NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday January 15 – All The Revenge

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 all about the chalk in what seemed like a spot where you could not avoid it. I am not sure I have ever seen a player owned 95% in a GPP before but that is where we were with Terry Rozier last night and even though he failed to hit 20 fantasy points, the truth was – we all had him. Personally I ended up with 4 Celtics on my roster with Rozier, Morris, Horford and Brown and although it seemed like a lock – the sad reality is that three of these four players failed to even get me to 20 fantasy points. So while the value allowed me and everyone else to get James Harden AND Anthony Davis in their lineups, it was about getting the right Celtics (Jayson Tatum as an example) who outscored all of Rozier, Morris and Horford on his own.

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.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

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 NBA DFS Slate and a FREE ROLL!

Before we get into today’s NBA DFS slate we have a little Tuesday gift for you from our friends at FantasyDraft with a $50 NBA DFS Picks and Pivots FREE ROLL to kick off your day – get in now before it fills up!

Looking over this slate at first glance, even thought we only have six games, we have multiple elite game environments with well over half the teams seeing pace boosts and all but two teams as of this writing, that are expected to see point decreases off their season average.

The first game that stands out tonight is Oklahoma City/Atlanta – a game with a 233 total, highest on the slate, and with by far the fastest projected pace of any available game. This is one of only two games tonight (Minnesota/Philly being the other) where both teams see a pace increase and in this case you have two of the top three pace boosts on the slate as OKC sees the biggest point AND pace boost while the Hawks are not far behind.

In any game environment where Russell Westbrook ($21K) is seeing the largest pace boost – I am not sure how you can make the case to fade him. There are ceiling type game spots for Westbrook in what should be a total track meet against two top 5 pace teams in the NBA this season.

What I love about this spot for the Thunder is how much upside they have as a result of the secondary stats that should be available here. No team in the NBA gives up more steals per game (11) to their opponents than the Atlanta Hawks while also giving up over 5 blocks per game – so not only do we get the pace/point boost, but this added upside presents ceiling game potential for anyone wearing a OKC jersey tonight.

Paul George ($16.7K) and Steven Adams ($13.5K) present high floor/high ceiling stacking options and you can balance them out with cheaper plays like Jerami Grant ($10.3K) and Terrance Ferguson ($6.9K). Now take all this and add-on a little Dennis Schroder ($10.4K) REVENGE NARRATIVE heading back to Atlanta where a tribute video is scheduled – I mean come on, how am I not supposed to play him here?

NBA DFS – Run it Back with Hawks.

If we are going to prioritize the Thunder in a game with a 9 point spread, I think it makes sense to run it back with some Atlanta pieces with the expectation you get a close game and full starters minutes. The Hawks side is a bit trickier as we have some serious injuries to watch for:

Trae Young ($12.1K) and John Collins ($13.6K) are the top two plays here if you are looking to run this game back in a stack and it seems like with Prince/Dedmon/Bazemore/Plumlee all likely out we will have enough value here to make a stack work with relative ease.

The big key here is what the Hawks do up front, as they opted to go small last game with Omari Spellman against the Bucks, but I think with Steven Adams on the other side, they will have no choice but to give Alex Len the minutes. Now, Alex Len ($8K) chalk night rarely works out for those of you who have been around for some time and he could get in serious foul trouble but he did well in the earlier match-up against OKC with 30 fantasy points in 23 minutes of court time and at only $8K, a similar performance would crush value at 3.7X.

Overall, this is a game stack spot priority for me and the pricing is soft enough where you can do it with relative ease.

Go ahead and click in the priority plays here – Westbrook/George and run it back with Young/Collins – you have over $9K per player for the last four roster spots and there are a ton of plays from this game in that price range with Schroder/Grant on the OKC side and Len/Huerter/Bembry on the Atlanta side of this game. Keep an eye on the news and lineup confirmations but I would start your day with a healthy dose of this game in your player pool.

NBA DFS – The Butler Did It:

Anyone who knows me, knows I play NBA DFS for fun – I have a real job, wife/kids – all the normal chaos so for me, DFS has been and always will be a way for me to have some fun each day. Sure would I love to get rich winning a million dollars on a Tim Hardaway Jr stack one night – of course, but I am a single lineup a night kinda guy who plays this for fun.

All that being said – we have a national TV game tonight with Jimmy Butler taking on the Minnesota Timberwolves for the first time.

HOW DO YOU NOT PLAY HIM? I am going to turn this game on at 7PM EST and just enjoy it – I do not care about ownership, I am not trying to break down match-ups or def-eff/pace here – this is all narrative and I want every freaking bit of it tonight.

Remember that last practice where Butler subbed in and proceeded to go bonkers? If you do not – here is a little clip to help you remember from Yahoo Sports:

"Throughout the practice, Butler verbally bashed Towns, Wiggins, president of basketball operations/coach Tom Thibodeau and general manager Scott Layden, league sources said."

The mini-stack here builds itself – Jimmy Butler – Karl-Anthony Towns – Andrew Wiggins.

I am playing it, I do not care if it is without analytical support – this is going to be amazingly fun and I want all of it. ALL OF IT.

The truth is – this game is every bit as awesome as the Thunder/Hawks – we have a 232 total, one point behind OKC/Atlanta and the second fastest projected pace so this is not simply a narrative spot, this is one where Vegas is telling us to go all-in and grab pieces from this game.

On the Philly side – if you are going to take your stand on Butler, then I think it makes sense to fade Simmons/Embiid and hope that this is a spot where the other stars defer to Butler. I know we joke about narratives for DFS but in the NBA I think it is a very real thing and the players have direct control over it – they can feed Butler the ball and make him the story if they want to support their guy. As such I would only use the secondary pieces on Philly like J.J. Redick ($11K) or Wilson Chandler ($6.9K) as complements to Butler.

On the Minnesota side, there are some big time injuries here which not only prop up the usage for guys like KAT and Wiggins but they also open up value. Minnesota will still be without Robert Covington, which is an even bigger boost to Butler without his defense available so Josh Okogie ($8.7K) will continue to push for 30+ minutes a night as a nice mid-tier value play alongside guys like Taj Gibson ($8.5K).

Derrick Rose is questionable to play which in theory should prop up Jeff Teague but after he burned us against New Orleans, and we saw Tyus Jones steal the PG minutes, I am not sure I would go here outside of GPP play.

This is going to be a fascinating game to watch and one I think for those of you who play DFS for fun should game stack, open a cold one and watch this when the slate locks – I know I will be.

Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:

As a reminder, 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: Russell Westbrook

G: Jimmy Butler:

G: JJ Redick

F/C: Karl-Anthony Towns

F/C: Andrew Wiggins

F/C: Taj Gibson

UTIL: Josh Okogie

UTIL: $6K Punt – Cory Joseph/Aaron Holiday?

Slate Overview: My player pool tonight is laser focused on the Hawks/Thunder and Sixers/Wolves with both looking like incredible game stacks to build around. We get fast paces and high totals and stars/values to make the stack easy to build. On thing to keep an eye on that i did not mention – both Darren Collison AND Cory Joseph are questionable tonight against the Suns – so we could get a punt PG value for the Pacers, although we have seen this before and it ends up that all the PG’s play so do not get married to this idea too early.

Enjoy this slate – we have tribute videos and all the revenge – forget analytics, all the narratives baby!

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest NBA DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings each and every night.