NBA Core Plays: Sunday, December 2nd

by Justin Van Zuiden (stlcardinals84) Last Updated 2018-12-02 15:54:26 Premium Content Part of the product SimLabs+

Andy Means will be bringing Premium subscribers his top cash game plays and tournament pivots to build around. A former Duke basketball walk-on and now top-ranked DFS player, Andy will take an in-depth look into each of his core plays, and then blend it all together from a roster construction perspective. On weekends, the great Justin Van Zuiden takes the reigns.

Sunday, December 2nd

Happy Sunday, Grinders! I am here to keep you covered over the weekend, and hopefully we can make some nice NBA cheddar along the way!

For those that read this article last year, welcome back. For those that are new, thanks for reading! Here is a quick review of what I am trying to accomplish with NBA Core Plays.

First and foremost, the Core Plays I reference below are for cash game formats (e.g. 50/50, H2H, double-ups). They are the players I think you absolutely must have in your cash game lineup(s) on that day’s main slate. There is a ton of great DFS information available nowadays. However, it can also be difficult to comb through all of that information and know whom exactly to put in your lineup. After reading a lot of articles and listening to a few podcasts, you suddenly are left thinking that there are 20 guys you should be putting into your cash game lineup (“Player X is an elite play!”; “Player Y is perfect for cash games!”; “Player Z is viable in all formats!”).

My goal with this article is to actually prioritize all of those viable plays. So the first player you see listed below is who I think is the most important. The second player listed is the second most important and so on and so forth. I will usually provide 3-4 players each day. While some (or all) of the plays may seem obvious, we still want to make those plays and let our opponents be the ones to make the mistakes.  Not building around this core set of players, in my opinion, is a recipe for an unprofitable night. 

Since I know a lot of DFS players only play tournaments, I also provide tournament pivots off of those Core Plays. I usually try to have the pivots be from the same position, same game, or same price range. The Core Plays will usually see some of the highest ownership on the slate, so how you mix them into your lineups for tournaments is up to your own personal tournament strategy.

*IMPORTANT: I will make every effort to update this article as news breaks until approximately one hour before rosters lock. So please check back throughout the day as I update my Core Plays. However, if time is tight, I will forego the analysis here and only update my tags on LineupHQ. I plan to keep the tags updated on LineupHQ all the way up until lineup lock, so always make sure to check there first. Remember, what may be a great play at 2:00 PM is not always a great play at 7:00 PM.

THE CORE

1) LaMarcus Aldridge, San Antonio Spurs
FanDuel – $8,000
DraftKings – $7,600
FantasyDraft – $13,700

What have I done to the NBA scheduling gods? I thought last night was bad… until I looked at today. Woof. We have just four games on the main slate, and they include such exciting teams as Utah, Miami, Dallas, and San Antonio. Get excited! I’m all aboard the balanced lineup build today, so you will notice that the core plays are full of mid to above-average priced players.

We’ll start the core plays today with LaMarcus Aldridge. Even though he has struggled over the last couple of games, don’t let that fool you as those were both blowout losses. The Spurs didn’t need to push Aldridge for big minutes as they lost both games by over 30 points. Aldridge is still a leader on this team and scores more than a fantasy point per minute. If he gets his usual run, the current prices are a nice bargain; we just need a competitive game. In fact, if you sort our projections for today by the “Floor” column, our current data has Aldridge with the highest floor on the slate. That’s good enough to make him a solid cash game centerpiece with only four games on the slate.