3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 2/27/19

LeBron James, SF, Los Angeles Lakers

Price: $12,000

After having only one player priced north of $12,000 on yesterday's slate, we have an embarrassment of riches at the top on Wednesday. Three players are priced that high, all with good-to-great matchups. The top play of the three is one LeBron James.

Tonight's matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans has a huge, slate-high 239-point implied total, and while the 5.5-point spread is modest, the combination of the two gives LA a hefty 122.25-point implied total. That's also the highest on the slate.

That doesn't come as a surprise, either. The Pels sit 22nd in defensive rating while playing at the league's fifth-highest pace. The matchup is even softer with Anthony Davis now playing the fewest minutes he can without New Orleans getting themselves into trouble with the league. The team's defensive rating is 2.8 points worse with Davis off the floor this season, and their rebound rate falls by 2.5% without him.

The King is playing some massive minutes while the Lakers fight to make the playoffs, and he has at least 38.5 in each of his last four games, topping 40 twice and averaging 40.4 per game in that stretch. In eight games since returning from a prolonged injury absence, James has averaged 56.1 FanDuel points in 37.9 minutes per game, even though two of those contests were blowouts, decided by at least 23 points. If we remove those two from the sample (tonight is unlikely to be a blowout with a close point spread) we see his averages jump to 62.1 FanDuel points in 39.9 minutes per game.

He's also only one game removed from cooking the Pelicans for 64.4 fantasy points in 38.5 minutes on Saturday.