NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday, February 25
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.
Sunday’s three game NBA DFS slate turned out to be a bit more interesting as we got news ahead of lock that Kawhi Leonard would sit which pushed Raptors players like Kyle Lowry and Pascal Siakam into near must play territory alongside Nikola Jokic. I chuckled as I opened FantasyDraft post lock and saw Jokic at 98% and Lowry at 96% in GPP play – as it was clear everyone else took the same approach. As much as there were some clear paths, I will say, the Knicks dropping 130 points on the Spurs was an outcome I did not expect. Ultimately we had four players top 50 fantasy points on this slate and even with only three games, the cash line maintained at 300 points with winning tournament scores pushing closer to 350.
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 – Monday’s NBA DFS Slate Breakdown:
Do you like big slates with all the games biggest stars on display? Well in theory you are going to love this eleven game slate…problem is, the slates biggest stars are likely to be watching the action on the court like we are.
Heading into this slate it is either already confirmed or quite likely that we will be without Joel Embiid, James Harden, Giannis Antetokounmpo with question marks surrounding guys like Luka Doncic, Myles Turner, Draymond Green, Karl Anthony-Towns and the entire Pelicans organization.
Anytime you have a slate like this where you have a few stars out, the general buzz in every DFS article you read will be to focus on the secondary pieces that see a big usage and FP/M bump and rightfully so. On an eleven game slate this can really drive the chalk and depending on pricing, this may end up being the right chalk to eat.
Go ahead open up FantasyDraft and just select the Bucks, Rockets and Sixers rosters – now take a look at those prices – only one player, Chris Paul ($15.1K) is over $15K which screams to me that the secondary plays here are just flat-out too cheap for the roles they are going to play tonight.
With Embiid already ruled out and Giannis/Harden unlikely to play, I think you can make an argument to simply limit your player pool to these three teams and utilize all the secondary plays.
Take CP3 as an example, he would need between 45 and 52 fantasy points to hit 3-3.5x value, considering he is coming off games of 55 (with Harden) and 60 (without Harden), and now gets the biggest pace boost on the slate going up against the Hawks bottom 5 defense – this would seem like a spot where he is severely under-priced and he happens to be the most expensive player in this pool!
So the question is – can we turn this 11 game slate into a 3 game/team slate and try to simplify our lives?
NBA DFS – Three Team Core:
With Chris Paul being our “big spend” at $15.1K in this player pool, this slate takes on a considerably more balanced approach than you may think with so many stars out. FantasyDraft was quick to price Boban Marjanovic up to $10.6K so this is no longer the free square under $7K when Embiid first went down but even though the punt value may not be there, I would argue this mid-tier did not see the price boost it deserved.
If we stay in Houston, two of the biggest stars from Saturday Night’s Harden-less win against the Warriors remain too cheap considering their 30+ minute starting role and recent performance. Eric Gordon ($9.1K) and Kenneth Faried ($11.3K) each put up 38 fantasy points against the Warriors and get one of the best match-ups on the board with the Hawks.
Over the last 10 games, the Hawks rank in the bottom 5 in both defensive rating and PPG allowed and as mentioned, the Rockets see the single biggest pace boost of any team on this slate. If Harden wasn’t suiting up for a national TV game against Golden State, you really think he is going to push it tonight against the Hawks? Putting 2-3 Rockets in every lineup you have tonight is likely a great starting point.
The one Rocket I would likely leave out, despite the great match-up is Clint Capela ($13.1K) who when you look at this three team player pool is the 4th most expensive play. You will see as we go through this breakdown, there are simply better point per dollar options in multiple other spots.
UPDATE: It now looks like Harden will play, having been upgraded to probable. I do think this will make most pivot away from CP3 with the blowout risk but this is still a player who went for 50+ two games ago with Harden on the floor so your getting upside at a fraction of the ownership as people jump ship.
From Harden to Giannis – we head to Milwaukee where the remaining Bucks get a similarly juicy match-up against a Bulls team that ranks 27th in Def-Eff, just one spot worse than the Hawks! At this point in the year – we know the Bucks remaining players all get massive usage and FP/M boost with Giannis out – making guys like Khris Middleton ($12.9K) and Eric Bledsoe ($12.5K) near must-plays every time Giannis is out with 7% and 5% usage boosts respectively.
Malcolm Brogdon ($10.4K) tends to be the forgotten man for Milwaukee despite 4 straight games of 30+ fantasy points and a 4% usage boost of his own. The one unknown here is Nikola Mirotic ($10.4K) who has played 14 and 18 minutes in his first two games as a Buck and would seem like a prime candidate to take a big step forward with Giannis out.
Mirotic was an absolute beast in his 18 minutes over the weekend, hitting 7 of 11 shots, pulling down 6 boards and racking up 33 fantasy points. If we can get a minutes boost for Mirotic tonight in a REVENGE spot against is former Bulls team? Well giddy up!
UPDATE: On the other side of this game, the Bulls will likely be without both Kris Dunn AND Otto Porter Jr. and the line has come down considerably towards Chicago which makes this an interesting game stack. The Bulls will lean heavily on Lauri Markannen and Zach LaVine but do not gloss over Robin Lopez, who has gone for 30, 33 and 35 fantasy points in his last three games.
Last but not least – we have the Sixers without Joel Embiid in a significant pace up spot against a Pelicans team that has all but mailed in this season. Ben Simmons ($14.7K), Jimmy Butler ($13.4K) and Tobias Harris ($12.5K) showed against Miami two games ago that this trio could all have strong fantasy nights together, combining for 115 fantasy points and this is certainly the best match-up they have had since the break after playing the Heat and Blazers.
If you take a step back and think about this slate – you have three teams that will all be without their high usage superstar, facing three of the best matchups on the board and the prices – oh the prices – make it easy to simply pick and choose from this player pool. Sometimes it makes sense to not get cute and take the path of least resistance and this slate at first glance, certainly seems to be shaping up that way.
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 build.
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G: Chris Paul
G: Ben Simmons
F/C: Tobias Harris
F/C: Kenneth Faried
F/C: Nikola Mirotic
UTIL: Eric Bledsoe
UTIL: Malcolm Brogdon
Slate Overview: If you have read Picks and Pivots before you know this is always meant to be a first look written within the context of building your roster so it may seem odd on an eleven game slate to have essentially ignored 19 of the 22 teams in action with a focus on the obvious news but look at the sample lineup and think about what this slate is offering you.
You have three massively high usage and fantasy point/minute stars in Embiid, Harden and Giannis that will be sidelined – which pushes the secondary plays to the forefront of this slate. Everyone is going to talk about these guys today so nothing you read here is unique – but what I am hoping to point out is that the pricing, in my opinion, is not nearly aggressive enough, which makes simply plugging in the guys from these three teams a build you can complete without much taking on too much risk.
You not only build a roster with a safe cash game floor, but considering the opponents (Hawks, Bulls and Pelicans), these are ceiling type match-ups for every one of these players. I think you can make a strong case to just mix and match from the Sixers, Bucks and Rockets here tonight and oddly enough, make this one of the easier 11 game slates you will find all year!
Good luck tonight all!
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