Hello DFS Army members and welcome to a new idea I’ve had here for the 2020 NBA season. With the way data and info is available to all DFS players, all of the “great plays” are pretty easy to identify, thus leading to them all being highly owned in your big field tournaments and double-ups. This article is here to try and help you identify some of those plays that are flying under the radar, whether it be from breaking news, a certain player being out on an opposing team that improves a matchup, or simply someone who has just gone overlooked. I’ll utilize the Research Station and Domination Station and Ownership Projection tools we have here at DFS Army, as I truly believe they are the best in the business.
Tonight we have a really juicy 10 game slate, so ownership is going to be a little more spread out than it would be on a smaller 6-8 game slate, or the 4 game slate like we saw last night. Here’s my process for finding some of these GPP pivots:
The first thing I will look at is the Research Station and our all in one comprehensive And1 rating. First look gives us this:
This gives us a preliminary idea of who some of our top plays are going to be here tonight, they’re also likely going to be popular. From there I go and sort at each position by projected ceiling and we get:
I use ceiling for a reason, considering this article is focused on GPPs, you want to have guys with the highest ceilings (a.k.a. can score the most fantasy points), but we also have to keep in mind, that when a guy has a high ceiling, his floor is usually lower and more volatile. But in GPPs, you have to risk it if you want the biscuit. Looking at ceiling is also crucial because it can help us identify a pivot right there based on our ownership projections. Now, from here, I’ll look at who is popping for value, since we’ll need some value if we want to fit in some of these higher priced studs/pivots into our lineups:
Value can also help you identify the chalk, as those that are dirt cheap with high value ratings will likely be chalky, especially in cash games. Now comes the crucial step, ownership and identifying the chalk. With everyone having access to this data or an optimizer, certain players will be more popular than others. We have to be able to identify those plays that can still smash for us at a much lower ownership if we want to take down GPPs. It’s quite easy, go to the Domination Station and you can sort by highest projected ownership. Here are the top 3 highest owned per position today:
This gives us our chalk at each position for the day. Now that we have identified it, we can find ways to pivot off of it.
My GPP Pivots:
Coby White over Elfrid Payton- You wanna talk about Who’s Hot right now? Check out Coby White:
He’s averaging almost 12 FPPG more over his last 3 games, and he’s been shooting lights out. The issue here, is that he is volatile and is a bit scoring dependent as he gets most of his points from scoring. However, the Bulls are short on bodies, and given the matchup against the Mavs, his minutes are blowout proof. It’s a win-win either way, because if the Bulls keep it close, it is likely because White is scoring a ton, and if they’re down big, he’ll be getting extra run during garbage time. His price has come up which should scare some people off as well. With his counterpart, you’re also getting a volatile player in Payton, who has a tougher matchup than most people realize, and is in what will likely be a blowout as well. They both have a similar ceiling, so I’ll take the guy at 0.1% ownership over the guy projected for 25%. Also, Zach LaVine is also doubtful tonight.
Jimmy Butler over C.J. McCollum- Don’t get me wrong, I love me some C.J. with Dame out, but he’s projected at nearly 43% ownership, so we’re going to have to get different in GPPs. The thing that stood out to me here was these two guys’ ceilings:
Butler is $800 less, and has a ceiling of less than 7 points compared to C.J. and is coming in at a projected 10% ownership. While Butler’s matchup isn’t the greatest, we know that he always gets up for big games like these, and the Heat are one of the few teams in the East that can actually keep this game close with the Bucks. Butler also does it all for this Heat team, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, scoring. He doesn’t even need to score 10 actual points to get you 40 FPs. However, I think they’ll look to him to score more here tonight as they’ll really need him to step up if they want to take down the Bucks. The fact that the Heat are at home makes me like him even more.
Kevin Porter Jr. over Cam Reddish- The spot to attack the Grizzlies has been with SFs, which is why Reddish will likely be so popular tonight, add in the fact that he’s been hot beside his last game where he left the game early, and you have a chalky, slightly volatile, value option projected at 24% ownership. Meanwhile, we have Kevin Porter Jr. who is trending upward everywhere in our models, at a projected 8% ownership. Check it out:
That’s a lot of green, and given the matchup it’s likely that without Drummond, Utah is gonna blow out this lowly Cavs team, which will only lead to more minutes in garbage time for our boy KPJ. They also only have 0.2 FP Ceiling differential as well.
Bam Adebayo over John Collins- Sticking with the Heat theme here, I really think they have a chance to pull off an upset here, and the spot to attack the Bucks is at Center, and Bam has turned himself into a borderline NBA All-Pro this year. His last game against the Bucks, he put up 46.6 FPs and we have a slight pace-up game which actually helps his style of play. There’s no denying that Collins has a phenomenal matchup, but given that he’s projected for 32% ownership and Bam is projected at under 10% is criminal. Their ceilings also make you wonder at only a 1.7 differential:
Rudy Gobert over Nikola Vucevic – Vuc is projected at 32% ownership tonight, and it isn’t hard to see why, as he is way too cheap on both sites and draws an elite matchup against the self-proclaimed “Defensive Player of the Year” in Hassan Whiteside, who in reality can’t stop a nosebleed. If you need further proof of Whiteside’s defensive ability just watch this clip: https://youtu.be/q9O2HuczT6k. Meanwhile, for Gobert, he draws an elite matchup as well, against a Cleveland team that will be without Tristan Thompson or Andre Drummond, so….who is gonna stop him? Rudy also destroys this Cavs team, as shown in the Research Station:
He’s averaging just under 50 FPPG against them over his last 3, and he should play heavy minutes in this one, as he’s averaging 36 MPG over his last 10 games. I’ll take the nice ownership discount here as Vuc has also been struggling a bit with how well Aaron Gordon has been playing. Also, Gobert is projected at 13% ownership, a nice 19% discount to Vuc.
Everyone, NBA is very volatile with late scratches so please pay extra attention to Breaking News today! Stay on your toes!
As always, keep your eyes peeled for updates as we get news closer to lock. All my updates will be in BOLD.
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