Saturday’s card brings us some different NBA DFS start times, with a four-game slate getting underway at 6 p.m. ET on DraftKings. However, FanDuel chose to go with a three-game featured slate at the usual 7 p.m. ET lock time. There are several options in the player pool worth analyzing to find the top NBA DFS building blocks and NBA DFS picks. Bam Adebayo and Trae Young are intriguing options for Saturday’s shallow player pool. Let’s dig into the NBA DFS picks and core plays.
NBA DFS Picks & Building Blocks Today: Saturday, November 11
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Core Play of the Day — Bam Adebayo — Miami Heat at Atlanta Hawks
- Stokastic’s Preliminary Point Projections: DraftKings: 45.71 | FanDuel: 45.71
- Stokastic’s Preliminary Rostered Projections: DraftKings: 50.9% | FanDuel: 64.8%
- DFS Salary: DraftKings: $8,500 | FanDuel: $8,800
Jimmy Butler is away from the team attending to a personal matter, so Bam Adebayo is shaping up to be the most popular option tonight on both DraftKings and especially on FanDuel, with one fewer game on the docket for the blue site.
Since the beginning of last season, Adebayo has averaged 1.02 fantasy points per minute when sharing the court with Butler, but without Butler, that figure increases to 1.27 fantasy points per minute, which is almost a 20% pop. There is not much else to add since this is a short slate, but while Adebayo is center-only on both the main DFS sites, he has the third-best fantasy point-per-dollar ratio of any player.
Duncan Robinson and Kyle Lowry rank first and second on both DraftKings and FanDuel with their fantasy ratio, and while neither is going to lay down a monster performance, 30 fantasy points are in the cards for each player. Prior to his last game, in which he missed a triple-double by just one thin dime, Lowry had put together only one other game with more than 23 fantasy points.
Robinson is very scoring-dependent and has only one game with more than 23 fantasy points this season. For those willing to live life on the edge, he would be the chalky player to eschew in tournament lineups tonight. Josh Richardson, Haywood Highsmith, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Dru Smith are the other reserves who should see extra action. Well, technically, Highsmith is a starter, having moved ahead of Kevin Love, who has yet to set foot on the court in November.
Trae Young — Atlanta Hawks vs. Miami Heat
- Stokastic’s Preliminary Point Projections: DraftKings: 46.6 | FanDuel: 44.32
- Stokastic’s Preliminary Rostered Projections: DraftKings 16.9% | FanDuel: 22.3%
- DFS Salary: DraftKings: $9,400 | FanDuel: $9,500
This is the first time this season that Trae Young has been featured in this article, but with the Miami defense looking less than formidable this year and now having to play without Butler, we are likely to see Atlanta be able to push the tempo of this game. More possessions are key for Young when it comes to reaching his fantasy upside — he needs opportunities to put the biscuit in the basket since he is lacking production from rebounds and defensive statistics. The Hawks average 103.56 possessions per 48 minutes, which is the third most in the league this season.
Bogdan Bogdanovic is a good pivot away from Robinson, and he comes at a similar salary level. Saddiq Bey also fits that criteria. Head coach Quin Snyder has rotated heavily at wing this season. We know that Young and Dejounte Murray have the guard spots locked down, with Clint Capela and Onyeka Okongwu owning the five spot. That leaves Bogdanovic, Bey, Jalen Johnson and De’Andre Hunter to battle it out for the remainder of the minutes. All are viable tournament plays as each has a path to success via multiple positions, but it is hard to trust more than three Hawks on any DFS roster tonight.
Additional NBA Building Blocks Pick — Sports Betting Opportunities
Lowry is going to be hard to overlook in the DFS world, but we can hedge that position by going under at +108 on his 12.5 points prop. NBA Bet Pro currently has the venerable veteran projected for 34.9 minutes and 11.95 points. The under owns “True Odds” of +102, which is how OddsShopper measures the potential expected ROI of a given wager. The difference between the price of +108 and the true odds indicates that this wager has an expected ROI of nearly 3%.
Only twice this season has the soon-to-be 38-year-old surpassed 12.5 points. He did so in his last game, in which he shot 5-for-11 from the field and 4-for-7 from behind the arc. The other time was in the second game of the season when he went 5-for-7 from the field, including 3-for-4 from downtown… for a whopping 13 points. The pucker factor will be high on this wager as it is likely to go down to the wire, but over the long term, it is a favorable one.
Final Thoughts on NBA DFS Picks & Building Blocks Today
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