NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday December 15
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.
It was a night dominated by the stars of the slate as the duo of Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo was the key NBA DFS combination, going for over 150 fantasy points together and the key cogs in winning GPP lineups that went for over 375 as a result of their stars going off.
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 – Saturday Night NBA DFS Slate:
Before we jump into today’s NBA DFS slate, we are so thrilled to announce another Picks and Pivots Free Roll from our friends at FantasyDraft who are giving away NBA DFS tickets to Sunday’s contests for the top 10 finishers tonight. Join in today and everyday!
We have a six game NBA DFS slate to break down on this Saturday and right off the bat there are two games that stand out above the rest – the Lakers/Hornets and Thunder/Clippers – two games 227+ totals, the fastest projected pace environments and the only two games where both teams see a project pace increase.
With these two games being the clear top game environments to build around, I think the biggest decision you have to make is which game and therefore superstar are you going to anchor your lineups to tonight? LeBron James or Russell Westbrook?
The fact that LeBron is priced at $19K which is over $1K less than Mr. Westbrook, gives him an immediate advantage for those looking to pinch any pennies they can and allocate it out to the rest of their roster.
At this point we do not need stats to back up a player like LeBron, but I think there is an interesting narrative at play here tonight – the fact that LeBron will be playing in Charlotte, in front of the GOAT, Michael Jordan. King James has gone for 57+ fantasy points in each of his last four trips to Charlotte. I am an analytical person by nature but I believe that these narratives matter ESPECIALLY in sports like basketball where the individual has direct control on the outcome. With MJ sitting court side, you don’t think LeBron will be looking to put on a show?
Now back to this game – if you are looking to stack it up, the benefit is that the core pieces here are much more condensed as the usage/fantasy production in many ways can be captured by simply clicking on LeBron and adding Kemba Walker ($17.6K).
The “issue” with this game is that the Hornets are playing on the tail end of a back to back, after going to OT last night with the Knicks, where every Hornets starter played 35+ minutes and now have to turn around and play LeBron and the Lake Show. The Hornets are one of the best 3 point shooting teams in the NBA this season, making over 12 3’s per game which is fifth in the NBA and shooting them at a 35% clip.
Last night the Hornets shot a whopping 48 three-point attempts, the 7th most in any NBA game this season and knocked home 20 of them, a 42% rate which is well above their season long average and would be higher than any team’s average this season.
So before you go chasing the Hornets game logs, ask yourself if you trust them at inflated ownership on a back to back after a OT game. Will the legs be there, will the 3 point efficiency be there?
Charlotte has had three back to back scenarios this year, two coming early in the season on October 20 and 27 and the latest on November 26th. In those games the Hornets shot 35.8% from 3-point range which would be more in line with their season average but not a significant drop off by any stretch.
Overall, this is a relatively easy game to stack as the only real “pricey investments” lie in LeBron and Kemba. You can stack the core Lakers like Kyle Kuzma/Lonzo Ball and run it back with Nicolas Batum/Jeremy Lamb and still have $9.5K per player remaining on FantasyDraft for the final two spots in your build.
NBA DFS – Pivot to OKC and LAC:
My gut reaction in looking at this slate is that the Lakers-Hornets becomes a far more popular stack than its high scoring counterpart in OKC for a few reasons. One of the reasons is the pricing – it becomes far easier to stack that game with the cheap(er) fringe pieces available and really identifying how to stack that game is far easier because so much of the production runs through two guys – LeBron and Kemba.
I think the recency bias plays a massive role in how ownership will fall today as the Hornets game logs are significantly inflated after last night’s OT affair and I think that people will see the price points have not been adjusted on players like Nicolas Batum ($8.8K) and just slot them in as value players in a high total.
Conversely, the Clippers game logs are a disaster – as with Lou Williams off the court the last two games, they have been taken to the woodshed, losing by 38 to the Spurs and 24 to the Raptors which has meant significantly less run for the starters. Add in the fact that the Clippers lost by 18 to this same OKC team the last time they came to town (and Russ played) and I think folks will be scared to build around LAC.
Let’s start first with OKC – which means starting with Russell Westbrook ($20.1K) who went for 56 FPTS the last time these two teams played and after back to back 70+ FPT outings, has failed to hit 50 fantasy points in either of his last two games.
Paul George ($16.9K) went for 58 fantasy points the last time these two teams met, in the game on 10/30 in which Russ was active. The days of “you only play PG13 when Russ is out” are officially dead – he has shown this season, and especially in the last two weeks, that his usage and FP/M production essentially mirrors Russ when they are on the court together and you only need to look back at that October 30th match-up where both George and Westbrook went for 58/56 fantasy points against the Clippers to realize you can stack both.
Steven Adams ($12.2K) has been incredibly consistent in his two games against LAC with 42.5 and 43 fantasy points and attacking the Clippers with big men has been the way to go all year as they rank 26th in DEF-EFF this season. Dennis Schroder ($11.4K), much like PG13, has seemingly adjusted to his role alongside Westbrook and over the last two weeks is sporting a usage rate of 27.8% while shooting the ball over 14 times per game over his last 10 games.
Now, there is blowout risk here based off he Clippers recent performance and although their season long top 10 pace is enticing, this is a LAC team that over the last 5 games is ranked all the way down at 21st in pace of play so you need to weigh that into ow heavy you go with OKC here.
If you are going to go heavy on the Thunder, then you need to run it back somewhat with the Clippers and its relatively easy to do and isolate where to go. Tobias Harris and Danillo Gallinari have had the most success against OKC this season, with Gallo going for 35+ in each of the first two games while Tobias dropped a 50 spot on the Thunder in their first meeting in which Westbrook was out.
With two straight blowouts, it remain tough to see what a real Clippers rotation looks like without their usage leader in Lou Williams but starting with Harris/Gallo feels like the safest route and allows you to attack the Thunder forward defense which is where they have been most vulnerable all year.
NBA DFS Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
This sample lineup is not meant to be a plug and play lineup and is meant to be illustrative only:
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G: Russell Westbrook
F/C: Paul George
F/C: Steven Adams
F/C: Tobias Harris
UTIL: Danilo Gallinari
UTIL P.J. Tucker
Slate Overview: This looks like a really interesting slate with two games that stand out as elite spots to attack and I wonder if the buzz during the day in the industry will push the ownership to be more concentrated on the Lakers/Hornets as I mentioned here. If that happens, I will gladly take an OKC-Clippers stack at a fraction of the ownership with frankly a much better player pool to build around. Enjoy the slate and your weekend – get in on that Free Roll and get set for a full weekend of NBA DFS and Fantasy Football!
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