Gary Gustafson 
Happy Saturday my NBA DFS friends and welcome to another Picks and Pivots! After a huge night on Friday driven by our core star trio of Luka, Westbrook, and Kawhi and all the value we had spoonfed to us – we are back to make more money on this four-game Saturday Slate!
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NBA DFS Picks and Pivots: Slate Breakdown
When you open up this four-game slate for Saturday, the logical place your mind will focus on is the best game on the slate – Brooklyn and Golden State – and rightfully so.
This game will be played at the fastest place on the slate, it has tons of star power to pick from and you get the added boost of it being a national TV game with all sorts of added motivation.
I talk about this all the time on slates of this size – the idea of taking a stand.
Brooklyn and Golden State are going to be popular starting points today for DFS players and there won’t be anything “sneaky” about any of the stars here – so I am not going to simply list the best plays – instead I am going to walk you through how you go “all-in” on a game like this and approach a full on game stack!
Building a Game Stack
There are critical decisions you need to make at the top-end of this game stack, especially now that Kevin Durant ($9.6K) is back for Brooklyn and it begins with which stars you want from the Nets. The decision any time Brooklyn is on a slate comes down to how you attack the Big 3 – Durant, Kyrie Irving ($9.2K), and James Harden ($10.4K).
Durant to me is the easiest “first man in” due to a combination of price and his role. With the Nets ruling out DeAndre Jordan ahead of this game, we are going to see a ton of KD at the 5 tonight for Brooklyn which allows you an inside-outside pairing with one of Harden or Kyrie.
The most difficult question is whether you go with Kyrie or Harden as your secondary Brooklyn star. The pricing difference is substantial and on a small slate without a ton of value, this really tilts the scales towards Kyrie because that $1.2K of salary savings becomes wildly important as you start to stack around the stars here.
I remain very skeptical about the health of Kyrie’s finger and while his fantasy production was strong last game against the Pacers, it was largely inflated by going 17-17 from the line. The flip side of that argument though is that Kyrie realized his shot is off and so he chose to attack the rim instead of settling for outside shots – and tonight against a Warriors interior without a rim protector, I think he has a similar path to success. No team in the NBA is giving up more Free Throw attempts per game to opposing teams than the Warriors tonight and if Kyrie can get to the rim – there is simply nobody to stop him from getting whatever he wants.
The Warriors side is FAR easier – in fact, it is almost too easy.
If you are game stacking this spot – you lock button Stephen Curry ($10.1K) and move on. No seriously – there is literally no reason to even bother with this game if you don’t plan on locking in Curry. He is going to be the entirety of their offense and if it stays close, it is because of him.
The only real pairing that makes sense for Golden State in my eyes is to go Curry and Draymond Green ($6.7K). I think the price for Dray is a touch higher than I would like to go but he is the single best correlation play with Curry as his fantasy ceiling comes from the peripheral stats. Guys like Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre who are scoring dependent players, simply won’t get that ceiling if and when Curry is scoring at will, so you need Draymond to get the DFS sloppy seconds here and well against the Nets interior, we all know that path to rebounds exists!
A Kyrie/Durant and Curry/Draymond core stack will leave you with $3.6K per player for the rest of your build tonight and frankly, I think that is enough to make it work, even within this game by attacking the fringe pieces.
One area we need to watch ahead of lock is what lineup the Warriors go with as they opted to bench Juan Toscano Anderson ($4.9K) in favor of Mychael Mulder ($3.3K) to start the second half against Orlando. Mulder played every single minute of the third quarter in that game – then oddly enough got zero closing run as he did not step foot on the court in the 4th as JTA got the 4th quarter run with the starting unit. This lack of clarity leads me to ignore JTA at his inflated price point but gives me an interest in Mulder IF he draws the start again.
If JTA starts, my interest on the Warriors side would be more on the second unit with punts like Kent Bazemore and Damion Lee.
Lee ($3.5K) is my favorite play here because of his role on the second unit, a player who gets that run when Steph Curry comes OFF the floor and this is key. You can use Curry with Damion Lee to get that offensive usage without really sacrificing the other’s scoring upside.
Bazemore is a play I like in this spot because he tends to thrive in high pace spots and even more so against teams that turn the ball over – a Brooklyn staple post the James Harden trade. If the Nets continue this trend of the fast-paced, turnover-prone ball – this is a spot where Bazemore’s ability to get steals could give him an easy path to value.
The Nets secondary plays are a trickier lot to feel great about – while I can make arguments for guys like Jeff Green and Joe Harris, the pricing simply does not allow me to get there and I am not going to pay down off core plays to fit them in.
Listen, I love Jeff Green, but the Nets simply cannot expect him to play 35 minutes a night and that is why they went out and got guys like Norvel Pelle and Noah Vonleh. Both players are near minimum priced tonight and are going to be the primary second-team bigs with Green moving to the starting unit with DJ sidelined.
These are nothing more than GPP darts but remember – this Golden State interior is similarly banged up with James Wiseman hurt so I like the idea of using one of these second-team bigs as a punt value play to attack Golden State when they are running Eric Paschall at the 5 on the second unit.
Remember you need to find at least one play outside of this game and the nice part here tonight is we have a punt value one-off that I think makes this game stack work perfectly.
The value we need to stack up the Nets/Warriors stars – may actually come from the other New York team where we already know Mitchell Robinson is out. This is going to open up some punt value with Nerlens Noel ($3.9K) likely to draw the start for New York as he started the second half in place of Robinson, played the entire 3rd quarter before the game blew out and he got to rest in the 4th.
Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
This is a fun GPP slate tonight with a game stack being the priority for me around Golden State and Brooklyn. It takes some creativity to do so and some thought around how the game unfolds as well – you cannot simply just “plug in the starters” – and you will need to think through second team rotations that correlate well.
This is where using Damion Lee as a second team offensive weapon makes sense or plugging in Pelle/Vonleh for Brooklyn if and when Jeff Green needs a breather. You are taking risk – but it is calculated risk – and it can pay off in a big way if you hit the game script correctly.
Stack it up tonight my friends – let’s get this money!
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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