NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday December 2

Welcome to the Sunday 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.

Scores were generally lower on Saturday Night’s NBA DFS slate with only 5 people going over 300 points in the $25 Pick and Roll as only four players went for over 50 fantasy points on the night. I am sure it does not shock anyone that James Harden, John Wall and Andre Drummond hit that mark, but I doubt many expected Gordon Hayward to lead the slate in fantasy points with 58 and his 2% ownership certainly seems to support that statement!

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 – Four Game Slate:

As we do on most Sundays where the majority of the sports world is focused on the NFL and  Fantasy Football we get a smaller NBA DFS slate with 4 games on the FantasyDraft slate which kicks off at 6PM EST and ignores the two early games.

If you are looking to play the 2 game early slate – my man Mike Marteny has that broken down for you here.

What really stands out to me on this four game slate is that we have three of the four games with totals under 220 and five of the eight teams in action actually see a projected pace decrease so this could be a spot where we see the cash line far lower than we normally do.

The big news we have to watch on this slate is the status of Grizzlies center Marc Gasol who is questionable to face the Sixers in the first game of the night, meaning we SHOULD have the news before lock.

The fact that Gasol had a similar injury designation ahead of the Brooklyn game where he played 46 minutes should give you confidence that he plays here and to say Memphis will need him against Joel Embiid and company is an understatement.

A few things to note about this game besides the injury to Gasol – first, this is projected to be the slowest pace game on the slate with the Sixers seeing the biggest pace decrease and one of the largest point decreases on their season long numbers. Secondly, be careful simply clicking on the Grizzlies game logs as the 2OT game against Brooklyn is going to significantly skew their recent fantasy production.

If Gasol is out, Jaren Jackson would get a huge boost and would likely become one of the more popular plays on this slate. If Gasol is ruled in, I think this game may make sense as a stay away for a few reasons. First, the pricing on the core guys here is elevated with Conley/Gasol both near $16K on FantasyDraft with the Nets performance boosting their price points and we know the cost associated with the Sixers stars in Embiid and Simmons. On a short slate like this, raw points matter and these all seem like fine plays for cash games but I question how much upside exists here at the price points for these players in a massive pace down spot.

Secondly, with this being the first game on the slate, I expect the ownership to slightly lean towards the “star power” in this game which makes me like the idea of fading it even more. Lastly, I know the spread is “only 6.5 points” but this is a Sixers team that has blown out the Wizards/Knicks in two straight games and that is a Knicks team mind you that just beat this Memphis squad. The fact that there are game scripts here that could go the blowout route or the slow-paced grind out game, make this a spot where we fade and look towards the later games.

Speaking of the later games, if there is one spend up play I am prioritizing today it is Damian Lillard ($17.3K). The Spurs have been routinely gutted by opposing PG’s this season, ranking 23rd in DEF-EFF against the position and the Portland star may see an even bigger usage boost with the potential absence of Evan Turner today. This Turner injury may actually be more important that we would assume at first glance as Turner routinely runs the second unit for Portland which means the Blazers could be forced to split Dame and CJ McCollum up a bit more today and rely on them for more of the ball-handling responsibilities.

If Turner misses, it could also open up value as Moe Harkless could be asked to finally push past his minutes limit and/or it could mean guys like Nik Stauskas and Seth Curry are asked to take on more of the second unit ball handling. Turner may come off the bench but is 4th on the team this season in MPG at 26.9 which gives those who may take his place a nice boost today in a spot many may not key in on for value.

NBA DFS – Late Game Revenge!

OK, calling these the late games may be stretching it since they start only 1 hour later at 7PM EST, but ignore that for a second and let’s focus in on REVENGE NARRATIVES as we get LaMarcus Aldridge against his old squad and a certain Mavs big man facing his old team for the first time.

DeAndre Jordan ($12.3K) gets to face a Clippers team he spent the previous 10 years with for the very first time as a member of the Dallas Mavericks in a game with the highest total (225) and fastest projected pace of any game on this four game slate. Outside of the narrative silliness which I love, this game sets up perfectly for a game stack as the pricing correlates perfectly with essentially everyone you would want to play sitting in the mid-tier on FantasyDraft. You also are getting two teams in the Clippers and Mavericks that play a relatively tight rotation with the focus being on their core 5-6 players each and every night.

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Outside of DJ, the next place to look on the Dallas side is with rookie Luka Doncic ($13.3K) and Harrison Barnes ($12.2K) who are the team leaders in minutes played over the last two weeks. Doncic is a multi-category monster, leading the team in points and FGA per game and second in rebounds behind Jordan and gets a pace boost game environment that sets up for a potential ceiling game. Barnes is never an exciting roster and rarely is someone I put in my core plays but Barnes remains a focal point of this Mavs offense and comes into today with 35+ fantasy points in three of his last four outings.

Dennis Smith Jr. and Wesley Matthews are both viable options within a game stack but this is a tough Clippers back-court defensively and both DSJ/Matthews already find themselves as secondary options in a deep Mavericks starting five. I would load up on the Mavs front court here as I believe the trio of Doncic, Barnes and DJ correlates well as you get high usage, high volume scorers along with players that can rack up peripheral stats and are less scoring dependent.

The Clippers have the best record in the Western Conference and if you don’t think they plan on sticking it to their old pal DJ tonight then you don’t understand revenge! Much like the Mavericks, this Clippers team is essentially a 5-6 man rotation and all the prices here make them cash game viable with profit potential for GPP’s.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($10.1K) gets one of the best individual match-ups against DSJ who ranks as the 75th out of 91 PG’s in the NBA in defensive ratings which is even worse than his 72nd ranking last season. Shai is locked into major minutes and has put up 30+ FPTS in three of his last five games. Tobias Harris and Montrezl Harrell are the “pricey” investments in this game stack as two players who just crank out 35-40 fantasy points every night and can give you 50 point fantasy upside in the right match-up.

If you build a game stack here with Jordan/Doncic/Barnes and run it back with Shai/Tobias/Harrell you still have nearly $12K per player for the last two spots on your roster and you are building a balanced core of players that are cash game viable with GPP upside in the best pure game environment of the night.

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest NBA DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings each and every day!