NBA DFS Picks and Pivots February 3 – Super Sunday
Welcome to the Super Bowl Sunday 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.
Freakin LeBron. Three minutes after lock, my phone went off with a FantasyLabs alert that announced LeBron James would be OUT for rest. A few minutes later we got the reports that LeBron had been sore after Thursday Night’s game and blah blah blah – it just always amazes me that this news, in a day and age in which we get nonstop information, is held out “conveniently” until right after NBA lock. This is a massive issue for the NBA – even with “rules” in place to stop this for games like Saturday which was a national TV game and a marquee event for the league, it still happens. Forget the DFS implications for a second, this is bad for the product – for the fans that pay money to get tickets to these games and the networks who pay massive dollars to showcase these games on TV. Imagine buying tickets to that game expecting to see LeBron and the Warriors, walking into the arena only to see LeBron in street clothes? Bad look NBA – this is not a hard fix. Put in mandatory injury reporting in advance of tip-off like the NFL has done for years. Correct the problem for the league – DFS will fix itself as a result.
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 Picks and Pivots February 3 – Super Sunday
Happy Super Bowl Sunday – 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! Let’s GO!
We have a small three-game NBA DFS slate which kicks off at 1PM EST giving us a nice little Super Bowl Appetizer to wet our whistles a bit before the big game. With such a limited player pool, my advice is to plant your flag and take stands – these are great slates to game stack and hope that your core build gets full run while the other game environments fall flat.
With the Clippers/Raptors having a double-digit spread and the early game being Memphis-New York (yuck), all signs are pointing to the Thunder/Celtics as the place to zero in on. Vegas has this game with a 227 total, 3 point spread and the fastest projected pace so it checks all the boxes when we are looking to stack a game on this slate.
In addition to the Vegas data, this game environment offers us a handful of stars on a slate where raw points will be key and the fact we can easily fit in the top three stars from this game, makes it a no-brainer core build in my opinion.
Russell Westbrook ($19.4K) and Paul George ($18.1K) have a five game streak of each player going for 50+ fantasy points and that kind of ceiling/floor combination on a slate this small, makes them priority plays and dangerous fades without any real strong pivot plays in the other games. Kyrie Irving ($16.3K) becomes the obvious run back play here as the Celtics player with the highest ceiling, having gone for 60+ fantasy points in four of his last six games.
Locking in this star-studded trio, leaves you with $9.2K per player for the rest of your build which is more than enough to build a well-rounded roster, realistically without even having to leave this game.
On the Thunder side of this game, Dennis Schroder ($8.9K) looks like a great mid-range value as the clear usage leader on the second unit who has put up 32 and 34 fantasy points in his last two games which would far exceed 3.5x GPP value at his current price tag. Terrance Ferguson ($7.1K) had a down game against Miami, but saw his minutes remain over 20+ and this is a player who has gone for 23+ FPTS in three of his last four games.
The Celtics get the biggest pace boost of any team on this slate and outside of Kyrie, the rest of the Celtic’s are priced quite fairly. The Thunder rank in the bottom 5 in the NBA in defending opposing SG and PF which makes Marcus Smart ($9.5K), Marcus Morris ($10.5K) and Jayson Tatum ($11.2K) the preferred options here to pair with Kyrie in a game stack situation. Morris and Tatum both went for 35+ in their only other match-up with the Thunder earlier this season and with Al Horford having to deal with Steven Adams, I would happily pivot to the other Celtics wings/bigs in a pace up game script.
NBA DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this is a sample lineup meant to be illustrative and should NOT be used as a Plug and Play lineup.
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G: Russell Westbrook
G: Kyrie Irving
G: Marcus Smart
F/C: Paul George
F/C: Jayson Tatum
F/C: Marcus Morris
UTIL: Terrance Ferguson
UTIL: $7.6K TBD
Slate Overview: Plant your flag. That is the name of the game on today’s slate in my opinion. Listen if you want to sort through Memphis/New York and act like you have any idea what David Fizdale is going to do with his new rotations in a massive pace down spot – have at it. You want to chase Shelvin Mack career night – go to town. Joakim Noah revenge game? Does it really apply when the dude made $70M for chilling on the beach?
OK maybe the Raptors/Clippers is the game you go to and there is potentially some under the radar value here. The Clippers opted to start Lou Williams and BOBAN in the second half of their game yesterday (which was not on the Main Slate so people may have missed it) and both went bonkers. Boban ($6K) racked up a double-double in only 17 minutes and remains minimum priced while Lou-Will went OFF for 50+ fantasy points in their win against Detroit. If we get any word of Boban starting today – at this price, you know I am going to have some exposure.
The Westbrook/PG13/Kyrie trio is a must start in my opinion from a raw points perspective and the rest of the Celtics are priced fairly enough that you can get 2-3 of them in without issue.
Enjoy the small NBA slate and the Super Bowl – get a comfortable spot on the couch and make sure you get up occasionally (to get more beer/food of course) – one of the best days of the year!
Next. Super Bowl Prop Bet Guide. dark
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