NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday December 17
Welcome to the Monday 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.
Sunday’s NBA DFS slate was about as Stars/Scrubs-centric as I can remember on a four game slate as the crazy Raptors value that opened up as a result of all of Lowry, Siakiam and Van Vleet sitting, meant we could lock in 2-3 and even 4 studs into our FantasyDraft lineups. Ultimately if you missed out on John Wall‘s massive 80 fantasy point night, then you likely knew your night was over early and as someone who had him, I can tell you even rostering him didn’t guarantee a spot above the cash line in all your contests. It was critical you paired him with other stars like Anthony Davis and Kawhi Leonard and in my case, it meant avoiding a total dud from LeBron James who put up a brutal 25 fantasy points.
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 – Monday’s NBA DFS Slate:
Before we jump into today’s NBA DFS action we have another Picks and Pivots FREE ROLL from our friends at FantasyDraft who are giving away ten tickets to Tuesday’s NBA DFS slate to the top 10 finishers, including a $25 Pick and Roll ticket to the first place winner. Please feel free to join and share this contests with friends as we can have up to 250 people per day included in this single entry free roll!
Looking over this slate, what jumps out to me is the lack of things that really jump out. We have 8 games on the slate with only 6 having Vegas totals of this writing but in today’s NBA to see only one total over 220, it feels a bit odd. Only two teams on the slate are projected to see material point increases (over 2 points higher than their season average), with the Timberwolves and Suns and there is no game environment where both teams see a significant pace boost – leading me to find more places to cross off initially than I may normally on an eight game slate.
The most “obvious” spot from a Vegas perspective is the Minnesota-Sacramento game with a 231 total and the fastest projected pace on the slate. Now this game just happened a few days ago on December 12th and ended with a 141-130 score so my guess is that people will flock to this game with the high total and ease in looking at the recent game logs.
Outside of Karl-Anthony Towns ($18.6K), the player pool in this game is priced very fairly in the mid-tier which makes it an easy mix and match stacking spot. The more however I look at this game, the less I want to build my core in tournaments around it – especially if it becomes super popular.
As great as a 270 game total was the last time these two teams played – you know how many people went for 40+ fantasy points? Two. You know how many went for 50+? Zero.
My point is, there is really nobody in this game that I think can set the cash line on their own and as the last game showed, this is a game where you have seemingly evenly distributed fantasy production with 3-4 guys on each team putting up 30-35 fantasy points.
Now to be clear, there is nothing wrong with that balanced approach but I am not sure this is the game and player pool I want to plant my flag with. The Wolves will have Taj Gibson back which knocks Dario Saric value back to his bench role and the Kings, will be playing their third game in four nights after a game at home against Golden State then playing on the road in Dallas last night and tonight having to trek to Minnesota.
We saw yesterday, the Lakers were in a similar 3 game sin 4 nights with travel situation and they came out incredibly flat – and that’s with a significantly different talent base (no offense Kings but if LeBron can dud in that spot, not sure I want to count on Nemanja Bjelica).
One fun note – it is Buddy Hield‘s birthday so all you narrative fans – FIRE HIM UP!
NBA DFS – A Game Stack to Love….and Hate:
I had to chuckle this morning as I jumped into our Fantasy CPR writer’s chat to see if folks had articles ready for review to go out today and saw a string of comments about tonight’s NBA slate which were calling out a certain game on tonight’s slate that they hate….and one in which to nobody’s surprise, I love.
Now before you go and scream at me for recommending a Knicks-Suns stack and calling me a THJ fanboy (which is true), just hear me out, I promise there is something to this!
For two teams that have seemingly frustrated us all season long with their rotations and inconsistencies, there are enough injuries and absences tonight on both sides that actually make this a …gulp…safe spot to target. The Knicks were without Damyean Dotson, Alonzo Trier and Mitchell Robinson on Sunday while Trey Burke was able to return. On the Suns side, the Trevor Ariza trade is still not final which means that the Suns should remain short-handed on the wing while they await the arrival of Kelly Oubre and Austin Rivers.
On the Knicks side, if you have been watching them recently, or strolling through the box scores, you may notice that David Fizdale seems to have landed on a starting five he feels comfortable rolling out for 30+ minutes a night and with no Knicks player over $13K on FantasyDraft, this becomes an extremely cost-effective stack with significant upside.
Emmanuel Mudiay ($12.2K) has stepped up his game in a big way recently with a near 30% usage rate over the last three games with 1.2 F/M and 40+ fantasy points in two of those three games. Enes Kanter ($12.8K) is always one of my favorite GPP plays as he has 20-20 and 50 FPT upside any time he takes the court and can be paired with Noah Vonleh/Kevin Knox who are both just under $11K and should thrive in this type of game environment.
The interior “battle” between Kanter and rookie DeAndre Ayton ($13.5K) should make for a nice mini-stack in this game as Ayton ranks 53rd out of 61 centers in DRPM while Kanter is ranked 59th so this could be a case where every time down the floor the two big men are just racking up fantasy points,.
With Trevor Ariza remaining out, it means Mikal Bridges ($7.8K) will remain in the starting lineup which makes him one of the best value plays on the entire slate. The big question here is what you intend to do with Devin Booker ($15.5K) who returned on the 15th in his first game back from injury and wasted no time settling back in with 36 minutes of court time, 28 points, 7 boards and 7 assists on his way to 47 fantasy points.
I think you can make the case for the fade of Booker at this price point and instead build around guys like Ayton, Bridges and someone like T.J. Warren ($12.5K) who maintained a 30% usage rate even with Booker back last game.
Oh yeah – it goes without saying, it’s a Tim Hardaway Jr. kinda night.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample lineup is meant to be illustrative only and is not intended to be a plug and play lineup.
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G: Tim Hardaway Jr.
F/C: DeAndre Ayton
F/C: Enes Kanter
F/C: Mikal Bridges
UTIL: T.J. Warren
UTIL: Kevin Knox
Slate Overview: With it finally looking like the Suns and Knicks are becoming teams, due to injuries and trades, that are settling on a distinct rotation, I think now is the time to fire them up in a game stack and hope that you can capitalize on two of the bottom 5 defensive teams in the NBA playing each other. It is risky for sure but there is significant point per dollar upside and if you are willing to leave out Devin Booker as I showed here, it means you can lock in a one-off stud like Steph Curry, in this stack. I know the Suns/Knicks are teams we find hard to trust but this is a game with a 218+ total (third highest on the slate) and we have a 1.5 point spread so the game environment combined with the mid-level pricing, makes this a great spot for a stack today.
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