NBA DFS Core Plays LIVE: Sunday, November 19th
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 Sunday! There’s an awful lot of basketball on the schedule today, and DraftKings and FanDuel have different main slates. FanDuel is rolling with a 6-game main slate starting at 6:00 PM ET. DraftKings, meanwhile, left the DEN/CLE game off and opted for a 5-gamer starting at 7:30 PM ET. There are a couple of high-total games that really stand out above the rest, while we’ve also got no shortage of injury news to monitor throughout the afternoon.
Here’s how things are looking ahead of Sunday’s main slates.
NBA DFS Top Picks: Core Plays LIVE for Sunday, November 19th
Slate Overview
- 6-game slate
- 6:00 PM ET – Denver Nuggets at Cleveland Cavaliers
- 7:30 PM ET – Sacramento Kings at Dallas Mavericks
- 8:00 PM ET – Boston Celtics at Memphis Grizzlies
- 8:00 PM ET – Phoenix Suns at Utah Jazz
- 9:00 PM ET – Oklahoma City Thunder at Portland Trail Blazers
- 9:30 PM ET – Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Lakers
- Teams on the front end of a back-to-back: Nuggets, Kings, Celtics, Rockets
- Teams on the back end of a back-to-back: Mavericks, Thunder, Grizzlies
- NBA DFS Injury Report: The Situation Room
- Scroll to FanDuel and DraftKings Rankings & Core Plays
News Updates
Here’s where I’ll be providing updates for news throughout the day.
Team Previews
Denver Nuggets (at CLE): Remember, this game is only a part of FanDuel’s main slate. The Nuggets are still without Jamal Murray. Amazingly, Nikola Jokic seems to have leveled up yet again this season, as he’s averaging a seemingly impossible 2.04 FP/min with Murray on the bench. His 34.6% usage is through the roof, and he’s also leading the team in assist and rebound rate. The only reason not to play Jokic everywhere is that we live in the world of a salary cap, and Jokic is up to $13,000 (!) tonight. I love him, he’s phenomenal, but it’s hard to make that work on a slate currently lacking value. Aaron Gordon ($7,000) grades out as the most appealing point-per-dollar value from the Denver side, but the matchup against a defensively-sound Cleveland team is far from ideal.
Cleveland Cavaliers (vs. DEN): The Cavs will be without Donovan Mitchell for a second straight game, which opens up gobs of usage to go around. Darius Garland (+7.8%) unsurprisingly gets the biggest usage boost of any player on this team, though Evan Mobley (+4.2%) and Jarrett Allen (+3.7%) get more involved too. We saw Dean Wade start for Spida the other night, but he did a whole lot of nothing in his 22 minutes. Caris LeVert (33) and Georges Niang (27) saw more time off the bench. Niang is cheap ($3,900), but I’d feel uncomfortable looking his way unless he winds up starting.
Here is an example of the DFS tables that are provided to our Premium Subscribers
Want to read more? Sign up for Premium!
