassan Whiteside and Josh Richardson are the clear top plays but the prices demand an elite level of fantasy production and personally, I think I will spend up for other guys with higher ceilings.
With both Goran Dragic and Tyler Johnson out, I would rather look to the secondary pieces in this game like Wayne Ellington and Rodney McGruder who should continue to see 30+ minutes and handle the majority of the wing minutes for Miami.
Overall, despite the high total and fast pace, this is likely a game where I simply utilize the value pieces as last man in kind of plays rather than core parts of my build.
NBA DFS – Last Stop – OKC and Atlanta:
The wild card in this trio of games is OKC and Atlanta as you have the one of the few potential blowout spots with an opening Vegas line of 13 points but you conversely have a game with by far the highest projected pace. Any time you find a game environment where OKC is getting the largest pace boost AND the largest projected point increase then I am going to be all-in on Russell Westbrook.
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Westbrook has triple-doubles in three of his last four games – and I want to make sure you didn’t gloss over that – triple doubles in 3 of his last 4 games and was two assists shy of making it 4 in a row.
I would like to call your attention to one item in particular here as you scroll through the NBA DRPM ratings for this season. Not only is Westbrook’s counterpart Trae Young the worst rated defender among all PG’s this season – he is ranked dead last among 438 NBA players in DRPM.
So, Westbrook gets a pace up spot AND faces the worst defender in the entire NBA – this is where I think you take your stand. I love AD and Harden has been a monster with CP3 out but this could be one of those vintage Westbrook games and if the spread scares people away then I want to go all-in.
With the salary structure on FantasyDraft, you can easily fit in Westbrook and Embiid and still have over 10K to spend per player for the rest of your roster and I think that is the route I prefer here tonight especially with the mid-tier and value you can use in this game and in Philly/Washington.
Jerami Grant ($8.5K) makes for a nice mid-tier option after putting up 35 and 37 FPTS in two of his last four games in similar up-tempo spots against bad defenses (GS/CLE) and much like with Wilson Chandler, you have a 30+ minutes floor that makes him playable in any format.
Last but not least – our friends at FantasyDraft are sponsoring a Picks and Pivots Free Roll tonight with three $25 Pick and Roll tickets for Saturday’s slate on the line. The response to this was overwhelming yesterday and I am so pumped to be able to offer this to our readers due to the generosity of the folks at FantasyDraft.
Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest NBA DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings each and every day!