NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – A Thunder Buddies Valentine’s Day!
Welcome to the Valentine’s Day 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.
Wednesday’s NBA DFS slate was the last big slate before the All-Star Break and we saw winning GPP lineups over 375 points with the cash line around 335 as a result of two highly owned played – Pascal Siakam and Nikola Jokic – who were near 50% owned in GPP’s – as the only two players with 60+ fantasy points on the night. Personally, I had a rough night as the Warriors and Blazers stars failed to have the ceiling games we needed, with none going for over 50 fantasy points which is a shame because the ownership was far lower than I expected – for example, Kevin Durant at only 7%. Basically this was a night where the chalk hit big and I didn’t have it – lesson learned, we move on!
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 – Thursday Slate Breakdown and a FREE ROLL!
Before we jump into the final NBA DFS slate before a week-long All-Star Break, our friends at FantasyDraft are sending us into the mandatory breather with another $50 Picks and Pivots Free Roll. Get in on this and show this site some love as they have been bringing us these awesome free rolls on a daily basis for the majority of the NBA season!
We have a three game slate tonight and with one of those games being a “battle” between the Knicks and Hawks, the player pool here tonight is going to be extremely concentrated with everyone likely on the same handful of plays.
Everyone tonight is going to start with the same pairing – Russell Westbrook ($20.7K) and Paul George ($19.4K) – the two most expensive plays on the slate and frankly, the first two players you will want to lock into your lineups.
The Thunder/Pelicans game has a massive 237 total, only a 3 point spread, and is projected to be the fastest pace game on the slate and the only game where both teams see a projected pace boost.
Westbrook has put up 10 straight games now of 50+ fantasy points while PG13 is coming off an 87 fantasy point outing and has 50+ FPTS in 9 of his last 10 games. This is all about raw points on a three game slate – you simply take the two best players and likely the top two raw point performers and move on. On FantasyDraft as an example, this duo still gives you $10K per player for the rest of your roster so you can easily make this work.
Paul George has gone for 50+ fantasy points in all three games so far against the Pelicans this season, and while Westbrook struggled with only 38 and 47 FPTS the first two games, he exploded with 75 fantasy points in his last outing.
The Thunder are going to be short-handed once again tonight with Dennis Schroder and Jerami Grant out and if you look at the 130 minute sample size this season with them both off, it gives Westbrook (3%) and PG13 (2%) additional usage bumps – as if you needed any more reason to play them.
Put quite simply – these are the priority plays – they should be 100% owned and you should make a point to build all your lineups around them.
NBA DFS – What to do with the Brow?
The biggest question on this slate in my mind is what you intend to do with Anthony Davis ($16.3K).
Listen, this whole situation is a total cluster and on any sort of normal slate I would avoid AD and this Pelicans mess entirely but tonight, I think you almost have to go all-in.
First, the price – at $16.3K, for as bad as AD is playing right now and for all the minutes fluctuation, you are getting a guy priced cheaper than Kemba Walker ($16.7K) who has proven 80+ point upside. How many other guys in this price range can say that?
Secondly, and most importantly, if you are locking in Westbrook and PG13, you are banking on this game staying close as Vegas projects it will and the only way that happens is if AD is carrying the load.
AD has gone for 31 and 76 fantasy points in two meetings with OKC this season – and frankly, that may not even be a wide enough range of outcomes tonight. AD is coming off a 24 minute, 16 fantasy point embarrassment at the hand of the Magic, at home in New Orleans, and it is that kind of floor you are risking tonight.
After that game, AD came out and said it looks like his team simply didn’t care and did not want to be there. Well truthfully, can you blame them? This is a toxic situation for all but here is the thing – tonight’s game is the national TV game on TNT and I think that matters in a major way.
The headlines about the Pelicans and AD have made them a laughingstock (and rightfully so) – but these are professionals, people who take pride in their craft and I do not care who you are – put under the spotlight, you are going to want to show what you are really made of.
AD will likely draw some solid ownership – he has 35% owned last game at a seemingly too cheap price of $17.9K, and now the price has come down and he is the ideal “run-back” candidate in the best game of the night. The GPP fade makes all the sense in the world if he’s going to have that kind of ownership, but on a three game slate tonight, he almost has to be your “next man in” as scary as it sounds.
The fact that you can start a line-up tonight with Westbrook, PG13 and AD and still have $8.7K for the last five spots on your roster may seem crazy with where these stars were just a few weeks/months ago but the situation now gives us the opportunity for a three-man stack we likely would never have been able to afford earlier in the season.
NBA DFS – Building Around the Thunder Buddies and Brow:
Let’s make this easy when trying to fill out your roster.
First – the Magic and Hornets – Kemba Walker and Nikola Vucevic are perfectly fine as pivot plays if you want to move away from Westbrook/PG13 as your high dollar spends. The issue is, this game has a total over 20 points lower than OKC/NO, by far the lowest projected pace and the only game where both team see a pace decrease.
In two meetings this year, Kemba has gone for 37 and 39 FPTS against Orlando while Vuc has been held to 28 and 35 fantasy points. Outside of being contrarian – I just cannot recommend this route over the other high dollar plays.
Cody Zeller ($9.2K) played 34 minutes last game at Center against the Pacers and put up 33 fantasy points and would really be the only player I have some interest in here but I am hesitant to pay for the high water mark with the price increase when this was a player who was rarely breaking 25 minutes.
Secondly – the Knicks and Hawks. Yuck. Listen, you may have to play someone or something from this game but I just would rather not. The Knicks are on a tail-end of a back to back, having got blown out by the Sixers last night which meant no starter played more than 25 minutes while the bench players all got upper 20’s minutes to even 30 minutes in the case of Damyean Dotson.
Dotson ($6.8K) and Allonzo Trier ($6K) scored 24 and 30 fantasy points last night and although it may feel like chasing to an extent, these are guys with clear paths to bench minutes and we know they will chuck when given the run.
Lastly – my preferred route, is to just build around a game stack of the Thunder/Pelicans.
The price points on Jrue Holiday ($15.9K) and Julius Randle ($13.8K) feel a touch too high with AD back in the fold which leads me to look more towards guys like Kenrich Williams ($10.1K), E’Twaun Moore ($8.1K) and Jahlil Okafor ($10.5K) on the Pelicans side.
Williams showed he can correlate well with AD, as against Memphis two game ago where AD went for 50+ fantasy points, as Williams dropped 40+ with a near triple-double in 37 minutes (10 pts, 13 rbs and 7 assts).
On the OKC side, with Schroder and Grant out – you can approach this in one of two ways. First, it just further cements the starters minutes which makes guys like Steven Adams and Terrance Ferguson interesting secondary plays.
Adams is averaging 35+ fantasy points in three games against New Orleans and assuming this game is close, should be on the court for as many minutes as he can handle against The Brow.
The other route would be to use the second team value – guys like Deonte Burton and/or Raymond Felton who played 20+ minutes last game and put up 25 and 23 points, both under $7K on FantasyDraft.
Patrick Patterson ($6.4K) will likely draw the start once again in place of Jerami Grant and listen, the floor is risky here but he has a clear path to 20+ minutes and he did bring down 7 rebounds last game. He failed to score as a result of going 0-5 from the field including 0-4 from three, so if he is able to contribute basically anything offensively, he would scratch and claw his way to value.
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: Russell Westbrook
F/C: Paul George
F/C: Anthony Davis
F/C: Kenrich Williams
UTIL: Steven Adams
UTIL: Patrick Patterson
Slate Overview: As ugly as this slate is, the reality is that it presents our last chance to play NBA DFS for a week so why not take advantage of it.
This looks like the perfect game stack kind of slate where you simply plant your flag and move on. With Westbrook and PG13 being must plays, the logical route is to game stack around them and hope the Pelicans can get their “stuff” together and keep this national TV game close.
For all of you Picks and Pivots readers – thank you for reading along all season thus far only for my articles but for everything at Fantasy CPR. Enjoy the All-Star Break, take some time to re-charge and we will see you back here for the NBA playoff push!
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