NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday December 16
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.
Saturday Night’s NBA DFS slate was dominated by the stars as James Harden (68), Andre Drummond (62) and LeBron James (60) all had huge nights and the pairing of LeBron and Lonzo Ball (58) in a mini-Lakers stack was a common theme to winning/cashing lineups on this slate.
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 – Sundays are for Hoops:
A little bit of housekeeping before we jump into today’s NBA DFS slate. First and foremost, we have another Picks and Pivots Free Roll from our friends at FantasyDraft – giving you a chance to win 10 tickets to Monday’s NBA DFS contests with the top prize being a $25 Pick and Roll ticket. Seriously, what other site is giving out NBA free rolls for a four game slate – this is the most customer-centric DFS site out there and they prove it everyday with offerings like this.
Secondly, for all of you NFL DFS fans – we have all the Week 15 Fantasy Football coverage for you at Fantasy CPR with game by game breakdowns, cash game and GPP focused articles for every possible DFS platform you could want to play on – DraftKings, FanDuel, FantasyDraft and Yahoo. Check it out!
After a huge night on Saturday, the Lakers head to DC to take on the Wizards in a game with a slate leading 232 total, 1 point spread and the fastest projected pace on the slate. Checks off all the boxes right?
LeBron James ($19.2K) and Lonzo Ball ($11.6K) are coming off a historic night in which they both logged triple doubles and will likely be a popular pairing on this slate due to recency bias alone. This may be a spot where you simply eat the chalk with the Lakers though as the Wizards rank second to last in the NBA this season in defensive rating while giving up 118 points per game, also 2nd worst in the league.
The key thing to watch in this game is really on the Washington side, and since this is the first game on the slate, we “should” have all the news we need before lock. Trevor Ariza is on his way to the Wizards in exchange for Kelly Oubre and Austin Rivers and it sounds unlikely that Ariza will be able to suit up which when combined with the news that Otto Porter is a GTD and was unable to practice Saturday, this could be an extremely short-handed Wizards team.
Step back and just think about what we could see – a Wizards team without Dwight Howard, Otto Porter, Kelly Oubre, Austin Rivers and Trevor Ariza would mean a condensed rotation of 6, maybe 7 guys? This is shaping up to be an all-in game stack kind of spot.
John Wall ($16.9K) and Bradley Beal ($15.1K) become elite plays in this pace up spot and along with Markieff Morris, Jeff Green and Tomas Satoransky you could be looking at a situation where all five of these guys is asked to play 30+ minutes.
As an example – you can stack up all five Wizards noted above with Lonzo/LeBron and still have 10.8K for the last spot on your FantasyDraft roster. It is too early to say this is a lock and load route butif we get news that Ariza is unavailable and Otto Porter is not able to play – this may be a spot where you roll our 4-5 Wizards in all formats. If Porter is ruled in, the same logic really would still apply and all it really does is pushed Jeff Green out of your player pool.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays:
With so much focus on the Lakers/Wizards, it will be interesting to see how much ownership disparity there is between someone like LeBron and Anthony Davis ($20.7K). The Pelicans/Heat has “only” a 221 total but has the second fastest projected pace and is a game environment where both teams are expected to see a pace boost.
Much like the Lakers/Wizards, this game is loaded with injuries that should open up value as the Pelicans will likely be without Nikola Mirotic (doubtful) and Elfrid Payton once again which means all the offense will continue to run through AD, Julius Randle and Jrue Holiday. We saw in their last game against OKC that all three players can co-exist with big fantasy nights as AD went for 70+ and Jrue and Randle went for around 45 each.
While the Lakers play on the tail end of a back to back, with three games in four nights – going from Houston to Charlotte to DC – the Pelicans have been off since Wednesday and have been at home this entire team. A well rested AD may be worth paying the premium here as he has gone for 65 and 90 fantasy points the last two times he faced Miami and combined with Randle/Holiday could be a GPP winning trio at reduced ownership IF the masses flock to the Lakers/Wizards.
The Miami Heat meanwhile will be banged up without Goran Dragic and possibly without Dwyane Wade which should open up value for Miami here as well. We saw a similar outlook for Miami in their last game against Memphis and even with the banged up back-court, Miami still managed to play a nine man rotation with all 9 playing 20+ minutes and only Josh Richardson and Tyler Johnson seeing 30+ minutes.
The Heat are priced fairly with Hassan Whiteside being the most expensive ply at $12.7K so there is a path to easily stack them with the higher priced Pelicans here but there is considerably more risk than say sing the Wizards who will have a much more defined and condensed rotation on this slate.
NBA DFS – Value Plays:
Heading into the final game of the night, the Raptors and Nuggets could end up being an elite source of value, however we may not have all the news we need heading into that game. We already know Jonas Valancunas is out and we know that both Kyle Lowry and Pascal Siakam are questionable for this match-up.
If Lowry sits, we can go right back to Fred Van Vleet ($10.2K) and if Siakam is out, it would likely be a combination of CJ Miles ($6.8K) and OG Anunoby ($6.5K) to fill that role. It is worth noting, in the last game with Siakam out in the second half, it was Miles who got essentially all the fourth quarter run alongside Kawhi Leonard and company. Speaking of Kawhi, if you are looking to go more balanced tonight – Kawhi could end up being the forgotten star with everyone focused on LeBron and AD so building a balanced line-up with Kawhi and fading the higher priced stars could end up be a nice contrarian build that would get a huge boost if Lowry is indeed ruled out.
Enjoy this Sunday afternoon NBA DFS slate – keep an eye on the Wizards news and the Raptors value and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR and for all your Sunday DFS content!
Next. FantasyDraft Week 15 NFL GPP Breakdown. dark
Best of luck today in your NBA DFS and NFL DFS contests and we will see you back here on Monday!