NBA DFS Picks and Pivots Saturday, February 2

Welcome to the Saturday 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.

Friday Night’s NBA DFS slate was one that going in felt like a necessary two star night and with four key studs to pay up for in James Harden, Nikola Jokic, Russell Westbrook and Paul George, it seemed like the roster builds all generally felt the same. As the dust settled, it was no real surprise that these four players happened to be the top raw point plays on the night as the only four to go for 50+ fantasy points but it was Paul George who was really the key cog as he was not only the highest scoring (67 FPTS) but he was also the lowest owned (22% compared to Jokic at well over 80%). The Jokic/PG13 pairing was the key theme to the top of the leaderboard and with so much value on the Knicks/Grizzlies, many of the top scores ended up having Jokic, PG13 AND Westbrook in the same 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.

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 – Saturday Slate Overview and a FREE ROLL:

Before we jump into this monster 11 game NBA DFS slate, our friends at FantasyDraft were kind enough to hook us up with another $50 NBA FREE ROLL for tonight’s action with 10 tickets to future NBA DFS contests up for grabs.

Also, with the Super Bowl just a day away, make sure you jump into their Big Game Promotion – a free contest where you simply choose a few prop bets on the game and the winners get free NBA DFS contests on FantasyDraft for the rest of the season!

With the NFL on display on Sunday, the NBA looks to take center stage tonight with 11 games on tap, including a national TV battle between LeBron and the Lakers versus Curry/KD and the Champs – yeah this is going to be a good one.

What stands out to me on this slate is that despite the large number of games, there seems to be a pretty clear line in the sand we can draw to limit our player pool as we have 4 games with 220 or lower totals versus 5 games with 230+ totals.

That same clear split is evident in the projected pace as we have 4 clear games that are massive pace up spots with 4 games on the other end of the spectrum that have massive pace down game scripts – so on a slate this big, finding the games to cross off becomes a nice first step in simplifying your player pool.

• Four Games with Lowest Projected Pace (100 or lower total possessions)
  • Jazz/Rockets, Magic/Nets, Heat/Pacers, Mavs/Cavs
• Four Games with 220 or lower game totals
  • Magic/Nets, Bulls/Hornets, Mavs/Cavs, Pacers/Heat

The easy take away here is to simply start to X off these games and focus your research in other spots which makes this a much more digestible slate. The other key thing to note, with a slate this large, we are bound to see ownership spread out especially with multiple high-end games to target, so I would focus far less on ownership on slates like this and simply attack what you deem to be the best plays.

NBA DFS – One Spot to Start:

LeBron on National TV. Against the Warriors.

Go ahead and spend your time digging through games with 200 totals, I’ll happily take the path of least resistance with the best game on the slate – the one with a slate high 236 total, an elite pace up game environment and enough stars capable of breaking the slate in this game alone!

Is tonight the night we finally get the heavy weight battle here we have been waiting to see all year? Well, that is before the Lakers get Anthony Davis, but that is a story for another day.

These two teams have played twice already this season, the first being on Christmas Day where LeBron James ($19.1K) injured his groin after 21 minutes of court time, that forced him to a miss a month and the second being just a few weeks ago when DeMarcus Cousins made his return but this may be the first time we get a somewhat full squad meeting.

There are still some injuries here we need to watch as they open up some great value to help mix and match with our stars as Klay Thompson is the most likely to miss this game after missing Thursday’s game with an illness that also forced him to sit out Friday’s practice. Alfonzo McKinnie ($6K) played 27 minutes in place of Klay and at stone minimum on FantasyDraft becomes one of those easy plug and play punts that allow you a path to all the studs here – and boy are we loaded with em.

Let’s start with LeBron, who returned against the Clippers last game and fell one assist shy of a triple-double on his way to 57 fantasy points. LeBron stepped right back into his usage-centric role in that game, putting up a team-high 33% usage rate and remember, on Christmas Day, he had 43 FPTS in only 21 minutes of court time – if you want to fade LeBron in this kind of match-up, have at it – these are the kind of ceiling games I would argue you make every attempt to shoehorn him in.

Rajon Rondo ($12.4K) would be the second piece from the Lakers I would want to build around here, as with Lonzo Ball on the shelf, Rondo is going to be locked into 30-35 minutes a night and his multi-category contributions give him a 40-50 point ceiling especially in a pace up game environment like this.

Ivica Zubac ($8.4K) is one of my favorite GPP options on this slate, as his upside relative to his price tag is simply off the charts. I understand the volatility, as his back to back sub 15 fantasy point efforts have shown, but as he showed against the Suns, this is a player with 50+ point upside – how many other guys in this price range have a demonstrated track record of hitting that ceiling?

Last game it was Lance Stephenson ($8.2K) who really stepped up, playing 30 minutes on the second unit but that was against the Clippers, a team that the Lakers could play smaller against, which is no longer an option with Boogie healthy on the Warriors side of this game.

When these two teams played on the 21st, it was Zubac who saw the most run of the Lakers three-headed monster, playing 21 minutes versus JaVale McGee (19) and Tyson Chandler (8). There is risk here for sure, but there is also some serious upside/point per dollar value that allows you the ability to stack 2-3 studs from this game.

NBA DFS – Run it back with the Dubs:

If you want studs, just go ahead and run this bad boy back with Stephen Curry ($17.3K) and Kevin Durant ($17.2K) who saw their prices tick up slightly but still remain quite cheap considering their upside.

The buzz ever since DeMarcus Cousins joined this team was how he was soaking up the usage and directly hurting the output of Curry/KD and the metrics had supported that argument until the Philadelphia game last time out.

Now, is this a blip on the radar with only one game or are we seeing things balance out a bit more with the Warriors franchise stars starting to take back their ball dominant roles. Against the Sixers, Curry was off the charts with a 43.3% usage rate, by far his highest mark since Boogie was activated while KD was not far behind at 33%.

Prior to that game, it was actually Klay Thompson who was leading the starting unit in usage at 30% since Boogie joined the starters so maybe this is the perfect storm of things normalizing a bit and also having Klay on the bench.

Draymond Green ($12.5K) and DeMarcus Cousins ($12.4K) become elite secondary plays in this game stack with Green being the one I would prioritize as correlation if you are going with both Curry/KD. Cousins would become a leverage pivot if you are fading Curry and/or KD as you would likely see him take the direct usage away from them where as Draymond can have ceiling games co-existing with KD/Curry when they are having high-usage games.

So can this stack actually work?

I say this all the time in Picks and Pivots, my goal is NEVER to write this article and simply list out the best plays – my goal is always to help you think through roster construction.

So can we actually stack this game in a way that captures the upside but also does not leave us scraping for punt plays that are nothing more than dart throws? Let’s look:

• Start with the 3 stars – LeBron, Curry and Durant
• Pick two of the “second tier” – ie. Rondo, Boogie, Draymond
• Mix in the value – ie. Zubac, Lance and McKinnie (if Klay is Out)

Going with that core concept/structure you can easily afford this stack without it feeling like you are settling. Now, to be fair, it becomes MUCH easier as a result of using McKinnie at $6K so that will be the primary news we need to watch but the path for a game stack here is viable.

On an 11 game slate – are we really going to game stack one spot?

I have proven that you CAN game stack this spot, the question is – should you? I will say, I tend to side with the game stack approach less on slates of this size as the player pool is large enough where you can opt to cherry pick from multiple games of planting your flag and that is likely the stronger argument for only taking pieces from this game instead of going all in.

We have four other games on this slate with 230+ totals and similar projected pace game environments so there are easy pivots if you opt to take this route but my only issue with prioritizing those games is that they lack the star power of Lakers/Warriors.

Sure you can stack up the Suns/Hawks with their mid-range guys or opt to pivot to Joel Embiid against the Kings but how many other games on this slate have 3-4 studs in one spot that could end up the top raw point plays on the slate?

Much like we saw last night, winning rosters did not get cute. They locked in a minimum of two studs and in many cases three, and I think that formula repeats itself tonight. This Lakers/Warriors game is the path of least resistance in my eyes – you get 3 stars with slate leading upside that you can fit in easily together so why make DFS harder than it has to be – stack it up.

NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:

Please note – this sample lineup is meant to be illustrative only and should not be used as a Plug and Play lineup. 

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G: Stephen Curry

G: Rajon Rondo

G: Frank Jackson

F/C: LeBron James

F/C: Kevin Durant

F/C: Draymond Green

UTIL: Ivica Zubac

UTIL: Alfonzo McKinnie

Slate Overview: I am just going to keep it simple. We have a game in the Warriors/Lakers that checks every single box tonight and with 11 games on the slate it should spread out ownership enough to where we let others get cute and make the mistakes.

This game has the highest total on the board, one of the fastest projected paces and pricing on the stars that makes fitting in 3 of them, not an overly cumbersome exercise. As I said, you can make the argument for other spots – but when you have a game like this and pricing that makes a stack work, sometimes you just take the clear path and let everyone else over think it.

Now – get in those Free Rolls I linked to earlier, get your fridge ready for Sunday and kick off your Super Bowl with some NBA DFS action. Good luck all.

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