Gary Gustafson 
Happy Friday my NBA DFS friends – we have made it to the last day of the week and we get one of the best weekends of the year on tap – that’s right, Super Bowl Sunday! However before we dive into the wings and the chips, we have a 9 game NBA DFS slate to rock on Friday Night and you know Win Daily Sports is ready to make some cash!
Looking to take your game to the next level? Lock in our reduced Gold Membership deal now, getting THREE MONTHS of all sports access for just $79.99 using promo code “Winning” – and let’s get to some green!
NBA DFS Picks and Pivots: Slate Breakdown
We have 9 games to sort through in our NBA DFS player pool tonight and if you have been playing along this week, well this Friday Night slate is going to have a similar look and feel to some of the most recent slates we have played.
Once again the Oklahoma City Thunder are decimated with injury, even more so tonight as Lu Dort will miss this game alongside George Hill and SGA. If you love mid-range OKC chalk – well tonight is your night! My man Adam Strangis nailed how the OKC plays will fold into your cash games tonight in his FREE Cash Game Breakdown – so there is no need to repeat what he described.
Past that storyline, well this slate seems pretty cut and dry to me – and if you have read along with Picks and Pivots the last few weeks, you will not be shocked by where my focus is.
Hello Brooklyn Nets and Toronto Raptors.
We have a game with a high Vegas total over 240, 15+ points more than any other game on the slate, featuring under-priced star power that also draws highly concentrated usage and fantasy production. Why start anywhere else?
The Brooklyn side of this game is a three-man show and the pricing on the Brooklyn Big 3 is going to draw some serious intrigue with James Harden ($10.6K), Kevin Durant ($9.6K), and Kyrie Irving ($9.1K) seeing a collective price drop from their last game against the Clippers.
If you watched our Win Daily Sports live show on Tuesday night, I made a passionate plea to stack the Nets as they were all projecting for single-digit ownership and I could not understand why. Ghost made a great point about how the masses seem to be approaching Brooklyn – most look at the Big 3 and think it’s a toss-up on a nightly basis which to pick and so unless one is sitting, they just avoid entirely.
It is interesting to sit back and watch the ownership on the Brooklyn Big 3 because this does seem to be the case. However, if you nail the “right plays” from Brooklyn – you are getting GPP difference makers at their ownership levels.
Against the Clippers, Kyrie and Harden were sub 5% owned in GPP’s and proceeded to drop 57 and 65 DK points while Durant at similar ownership was the third wheel with a sub 40 point game. If you picked the right two, you crushed, simple as that.
If you watched that LAC game, Durant sat with some early fouls and Harden and Kyrie just took over – and that carried into the second half. It was not an analytics or match-up based reasoning – it was simply, which two got hot. Kyrie even said so much in a post-game interview that they are fine deferring to the hot hand on a nightly basis – so good luck guessing.
Now flip to the Toronto side of this game because in many ways it feels like the SAME discussion we had with the Clippers on Tuesday. The Raptors Big 3 pricing first off is far too cheap and they are wildly interchangeable – Fred VanVleet ($7.9K), Kyle Lowry ($7.8K) and Pascal Siakam ($7.6K).
DraftKings did a phenomenal job of pricing this trio at levels that makes then easy mix and matches if you want to build multiple lineups but they also made it where the pricing doesn’t offer you any real reason to pick one over the other.
I will tell you right now though – getting this 2v2 mini stack is the KEY to cash position tonight and it will be at the heart of what I build tonight. So how can we approach this?
Which 2v2 do we want?
The NBA is by and large position-less basketball in this era, which is frankly why I think looking at DvP or specific positions is a worthless exercise by and large. However, I do think we can get strategic in how we attack this game tonight for Brooklyn and Toronto.
The two worst individual defenders on Brooklyn are Kyrie and Harden – followed by either Jeff Green/DeAndre Jordan. Meaning that the best place to attack the Nets individually is in the backcourt – so rather than pick between Kyle Lowry OR Fred VanVleet – maybe we just take them both understanding that at any given point they likely have the best individual match-up on the court.
The other option would be to look at correlations – and the highest two correlated players in Toronto are VanVleet and Siakam. In fact, Lowry has a negative correlation with both stars so locking in the better-correlated duo and ignoring match-up may be the optimal approach. So to summarize – I am either going FVV and Lowry or FVV and Siakam.
The one guy we haven’t touched on – Aron Baynes ($4.2K) – is a cheap way to get exposure not only to Toronto but to attack the most vulnerable part of the Brooklyn defense – the interior post Jarret Allen. Baynes has seen his playing time tick up from 23, 23 to 29 and 32 minutes and if he is going to get mid 20 minutes against this Nets interior, he has a very clear path in my mind to 6x value at Center.
The pivot off Baynes would be Chris Boucher ($4.5K) who has seen his price come down TWO GRAND in just four games. Seriously, this dude was $6.5K just 4 games ago. Could the recent run up in minutes for Baynes be related simply to the match-up with Nikola Vucevic?
There is a path for Boucher here if this game goes small as the Nets opted to start Jeff Green at the 5 last game. Boucher could be a prime GPP bounce back candidate tonight!
On the Brooklyn side of this game, Kevin Durant has arguably the best on paper match-up against Pascal Siakam and the fact he is priced under $10K on DraftKings tonight is absurd. I know last game was a dud but KD is still the team usage leader at 28% with all three stars on the court so I think he is player #1 in for me tonight.
The decision of Kyrie or Harden likely comes down more to price and roster construction than it does anything else. Basically, the dice roll that Ghost talked about when picking your Brooklyn pieces. The price discount from Harden to Irving is staggering on DK – so I lean Kyrie – however, I will tell you right now, if Harden is projecting to be sub 5% again tonight – I am finding a way to make him work!
Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
This slate tonight by and large feels very straight forward.
I am locking in a 3v2 Raptors/Nets mini-stack while using the OKC value around it. That path, as I write this at 6AM EST, is clear and likely only becomes easier as the day goes on and we get more news and value opening up.
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!
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @2LockSports and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD ACCOUNT account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!
