NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday January 8
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s NBA DFS slate was much more “normal” based on the season long trends as we saw winning GPP scores around 350 points while the cash line was set right around 300 on FantasyDraft in GPP play. The big three stars on the night, Anthony Davis, James Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo were the top raw point scorers on the night with AD and Harden being the only two players to crack 60 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 – Tuesday Night NBA DFS and a FREE ROLL!
Before we jump into tonight’s NBA DFS slate – we are pleased to bring you a little Tuesday Picks and Pivots FREE ROLL courtesy of our friends at FantasyDraft who are giving away 10 tickets to the top finishers in tonight’s contests. Hurry and join, only 250 spots are available.
The first thing I do when I open any NBA DFS slate is to first ground myself in the Vegas data and try to get a feel for the slate and right away there are a few things that stand out to me tonight.
First, we have 6 of the 8 games with 225 or higher Vegas totals with 10 of the 16 teams in action seeing a pace boost so be prepared for some high scores and fantasy totals tonight.
Secondly, we have two games in Denver/Miami and Indiana/Cleveland that have under 210 totals and the two slowest projected paces as the only two games where both teams see a pace decrease so we may be able to simplify and turn this into a six game slate right off the bat.
Of the 6 remaining games, two have some big time blowout potential – and I mean big – as the Knicks are 17 point underdogs in Golden State and Atlanta is a two touchdown dog heading to Toronto.
Very quickly this becomes a four game slate where we can start to hone our player pool around:
- Washington and Philadelphia – 225 total
- Sacramento and Phoenix – Opened at 229 but we have big injury news with Devin Booker to watch
- Charlotte and Clippers – 230 total
- Minnesota and OKC – 225 Total
With that in mind, let’s start attacking this slate.
NBA DFS – Finding Our Core Build:
With so many high totals and projected pace up spots on this slate, this is going to be a slate in my opinion where the cash line is high and winning GPP scores are even higher. With that said, I want to find game environments to build around that give me high Vegas totals, fast paced action and multiple stars to build around with value to balance it out.
Enter Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves.
This game has the second fastest projected pace, behind only Atlanta/Toronto, with a 225 total and a whole lot of star power to build around. Over the last 10 games, Oklahoma City is playing at the fastest pace in the entire NBA with 96 FGA per game which is second in the league during the time – while Minnesota ranks 9th in FGA during that time frame – meaning this is going to be a fast paced game and a whole lotta chucking!
Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Karl-Anthony Towns are an expensive trio, in fact they cost you over $57K of your $100K salary on FantasyDraft but I would argue there is no better trio of stars to build around tonight.
There is some significant amount of injury news as well here as Minnesota will be without Derrick Rose and Robert Covington, which opens up value and in the case of RoCo, takes the best defensive option off the court against Paul George.
On the Thunder side, they will still be without Alex Abrines and Andre Roberson, which may sound like nothing, but it opens up Terrance Ferguson to get 30+ minutes of court time at SG at just $200 over the minimum on FantasyDraft.
The OKC side is completely straight-forward – you play Westbrook and PG13, two players with 35% plus usage rates and 1.3 FP/M rates over the last week and while guys like Steven Adams and Jerami Grant are fine complimentary plays, they become guys I put in as last men in if the price points work, rather than guys I am prioritizing.
Minnesota will be playing their first game after firing Coach Thibs and I do believe that matters to players – especially with this being a National TV game on NBA TV – I think the Timberwolves come out firing tonight.
Karl-Anthony Towns has had a 32% usage rate while putting up 1.7 FP/M over the last week with Covington and Rose out and although the individual match-up with Adams is tough, he has shown his upside in this exact spot, dropping 33 points, 19 rebounds and 4 blocks, good for 66 fantasy points against Adams in his best game against him last season.
Jeff Teague (12.3K) has come back strong in his first two games since injury, with 45 fantasy points in back to back games, putting up 1.5 FP/M and should get all the run he can handle with Rose sidelined.
Josh Okogie and Taj Gibson are both under $9K and although the usage is low, we get guaranteed minutes that we can use withing a game stack. I would not use these guys, or players like Terrance Ferguson, as one-off value plays – they are complimentary pieces only within a game stack.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays
With three other games at our “core” player pool – we certainly have pivot options although in my opinion they fall flat of the upside in OKC/Minnesota.
Philadelphia and Washington is a game that will have a high total, but it also has a fully healthy Philadelphia team that will have Jimmy Butler and Ben Simmons alongside Joel Embiid which caps the upside of all three. Not only does it cap the ceiling for the three pricey stars but it also crushes the value of guys like Furkan Korkmaz and T.J McConnell, who by the way has finally seen his price jump over $8K on FantasyDraft after two weeks of being locked in at $6.8K.
Sacramento and Phoenix has some juicy Vegas data but with the Kings on a back to back and the Suns potentially being without Devin Booker, this may end up as DeAndre Ayton one-off and not much else honestly.
The Clippers and Hornets is probably the most logical pivot, with a slate high 230 total and a projected fast pace and gives you an intriguing balanced game stack with only Kemba Walker being priced above $14K on FantasyDraft.
If you want to stack this game – well it is easy.
Go ahead and click in Kemba with your choice of Hornets secondary plays like Nicolas Batum or Marvin Williams and run it back with all the Clippers you want – Lou Williams, Tobias Harris, Danilo Gallinari and Montrezl Harrell – and you still have $12K for the last “one-off” play in your build.
There is a clear path to a balanced build here if you want to use it, but I worry about the lack of upside in this game stack as we have seen time and again, on this slates where winning GPP scores push close to 400 points, its largely driven by ceiling games from superstars.
Who in this game is giving you that 70-80 point night? Sure everyone here has a path to 30-40 fantasy points and in a few cases, a ceiling game of 50 is possible, but IF guys like Westbrook, PG13 or KAT go for their ceiling games, you simply do not have the horses to keep pace.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this is a sample lineup only, meant to be illustrative and should not be used as a Plug and Play build.
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G: Russell Westbrook
G: Jeff Teague
G: Josh Okogie
F/C: Karl-Anthony Towns
F/C: Paul George
F/C: Taj Gibson
UTIL: Terrance Fergsuon
UTIL: Cory Joseph (if Darren Collison is out)
Slate Overview: The more I looked at this slate the easier it felt to eliminate plays and narrow down the player pool with a few slow-paced games and a few big time blowouts.
The one thing I want to watch today is injury/rest news – specifically like a team with Golden State – as with a near 20 point spread, wouldn’t this be a perfect game to give 1-2 of your stars a night off? If that happens, and I think it is very possible, it would open up value AND make the remaining Warriors near must plays so keep an eye on that.
If everyone plays there, then you are pick to picking your favorite spot and for me, that is easily OKC-Minnesota. This game gives us the fast-paced game environment and all the star power to get there and there looks to be ample value on the Minnesota side with the ability to pick and choose from other games as need be to make it work.
Also – and this is CRITICAL. Vince Carter is headed back to Toronto tonight. Narrative alert in full effect.
Good luck tonight all! Get in that Free Roll and let’s go!
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