NBA DFS Core Plays LIVE: Saturday, December 2nd
A daily fantasy sports OG, Notorious has been roaming the DFS streets ever since they were invented. He has racked up multiple live final seats and several six-figure tournament wins in his DFS career, and Noto will mix it up in all different types of contests. On weekends, jack-of-all-trades Taylor Smith takes the reins. So, who better to walk you through the madness of an NBA DFS slate? Core Plays LIVE will zoom out on the slate as a whole, zoom in on the best NBA DFS picks, and constantly update as news breaks. Whether you are diving into the slate 5 hours before it starts or 5 minutes before it starts, you’ve come to the right place.
Happy Saturday! To everyone except Kyrie Irving, at least. If you played last night, there’s an awfully good chance the majority of your lineups were graced by a frosty Kyrie. Nevertheless, today is a new day. We’ve got a whopper of a 10-game slate on tap for Saturday night, and the Mavericks are in our lives once again. There’s all sorts of injury news worth monitoring, so it’s fair to expect some twists and turns throughout the afternoon and into the evening.
Fortunately, that’s why we’re here. Stick around for updates all day long, and tune into Crunch Time pre-lock for my final thoughts.
NBA DFS Top Picks: Core Plays LIVE for Saturday, December 2nd
Slate Overview
- 10-game slate
- 7:00 PM ET – Cleveland Cavaliers at Detroit Pistons
- 7:00 PM ET – Orlando Magic at Brooklyn Nets
- 8:00 PM ET – Atlanta Hawks at Milwaukee Bucks
- 8:00 PM ET – New Orleans Pelicans at Chicago Bulls
- 8:00 PM ET – Indiana Pacers at Miami Heat
- 9:00 PM ET – Oklahoma City Thunder at Dallas Mavericks
- 9:00 PM ET – Memphis Grizzlies at Phoenix Suns
- 9:30 PM ET – Portland Trail Blazers at Utah Jazz
- 10:00 PM ET – Denver Nuggets at Sacramento Kings
- 10:30 PM ET – Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Lakers
- Teams on the front end of a back-to-back: None
- Teams on the back end of a back-to-back: Magic, Grizzlies, Mavericks, Pelicans, Nuggets, Suns
- NBA DFS Injury Report: The Situation Room
- Scroll to FanDuel and DraftKings Rankings & Core Plays
News Updates
Here’s where I’ll provide news updates.
Team Previews
Cleveland Cavaliers (at DET): The Cavs get one of the better matchups on the board against a Pistons team riding a 15-game losing streak. Caris LeVert and Dean Wade are still out, but this team is otherwise pretty healthy. Cleveland’s 116.75-point implied team total in this one is 6 points north of their season average, and the 9-point spread in this one is tied for the largest on the entire slate. The Cavs’ stars also all look a little too cheap around the industry, which puts them all in play as solid options in their respective salary tiers.
Detroit Pistons (vs. CLE): Woof! Monty Williams is the NBA’s highest-paid coach, and he’s your early frontrunner to win Not Coach of the Year. His Pistons draw a woeful matchup against a defensively-sound Cavaliers outfit at home, and they’re 9-point dogs with one of the lowest totals on the slate. We saw Isaiah Livers and Killian Hayes join the starting unit in the last game at the expense of Ausar Thompson and Jaden Ivey. You can make a case for Jalen Duren as a decent GPP center in the mid-$6,000s around the industry, but I otherwise plan to steer clear of this team tonight.
Orlando Magic (at BKN): The Magic, meanwhile, are red hot. Their win over the Wizards last night was their ninth straight, and they’ll look to run that streak into the double digits tonight in Brooklyn. Orlando is actually a 2.5-point underdog here on the back-to-back with a middling 111.75 total. Markelle Fultz and Wendell Carter remain out, while Jonathan Isaac is questionable after missing 2 straight games with a bad ankle. This team is priced appropriately for the most part except for Paolo Banchero on FanDuel ($7,600).
Brooklyn Nets (vs. ORL): The Nets have been impressively mediocre this season, as evidenced by their 9-9 record and plus-1.3 point differential. The Magic own the league’s second-best defensive rating early in the season, so it’s not the best spot to be getting to Brooklyn. Nic Claxton ($6,700) is almost always a little underpriced on DraftKings, though his salary is on the rise. Royce O’Neale is off the injury report after missing the last game, so we’re quite unlikely to see another 39-minute outing from Dorian Finney-Smith.
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