NBA DFS Picks and Pivots Wednesday January 23
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 dominated by stars and it was that Stars and Scrubs build I was trying to get to all day which really ended up breaking through as the result of some late breaking Kings news. As I outlined yesterday, my goal was to try to get all of Westbrook, PG13, Lillard and KAT in the same lineup and considering they all went for 60+ and ended up the top 4 scorers, I am glad this route worked. The issue all day long was finding the right value and thankfully the Kings did us a solid by sitting multiple starters which gave us a free punt play in Yogi Ferrell in addition to the chalk Dragan Bender value. Had you locked in these 6 players, you were starting with 317 fantasy points before you even lock in your last 2 guys which is a heck of a way to start your builds.
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 – Welcome to Madison Square Harden:
Stars and Scrubs – there is simply no way to get around it tonight, you are going Stars and Scrubs in every build as we have tons of elite plays and seemingly endless paths to value at first glance.
One BIG note here for you FantasyDraft Players – they have left off the Pacers/Raptors game at 7PM EST which means this slate locks at 7:30 PM EST so make sure you not only remove that first game from your player pool but you recognize we get an extra half hour before lock!
In a Stars and Scrubs build, there is one star you are locking in everywhere and that is James Harden ($24K). Listen, the price is high and in a vacuum you can argue the fade on price alone but in the context of this slate and all the value we will touch on, I simply do not see a reason to fade him here against the Knicks in Madison Square Harden, I mean Garden.
This is a guy who has dropped 75+ in 5 of his last 6 games and if the value is going to break like I think it will, there is no excuse to simply pay the freight and move on – it is just that simple.
The next stop for both Stars and Scrubs is in Philadelphia as this is one of the key spots to watch. The Sixers are playing the Spurs and the big news here is that both Ben Simmons and Jimmy Butler are questionable to play.
Over the last month, if you take both those guys off the court Joel Embiid ($19.1K) has a 45.6% usage rate and 2.1 FP/M. I know the price for Harden in theory should make this an either/or decision but I think you lock in both players if Simmons/Butler are ultimately ruled out because this becomes a spot for us to get our value.
If Simmons/Butler are indeed ruled out – Philly is going to be value city with guys like T.J. McConnell ($7.6K), Furkan Korkmaz ($6.3K) and even Corey Brewer ($7.3K) all looking like elite value plays with major minutes available. Brewer drew the start for Butler last game and played 32 minutes but we have also seen Korkmaz get this run when Butler has been out – so we need to wait for lineup news. Thankfully we have an extra half hour for lock tonight on FantasyDraft as this game tips off at 8PM and hopefully we have the news before then!
NBA DFS – New News Versus Old News:
I talk about this a lot in NBA DFS as our inclination being daily players is to gravitate and overemphasize the news of the day and sometimes we too quickly move past the “old news.” On this slate with so much news (ie. the Sixers stars), I wonder how that changes the popularity on old/recent news that has every bit the impact on this slate.
With Andre Drummond still in concussion protocol, the Pistons are going to remain the Blake Griffin ($17.8K) show against a AD-less Pelicans front court. We talked about this when Drummond first went out, but Blake has a 36% plus usage rate and 1.4 FP/M with Drummond off the court and all he has done is put up 54 and 47 fantasy points the last two games without him. The price has creeped up and he hasn’t had that “massive game” but again, as I said with Harden – I don’t think price/salary is an issue today – and I think you can lock in all of Harden/Embid/Griffin into a lineup without having to get overly cute.
In the same game, the Pelicans will be without AD – so we know what to do – go right back to the trio of Jrue Holiday, Nikola Mirotic and Julius Randle – who just dropped 130+ fantasy points combined against Memphis and will be in the second fastest projected pace game environment.
Right now, this trio sits just behind Embiid/Blake on my priority list but let’s say that Simmons and Butler end up playing – I could argue this trio now leapfrogs Embid as core plays. Jahlil Okafor ($9K) drew the start for AD last game and dominated to the tune of 20/10 in 35 minutes and racked up 40 fantasy points – on FantasyDraft they have been quick to hike his price from the $6K point last game so the value is not nearly the same, but there is still ample profit potential here if you want to go back to the Pelicans center.
OK enough of the day old value, we got more new value to cover here.
Al Horford will rest tonight for the Celtics against the Cavaliers while the Cavs will remain without Thompson, Nance and Love. Ante Zizic ($12.3K) has seen his price rise substantially and while the player is still a good target in theory, it makes way more sense to take the significant discount in the same game on Aron Baynes ($6.8K) who will likely draw the start for Horford.
We actually can go back to a game on 11/30 between these two teams where Horford was also out and Baynes drew the start – playing 23 minutes, racking up 10/9 and 24 fantasy points to give you an indication of a potential outcome. With a similar output tonight, Baynes would give you 3.5x value at this price point and that is tough to pass on!
NBA DFS – Keep on Punting:
OK, I had to go back in the archive a bit to find a picture of these two guys playing each-other but Enes Kanter and Kenneth Faried become two additional cheap big men that we can target tonight as they will seemingly rise from the dead into big roles tonight in NYC.
Kanter was basically banished to the bench as the third string Center with the Knicks going to a youth movement but an injury to Luke Kornet means that Kanter ($9.6K) will head back to the starting lineup and take on a Rockets team that is just getting destroyed by opposing Centers since Clint Capela went out with an injury.
In the last week, Jarrett Allen dropped a 20/24 lines on his way to 60 fantasy points while the Lakers duo of Javale McGee and Ivica Zubac combined for a 29/21 line in 37 minutes which resulted in a combined 66 fantasy points for the two-headed monster. All this way before Joel Embiid smacked down Houston for 32/14 on his way to 63 fantasy points in the last game.
Now Kanter is clearly not Embiid but his 20/20 ability when given the minutes, means he has a Jarrett Allen like ceiling here and for under $10K that is hard to pass up.
On the other side, Faried ($8.6K) was solid in his Rockets debut, playing 23 minutes, getting 20 FP on the back of a 13/6 line and although the price has come up a bit, this is the kind of game environment he could thrive in.
Listen, Faried and Kanter are certainly not strong defenders – these are rebounding monsters that are going to be plenty busy especially with the number of 3’s the Rockets put up. I love the idea of using them both alongside Harden and getting the all-around game equity here as they will likely gobble up any/all rebounds from the misses in this game and likely get some easy put backs when they are on offense.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
This sample lineup is always meant to be illustrative and even more so on this slate with so much news TBD – use this as a framework for ideas and do not simply plug and play as the injury news will likely change throughout the day.
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G: James Harden
G: TJ McConnell
F/C: Joel Embiid
F/C: Blake Griffin
F/C: Aron Baynes
UTIL: Enes Kanter
UTIL: Kenneth Faried
Slate Overview: Stars and Scrubs – that is what this slate is all about. There is going to be elite value all over the place tonight which makes the ceiling type studs even easier to fit in so my first piece of advice – ignore the 3x multiplier tonight – I think you are going to need 350+ easily tonight to even min-cash on a slate like this. It may end up being chalky, but it is chalk that you simply have to eat and find ways on the fringe to be different. Keep an eye on the news and be ready to adjust and remember on FantasyDraft, you get an extra 30 minutes before lock tonight!
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