Gary Gustafson 
Welcome back to the Tuesday edition of NBA DFS Picks and Pivots where we get a solid seven-game slate to tackle on DraftKings and FanDuel that kicks off at 7:30 PM EST tonight, giving us an extra half hour before lineup lock!
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NBA DFS Picks and Pivots: Slate Breakdown
Tonight’s 7 game NBA DFS slate kicks off 30 minutes later than usual with the Jazz/Celtics as the lone 7:30 PM EST game which also means strategically we can fade that first game and attack this as a 6 game slate starting at 8 PM EST.
We have the usual injury craziness, including big names being out like Joel Embiid and John Wall, while we get some players back from injury including CJ McCollum. The OKC Thunder will be short-handed as they seemingly always are with Al Horford and Darius Bazley out as long as having Lu Dort questionable.
As we always do in NBA DFS, we anchor to the stars and while tonight’s “star power” may not have the same appeal as last night – we still have guys like LeBron, Trae Young and Karl-Anthony Towns to choose from. All that said – the star that is my anchor tonight is Damian Lillard ($10.8K) who gets one of my favorite match-ups against the New Orleans Pelicans.
We have harped on this for weeks now, but the Pelicans continue to be one of the worst defensive teams in the league, ranking among the bottom 5 in team defense over the last 10 and 15 game sample size. Over that 15 game sample size, they are giving up the 4th highest FG% allowed, 2nd highest 3P % allowed, 2nd most 3PM per game and rank bottom 5 in assists and blocks allowed per game.
In summary – their defense is not super good.
Enter Damian Lillard – who over the last 15 games has the most three-point attempts of any player in the league and ranks 4th among qualified starters in usage rate at 34%. If you remember back to February 17th, the last time these two teams played – we were all over Dame in this spot because of the Pelicans inability to guard the perimeter and their penchant for bleeding points to opposing PG’s.
As Statmuse so beautifully illustrates – we were right to be on that spot then and we are right to be on it again tonight.
We anchor to stars in NBA DFS and tonight that star for me is Dame – but with so much value on this slate, I think we have the path to pay up for at least 2 other high ceiling stars in our builds.
Finding our NBA DFS Core
The one game tonight that seems ripe for the picking in our NBA DFS lineups on DraftKings is the Bulls/Thunder – as we have a game with value, under-priced plays and condensed rotations that are not reflected in their DFS pricing.
The Bulls made a change to their starting lineup over the weekend and slid Tomas Satoransky ($3.6K) into the starting unit who responded with 33 DK points and saw his price rise a whopping $400. The pairing of Sato’s value with the high pricing of Zach LaVine ($9K) gives you an ideal 1-2 punch and the ability to go high-low in attacking this undermanned Thunder backcourt.
The Bulls frontcourt should similarly feast against an OKC frontcourt that was just manhandled by JoVal and the Grizzlies – and once again, we get some serious value as all of the Bulls “big men” are priced in the mid-range. Thaddeus Young ($6.1K) drew the start in place of Wendell Carter Jr. and played alongside Patrick Williams ($4.6K) and Lauri Markkanen ($6K).
Both forwards are in play in my mind today with Markkanen in an ideal bounce-back spot after poor shooting against the Raptors. Williams however offers a nice discount and arguably better PP/$ upside with a similar usage rate and role on the Bulls offense.
I would focus my Bulls exposure on LaVine, Sato and then one of Markken OR Williams in a game stack scenario.
The Thunder side starts almost entirely with Shai Gilgeous Alexander ($8.8K) who will once again be the entire OKC offense after sporting a 33% usage rate in a similar spot against Memphis last game.
We already know Horford and Bazley are out which sets the stage again for Moses Brown ($3.5K) and Aleksej Pokusevski ($4.4K)to start after posting 23 and 48 DK points respectively against Memphis.
We have played this game before with OKC many times this season – on slates where they are down to an 8-9 man rotation, you play SGA and eat the value chalk. It has hit over and over again – and I see no reason to avoid it here tonight.
If we look at the game flow from that last game via Popcorn Machine – we can see that OKC ran a condensed 9 man rotation and would look similar tonight if Lu Dort is out while we may see Theo Maledon return.
What stands out to me in looking at that game flow is well, a few things. First – holy run for Poku who basically never came off the court in the second half and played the entire 4th quarter.
Secondly, while Justin Jackson and Ty Jerome got the starts, it was really Isaiah Roby and Kenrich Williams that got the starter run especially down the stretch in the 4th quarter. I do think it is interesting that Roby played alongside Moses Brown to close out the 2nd and 4th quarters which shows they may have be able to be used together tonight.
NBA DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
One of my favorite GPP builds in NBA DFS is to pick a one-off star and then game stack around it and tonight I think it sets up well for that kind of strategy.
My focus tonight is to lock in Damian Lillard as the ceiling star that anchors my build but I want to do that around an under-priced game stack in the Bulls/Thunder which provides serious value and upside with second-tier stars like LaVine and SGA.
Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this NBA DFS season with some big wins!
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