NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday January 9
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.
Tuesday’s NBA DFS slate was lower scoring that we typically have seen on slates of that size as winning GPP scores were hovering around 330 fantasy points with the cash line sitting right around 280. On a slate with Russell Westbrook, Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and the Golden State Warriors – it was Andrew Wiggins who led the slate in fantasy points with 61 at single digit ownership
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 – Wednesday NBA DFS Slate Breakdown:
Buckle up kids – we have a 10 game NBA DFS slate to dive into here and a whole lot of stars available to us so let’s dive right in.
As I always do, my first stop is to look at the Vegas data to get a feel for the slate and tonight we have 4 games with 220+ totals including Brooklyn/Atlanta, Washington/Philadelphia, Milwaukee/Houston and Cavs/Pelicans.
Interestingly enough, of the 20 teams in action, only 7 see projected pace increases tonight and the Washington/Philadelphia game is the only one in which both teams see a projected pace boost.
Let’s just start at the top though because this Milwaukee-Houston or Giannis versus Harden battle is where you are going to need to begin your daily research. With a 225 total and a 1.5 point spread, this ESPN nationally televised battle between arguably the two biggest studs on the slate is going to be a popular first stop in roster builds today.
If you are going this route, the most likely path is to pair the two stars together which will cost you over $48K on FantasyDraft and leave you with $9.7K per player for the last 6 spots on your roster which is certainly a viable route considering the pricing structure on this site.
These two have yet to play against each other this season but they did square off twice last year and interestingly enough, neither star was able to get over 55 fantasy points in either meeting. These are two of the better defensive teams in the NBA and the projected pace is relatively average for this game environment but all that goes out the window when you get two stars going against eachother on a national TV stage.
As we know – James Harden will be without Eric Gordon and Chris Paul again tonight so fire up the 40% plus usage rate and 80-90 point fantasy ceiling once again. Giannis Antetokounmpo has put up 70+ in three of his last six games and it is hard to argue that any duo on this slate has the raw upside of this pairing.
The reality is on this slate if you are rostering one, you are likely rostering both and trying to run this back and I cannot even remotely argue that it is a bad idea. We have seen time and time again over the last few weeks in NBA DFS that GPP winning scores have pushed 400 and above and that has always come on slates where the stars have ceiling games – if Harden/Giannis have those games and you do not have them, well good luck. Conversely, if they “only” get you 55-60 fantasy points then you will have a leg up on the field if you can get the right balanced build.
NBA DFS – Building Around Giannis/Harden:
If you want to take the approach of building around a Giannis/Harden stack, it is going to mean finding value and on a ten game NBA DFS, I think we will have more than enough paths to get there.
The Utah Jazz are stop #1 on this value tour as we already know the top 2 PG’s on the Jazz – Ricky Rubio and Dante Exum have been ruled out which will push Raul Neto ($8.2K) into the starting role. When Rubio left the last game in the 1st quarter with in injury, it was Neto who came on to spell him and also started the 2nd half – ultimately playing 29 minutes, racking up 10 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 29 fantasy points.
Now FantasyDraft has made you think about it, boosting his price tag up over $8.2K but even at that tag, if he just replicates last game he is already over 3.5x value and he gets the added benefit of facing a Orlando team that is ranked 25th this year in FPPG allowed to opposing PG’s.
Rudy Gay has already been ruled out for tonight’s game with Memphis which likely means we get another start for Jakob Poetl ($6.8K). In his last two starts, against Detroit and Boston, Poetl has played 23-24 minutes a game and averaging 17.5 FPPG which would be less than even 3x value. Unless we get other injury news, there may be better point per dollar values.
Richaun Holmes ($6.7K) may be the better pivot at this price point after he dropped 30 fantasy points last night in only 18 minutes against the Kings, flashing the kind of point per minute upside that makes him a great punt play on any slate.
The Pistons get the late night hammer against a banged up Lakers squad and it becomes hard to ignore someone in this match-up, where the Pistons get the second largest pace boost and I can roster a starting player who has logged 34 and 35 minutes in his last two games and is only $100 over the stone minimum.
Bruce Brown Jr. ($6.1K) is not a high usage player which is more than supported by the fact he has only 6 FGA per game despite playing over 34 minutes a night but he showed us against Utah, he can get you to 20-25 fantasy points through the peripheral stats (assist/rebounds) and this match-up against the Lake Show is considerably easier. At this price point, it takes very little to pay off this tag and even better, he makes the path to a Giannis/Harden build that much easier.
The most direct path however may be to just stay in the Bucks/Rockets game as outside of Clint Capela ($14.4K), the rest of this game stack is right in the mid-range sweet spot that works around these stars, especially if you use Brown as a punt one-off.
The Rockets, outside of Harden/Capela are all priced below $9K so go ahead and fire up Danuel House, Austin Rivers, Gerald Green or PJ Tucker and you are able to capture 25-35 minutes a per player with ease within a game stack. Tucker and Green were the only two players who went for double-digit FGA in the Rockets last game so the majority of the usage is being funneled to Harden/Capela which means these guys are better off as pieces of a stack then as one-off’s.
NBA DFS – Pivot Plays ….or not?
Diving through the value bin, although the prices were not truly “punts” it was hard to overlook the point per dollar value that exists in Atlanta-Brooklyn as we have a game with a slate high 227 total and the second fastest projected pace.
On the Atlanta side, how do you not go back to Dewayne Dedmon who dropped a 50 burger on this Brooklyn team the last time they met, with 24 points, 12 boards and 5 3PM and somehow is only $9.8K on FantasyDraft. Lock city.
The Hawks are banged up with Kent Bazemore and Taurean Prince out and we will need to keep an eye on the status of Kevin Heurter who missed last night’s game against Toronto which pushed Jeremy Lin ($8.4K) into the starting line-up and all he did was play 35 minutes and give you 36 fantasy points. If Huerter is out again tonight, fire up some LINSANITY REVENGE!
John Collins ($13.5K) put up 42 fantasy points the first time these two met and although the price point is elevated, he makes for one of the safest cash game plays against Brooklyn with considerable GPP upside.
The Nets were a popular value source last game with DeMarree Carroll and Joe Harris out, but with both looking likely to return tonight this will be a tougher spot to sort through.
D’Angelo Russell ($13.7K) is the top dog on this Brooklyn side, going for 56 fantasy points in the previous meeting with the Hawks and has gone for 43+ fantasy points in four of his last five games.
Shabazz Napier ($7.6K) was the mega chalk last slate with his starting role and punt price and my hope is that the return of Carroll/Harris combined with the price uptick gets folks off him here tonight. The reality is, Napier is going to play 25 minutes a night even with Carroll/Harris on the floor as the Nets have been routinely using a three PG line-up in recent weeks so if everyone jumps off, there is merit to staying right on course here.
Rodions Kurucs ($7.7K) was really the player who saw the biggest benefit last game, well besides the ghost of Kenneth Faried, so the status of Carroll/Harris is more likely to impact him then the other Nets fringe plays but as a starting player in this game with RHJ and Crabbe still out – he needs to remain in your player pool.
What stands out to me about this game is that the pricing is reasonable enough where you can actually stack the top pieces here AROUND Harden/Giannis – so we do not even have to pivot – we can lock in the top two plays on the slate and build a game stack around it with arguably the top game environment.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample lineup is meant to be illustrative only and is not meant to be a plug and play lineup.
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G: James Harden
G: D’Angelo Russell
G: Bruce Brown Jr.
F/C: John Collins
F/C: Dewayne Dedmon
UTIL: Shabazz Napier
UTIL: Rodions Kurucs
Slate Overview – The over arching theme on this slate is how can you fit in both Giannis and Harden and there are some clear value plays that help you get there including Bruce Brown Jr, but the more I dig into the Nets/Hawks game, it seems like the pricing is soft enough where you can actually wrap a game stack of this elite spot around the two best plays on the slate.
If you look at the proposed roster build, what stands out to me is the upside. Harden/Giannis are guys with 70-80 point upside and in this match-up, all of D-Russ, Collins and Dedmon have 50+ fantasy point upside so you are looking at the potential for this five man core to get you near 300 fantasy points all by themselves IF you get all ceiling type games.
It is that upside, that when sprinkled in with 3 guys like Brown, Kurucs and Napier who all have paths to minutes and say 25 fantasy points that you can see a path to 350+ with this build which is always the gut check I give myself when building this first look.
Keep an eye on the news and value that may open up today as this is looking like a slate where you are going to need big time scores to cash.
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