NBA DFS Picks and Pivots Wednesday December 26 – To AD or Not?
Welcome to the Wednesday 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.
The Christmas Day NBA action was a great watch all day including an OT thriller between the Celtics and Sixers. From a DFS perspective the winning scores pushed well past 350 on FantasyDraft as a star dominant slate saw four of the games best go for 60+ and in total eight players went for 50+ fantasy points which pushed the scores higher on a five game 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 – Day after Christmas Special:
I hope you all had a great Christmas, whether you celebrate or not, and got to spend some time with family and friends and hopefully caught some great NBA action as well. We have little time to ease back in into the NBA DFS schedule however as we get hit with a monster 10 game slate tonight before getting a nice looking string of slates (no more 2-3 game duds) for the next week.
The big question on tonight’s slate is what do you do with Anthony Davis ($21K)? The Pelicans/Mavericks game has a 228 total which is one of the highest on the slate and has the third fastest projected pace of play of any game tonight so by all accounts the game environment seems ideal for AD.
What is interesting about AD here tonight is he stands alone as the only true superstar to pay up for, one night after the NBA had all its big stars seemingly on display. At $21K, AD is $3.5K more expensive than the next closest player on the slate and would need to eclipse 70 fantasy points to make this price tag “worth it” – a mark he has hit in only four games in the thirty he has played this year.
AD has faced off with DeAndre Jordan 17 times in his career, 16 of which came as a member of the Clippers, and The Brow has only managed to eclipse 60 fantasy points twice with one game last season going for over 70.Davis and the Pelicans did play Dallas earlier this season on December 5 where AD went for 59.5 fantasy points on the back of 27 points, 9 assists and 5 blocked shots in 34 minutes.
It is hard to argue that AD doesn’t have the highest ceiling on this slate and if we wake up tomorrow and look back at this slate and Davis is the top raw point play on the slate I sincerely doubt any of us would be surprised. The question comes down to the simple fact of “is he worth it?”
At $21K you simply are going to need a 70-80 point ceiling game from AD in order to make the investment worth it. The fact that he is the lone superstar and pay up on the slate could leave him “over-owned” as well which gives you the chance to not only fade the player but fade the roster build that accompanies paying up for the only big spend. It becomes a tough choice but one I think that will be at the core of your roster decisions today.
NBA DFS – Building Our Core:
One of the interesting aspects of tonight’s slate is we have minimal injury news to watch, at least initially, with one spot that narrative lovers will be keeping an eye on as Derrick Rose ($12.5K) could get a start against his former Chicago Bulls team at the United Center with Jeff Teague still banged up. Rose himself missed the last game but did practice on Monday and my guess is we see him take the court after getting a few days off to heal.
Rose actually played the Bulls already once this season and but up 33 fantasy points in a game that took place in Minnesota and will be making only his second trip to Chicago as a visitor, with his first coming as a member of the Knicks in 2016 where he dropped 44 FPTS against his former squad. If Rose misses, Tyus Jones would likely be a core value play at under $9K but my guess is that Rose suits up and puts up a vintage performance against his old squad.
If there is one “spend up” on this slate, it may actually be from this game where Karl-Anthony Towns ($17.2K) will get another crack at a Bulls team he dominated earlier this season to the tune of 35 points, 23 rebounds and over 73 fantasy points which was his best fantasy performance of the year against any team.
Speaking of big men that should dominate – Andre Drummond ($16.8K) gets an elite match-up against a Wizards team that has given up 50 fantasy points in back to back games to Myles Turner and DeAndre Ayton. The Wizards simply have nobody on the interior to stop Drummond as this Washington team gives up the most offensive rebounds per game in the NBA and the second most total rebounds per game – although Drummond has yet to face them in the regular season, he did put up 20/17 on them in the preseason.
One of the reasons I think you can look to pivot off AD is that you have elite upside with guys like KAT and Drummond at a significant discounts. One of the other reasons I think you can pivot off AD, without losing exposure to the Pelicans, is you can lock in Julius Randle ($14.5K) with Nikola Mirotic out once again.
Randle has been a “core play” for many in recent games including his REVENGE spot against the Lakers but after failing to top 40 fantasy points in three straight, does he become a bit over-looked tonight? In the earlier season match-up against Dallas, Randle put up 27 points, 18 rebounds and 53 fantasy points and if you want some leverage off AD – going with Randle could be the route to get you there tonight.
NBA DFS – A Game Stack Spot:
Normally a game with a slate high total near 240 and the fastest projected pace would be the clear chalk spot but I honestly am not sure if that will be the case with the Clippers and Kings tonight due to the lack of name value within this game. These teams played once already, a 133-121 game back on 11/29 so we know the points will come in droves while the defense will be played sparingly.
Over the last 10 games, the Kings (24th) and Clippers (29th) rank among the bottom 7 in defensive efficiency and when you layer that on top of this being a meeting with two top 10 pace squads this season, this feels like a spot you simply need to have exposure to.
The hard part with these teams is that they are getting healthy and run deep(er) rotations without any superstar plays on either side so you find yourself in a position where you may feel like you are over-paying for the mid-tier – again, a reason why I think this game could go under-owned.
De’Aaron Fox and Tobias Harris are the perfect examples of great plays from a game environment perspective but at $14.7K and $14K respectively, are we paying a premium for this game that will be tough to pay off.
At these price points, in GPP’s where you need 3.5x to win, you would need to get 50+ fantasy points from these plays to “pay off salary” – a mark that each guy has hit only twice in 33 games played each. The game environment is ideal but stacking them feels like a losing proposition when you consider how rare it is for these guys to hit their ceiling games.
That is where this game stack seems to lose steam – you have a great game environment to attack without the superstar play to build around – which leads me right back to Anthony Davis and the decision you need to make.
What if I take the lone superstar on the slate as a one-off and game stack the highest total and fastest pace game around him?
The first time these two teams met, a total of nine players from the game went for 30+ fantasy points but none went for over 45 so what you seemingly have here is a great game where multiple guys hit mid-tier value but you don’t have any one guy who is giving you the 60-70 point game that takes you over the top – but maybe that guy happens to be sitting in another game and now you can find your way to a build you feel comfortable with.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
So we started this article off with the simple question – what to do with Anthony Davis? There is no doubt in my mind that we have viable pivot plays with guys like Drummond, KAT or Julius Randle as a leverage play but at the end of the day nobody has the ceiling of Davis and if he is on, he breaks the slate.
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The hard part is finding a way to pay up for him while filling in around him with a mid-tier/value you like. This is where the Clippers/Kings game works perfectly in correlation with AD as you get the best game stack paired with the best play on the slate.
Example:
G: Lou Williams
G: Buddy Hield
F/C: Anthony Davis
F/C: Nemanja Bjelica
F/C: Danilo Gallinari
UTIL: Montrezl Harrell
UTIL: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
As I mentioned earlier, the Clippers/Kings game the first time around saw 9 guys go for 30+ fantasy points which is really all you are looking for if you stack them with someone like AD. Think of it this way – if the 7 Clippers/Kings you roster get you around 35/fantasy points each in a balanced game stack – you have 250-ish fantasy points with AD layered on top which sets you up for a 300+ night with upside.
Ultimately tonight comes down to whether to AD or not and I can make strong arguments either way – the question becomes which route do you want to go?
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