NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday December 1
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.
Friday Night’s slate was littered with blowouts and some brutal late scratches (hi Devin Booker) which made a large NBA DFS slate even more unpredictable and if you were lucky/smart enough to game stack the Grizzlies and Nets which went into 2 OT you probably had yourself quite a 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 – Six Game Saturday Slate:
Before we get into tonight’s six game slate I want to start your weekend off with a FREE ROLL! Our friends at FantasyDraft have sponsored a Picks and Pivots Free Roll where they are giving away three $25 tickets to Sunday’s Pick and Roll NBA DFS slate and I want to make sure our readers are taking advantage of this each and every day!
We have a six game NBA DFS slate tonight which kicks off at 7PM EST and excludes the Bucks/Knicks which begins at 5PM EST meaning we will have to wait another day for a Tim Hardaway Jr. inspired Picks and Pivots – I know, you all are crushed.
With that game off the slate it leads us to the Warriors and Pistons as the game with the highest total (227), a close 4 point spread and the return of Mr. Stephen Curry ($16.5K). Let’s start with Curry who feels insanely under-priced for a player of his caliber and with no minute restriction buzz as of this writing, I have no issue going right back to him in his first game action off injury.
The return of Curry to this Warriors team has a massive impact on the pace and style in which they play and the stats tell just how much of a difference we see with him on/off the court. In the month of October when Curry was active, the Warriors led the league in offensive rating and were top 10 in pace but in the 11 games he missed, they ranked 27th in the NBA in pace and dropped to 13th in O rating.
My guess is the industry will take a cautious approach with Curry tonight in his first game back from injury which makes this the perfect GPP spot in my opinion. The Warriors will still be without Draymond Green tonight and we have seen over the last two seasons that Curry gets a team high boost in usage and this season in particular has put up over 1.5 FP/M with Draymond off the court.
The interesting play here is Kevin Durant ($19.2K) now that Curry is back as the price has been inflated due to his recent elite play with Steph sidelined. Will people all jump off now that Curry is back? With Draymond off the court this year, Curry and KD have 42% and 39% usage marks respectively while both exceeding 1.5 FP/M so why not simply play both here tonight on a smaller slate?
With Draymond out, do not underestimate how much this boosts the upside for Andre Drummond ($17.2K) and Blake Griffin ($17.1K) as they should have a field day with this Warriors front court that will simply have no answer to the Pistons big men. The wild card with the Pistons is really Reggie Jackson ($11.3K) who is coming off his best stretch of games with 33+ FPTS in three straight but the price as caught up to that production and you are now paying market price for his game logs.
If you are going with a game stack here, it may make sense to pivot down to the cheaper plays here like Reggie Bullock ($7.3K) or get leverage on RJax by using Ish Smith ($6.9K) who is considerably cheaper than Jackson and allows you to better absorb some of the Pistons guard risk.
NBA DFS – Value and Pivot Plays:
The Nets and Wizards have a game total and close spread that essentially mirrors that of the Warriors and Pistons but trying to figure out this game for NBA DFS is a whole lot harder. The Wizards are coming off a beat down at the hand of the Sixers while the Nets are on a back-to-back after a 2OT game against the Grizzlies last night.
The Nets rotations are hard enough to sort through on a normal night, now you want me to predict what Kenny Atkinson is going to do after he played D’Angelo Russell and Spencer Dinwiddie 45+ minutes last night? Sheesh.
The one thing that stood out to me last night for the Nets outside of the crazy minutes they played their core, is that Allen Crabbe was benched mid-way through the 3rd while DeMarre Carroll took over at SF and played the entire second half and every minute of both OT’s. Carroll is only $6.6K on FantasyDraft and after putting up 45 FPTS last night could be a popular value option if he draws the start.
This Nets team has one of the best match-ups you could ask for against a terrible Washington defense but I worry about the minutes on a back to back after 2 OT’s last night. Could we see Crabbe re-enter the rotation tonight after playing only 23 minutes? This is a wait and see spot for value.
The best spot for value though may be in the Indiana/Sacramento game which has the fastest projected pace on the slate and a TON of injury news to sort through. We already know Victor Oladipo is OUT indefinitely but tonight we also have Domanatas Sabonis and Marvin Bagley questionable with injuries. No team plays at a faster pace than the Kings so this is an incredible spot for the Pacers if we can find the right value plays to make it work.
With Oladipo out – how can you not love Tyreke Evans ($9.8K) in a REVENGE spot against his former Kings team at under $10K. I know he has let us down since Dipo has been out but this has to be the spot right? Sabonis has only missed one other game this season, against the Nets, and we saw Kyle O’ Quinn ($6K) come off the bench and go bonkers for 32 fantasy points. KOQ and Tyreke revenge – are you not getting excited for this slate?
I would expect the Tyreke revenge narrative to get a bit more love than maybe it deserves so pivoting to Darren Collison ($10.4K) who has actually produced with Dipo out, may be the lower owned route especially with his price hike that may leave some sticker shock.
The Kings side could be very interesting for value if Bagley misses this game as he has been playing roughly 30 minutes a night for the Kings and if you saw him after he left last game with a back injury, he certainly looked to be in some serious pain. Harry Giles ($6.1K) put up a monster 40 fantasy point outing just two games ago against the Jazz and now could be forced into extended action with the Kings potentially short-handed in the front court.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Strategy
The sample lineup shown here is mean to be illustrative only and is not meant to be a Plug and Play lineup.
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G: Steph Curry
G: Darren Collison
F/C: Kevin Durant
F/C: Blake Griffin
F/C: Andre Drummond
UTIL: Harry Giles
UTIL: Kyle O’Quinn
Slate Overview: With my first glance at this slate leading me towards the studs in the Warriors and Pistons game, it means having to find value and frankly, this early in the day it is not easy. We have SO many unknowns both with injuries and numerous teams on back to backs which could mean “rest” days and value galore which would make a Stars/Scrubs build even more viable.
Do not forget to enter the FantasyDraft Free Roll and let’s get some tickets!
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