NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday January 21 – MLK Day
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.
After only a three game ugly NBA DFS slate on Sunday that took a clear back seat to two incredible NFL games, we get a full day of NBA action as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day with two slates on FantasyDraft – the first which kicks off at 12:30PM EST with 6 games and another 5 games on the “Main” slate which kicks off at 5:30 PM EST.
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 – Early Slate Breakdown:
The early slate on FantasyDraft kicks off at 12:30 PM EST with the Thunder-Knicks from Madison Square Garden, a game that is left off the early slate on DraftKings and only included in the All-Day slate on FanDuel.
Anytime we have a situation like this, I always find it interesting to see how ownership lands when one site becomes the clear spot to get exposure to a game and especially when FanDuel/DraftKings overlook it, the majority of NBA DFS content you read today will exclude this game.
Of the six games available to us on this early slate, the OKC-NY game has one of the highest totals at 227.5 and has the fastest projected pace of any game in action so there is going to be some fantasy goodness here. Russell Westbrook ($20K) is the most expensive player on the slate and is averaging over 61 fantasy points per game in his last 5 and will bring his OKC team, which is playing at the fastest pace in the NBA over the last 10 games into the worlds most famous arena.
The Knicks rank dead last in Def-Eff as a team this season, ranking 23rd or worse against every single position so this is one of those potential all-in stacks where multiple Thunder players could reach their ceiling.
Paul George ($18K) feels fairly priced but my guess is he goes totally over-looked here – not because of the match-up but because hes at the exact same price point as Blake Griffin ($17.5K) who will take on the Wizards without Andre Drummond and Nikola Vucevic ($18K) who may get to take on Atlanta without Aaron Gordon on the court. Assuming the ownership flows to Griffin and Vuc, my guess is PG13 comes in at single digit ownership and has the same 50+ point ability as either of the other two big men.
You know it is killing me to get a slate with Tim Hardaway Jr. ($11.8K) in a pace up spot and not to just hit the lock button blindly. The truth is, outside of a GPP dart, this is a player with a 20% usage rate the last two weeks who has only gone for 30+ fantasy points one time in the new year. The appeal with THJ for me was that this was always a player with a sky high usage rate and ton of FGA’s per game that was priced at a discount relative to is volume but he has taken a clear back seat offensively to Emmanuel Mudiay and Kevin Knox in recent weeks.
The reality is, there is only one player (Enes Kanter) who has put up over a FP/M in the last two weeks on this Knicks team and even though the game environment is a good one, I think there are better spots to build around which leaves this early game to me as a stack or nothing spot.
NBA DFS – Early Slate Injuries and Upside:
Much like we had on Saturday, it becomes really hard to get away from the pairing of Blake Griffin ($17.5K) and Zaza Pachulia ($7.8K) against a depleted Wizards front-line with Andre Drummond’s usage falling to the remaining Pistons. These two combined for nearly 85 fantasy points against the Kings which would return over 3.3x value at this price point so there is still profit at these prices. Griffin put up 50 against Washington already this season in a game Drummond was active for – this is a don’t get cute spot, Blake is a foundation piece of your lineups today.
As enticing as the Knicks-OKC game is from a Vegas perspective, the best game on the board in my mind is the Nets-Kings, a game with a slate high 230 total, a 3 point spread and the second fastest projected pace of any of the six games.
Over the course of the season, the Kings have been one of the fastest pace teams in the NBA and in previous seasons we always viewed Brooklyn much in that same light but this year they rank 19th in the NBA in that metric. With the Nets getting healthy and playing some of the best team basketball in the NBA, what may be getting over-looked is how much faster Brooklyn is playing, playing at the third fastest pace in the league over the last three games – interestingly enough against slow-paced teams like the Rockets, Magic and Celtics.
I am a huge fan of D’Angelo Russell ($15.3K), both as an NBA player and as a DFS target – I say it all the time but how many other players in this price range can drop 50-60 any given night? D-Russ over the last two weeks has a 34% usage rate and is putting up under 1.4 FP/M and has 55+ fantasy points in two of his last three games.
The Nets are getting healthy, the rotations change from night to night and much like their opponent, the Sacramento Kings, they become a hard time to peg when building your line-ups. There is ceiling potential here though in a game stack as you can run D-Russ back with Jarrett Allen and bring back the Kings trio of De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield and Willie Cauley-Stein.
That five man core in arguably the best game environment of the slate, leaves you with roughly $11K per player for the last three spots in your build. This is another game, much like the Knicks-OKC where I find myself more interested in a stack or bust kind of approach as the price points here are all high and even though the path to ceiling games is clear, picking multiple pieces from two of the deepest/most inconsistent rotations in the NBA could be a tough spot to nail all the plays from.
NBA DFS – Landing on an Early Slate Core:
At first glance there are three players that I am starting my core build with regardless of game type and that is Russell Westbrook with the Pistons duo of Blake Griffin and Zaza Pachulia.
We have already covered the Blake/Zaza duo and it becomes hard in a pace up spot to simply not lock in Westbrook in Madison Square Garden where if we played this slate out 100 times he would likely be the top raw point play in the majority of those slates.
Locking in this trio leaves you with $11K per player and I think you can go a few different routes.
- Option 1 – Stack around the Knicks/Thunder – The OKC-New York game may actually be the only one we have confirmed news for before lock and that alone may make it one of the safer routes on a non-late swap site like FantasyDraft.
- Outside of PG13 and Steven Adams, every other player in this game is under $12K so you can easily mix and match guys in this mid-range, especially from the Knicks side in hopes that guys like Mudiay, Knox and THJ can keep it close and match Westbrook on the other side.
- Option 2 – Stack up the Nets/Kings
- This one is a bit trickier as if you go this route, you will likely want to pay up for Russell/Fox type plays like sit at $14-$15K which means you may have to balance it with some cheapies like Treveon Graham or Iman Shumpert as punt plays with clear paths to minutes.
- Option 3 – Wait for News:
- As silly as it sounds, this may be the riskiest because with the early start and a ton of news we want, waiting on news and taking shots on guys without confirmation could be critical. If Aaron Gordon is out, shoe-horning in Vucevic against the Hawks may become a priority. The Mavericks may be without DeAndre Jordan, which could open up a starting spot for Dwight Powell ($6.4K) as an elite punt option.
With two clear top pace game environments with both the New York clubs in action, that is likely where my core will fall with some combination around my Westbrook/Blake/Zaza trio. Keep an eye on the news – be ready in the minutes leading up to lock to adjust and play ti smart – we have two slates today and a ton of contests to choose from so make sure you manage your bankroll wisely.
NBA DFS – Main Slate Overview:
The Main Slate kicks off at 5:30 PM EST so again, make sure you are setting aside time today pre-lock as we have some odd start times and with 5 hours between the first and last game on the Main Slate, we may not have all the news we need.
James Harden ($23.4K) becomes the top story on the Main Slate and once again, he is simply not someone I am even entertaining fading, especially not on a short slate. On FantasyDraft, you have $11K per player for the rest of your build even with Harden in it and I am simply making a guy who has gone for 70+ in six straight, the top priority in my builds – it is that simple.
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The Rockets/Sixers game has a slate high 234 total (tied with Warriors/Lakers), and we could end up with a crazy amount of value here as Joel Embiid is questionable with back tightness AND Jimmy Butler, the old General, is a GTD due to “right wrist soreness.”
Here is the rub – this game is at 8PM EST, 2.5 hours after lock so there is a very real risk we don’t know the news here but it is the key spot to watch. If Embiid/Butler or some combination does sit, all of a sudden Ben Simmons becomes a must play and the value of guys like Furkan Kormaz and Mike Muscala would vault into near must play status.
Speaking of important injuries – a certain Anthony Davis will be out for the next 1-2 weeks and we all know what to do – lock button Jrue Holiday, Julius Randle and Nikola Mirotic, who all have put up 1.2 FP/M with AD off the court.
You are starting to see a clear core develop – and if the Sixers value materializes, this becomes an easy build.
Start with Harden, add in Jrue/Mirotic and Randle – that leaves you with $8.7K for the last four spots on your roster and frankly, you may not have to leave Houston/Philly to make that work.
The Rockets are all incredibly cheap – with Eric Gordon and PJ Tucker being the only members of the team over $10K (and just barely) so you can mix and match the value here with guys we know will play a ton of minutes. If we get the Sixers news – all of TJ McConnell, Furkan Korkmaz and Mike Muscala are in the $6-$7K range and would make elite value plays.
This Main Slate feels very cut and dry IF we get the injury news to break in the Sixers game before lock, I see no reason to get cute – it becomes Harden, the Pelicans trio without AD and as many cheap value guys from Sixers/Rockets as I can make work.
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