3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 10/28/19

Basketball is the most consistent sport for daily fantasy purposes.

A top slugger in baseball will have his fair share of 0-for-4 days, and an elite fantasy football player is at risk of having games where his team's offense as a whole is shut down. A high-priced NBA stud is generally going to get his, though. With so many possessions in a game providing opportunities to produce, top fantasy basketball options will be posting high scores just about every night.

While this consistency puts us in a good position to identify top plays, it also means you can't afford to miss when you're paying up for someone. Even with strong value plays in your lineup, paying up and getting a dud is likely going to leave your lineup drawing pretty close to dead.

Let's get right into it and look at which top players should be the focal points of your lineups tonight.

Stephen Curry, PG, Golden State Warriors ($9,200)

Stephen Curry hasn't exactly seen the massive boost in production that he appeared set for while playing without Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant, but it's hard to imagine he and the Golden State Warriors continue to struggle the way they have to open the season.

Limited to just 30 minutes in each of his two blowout losses, Curry has yet to notch even 40 FanDuel points in a game. That could change in a big way tonight in a terrific matchup with the New Orleans Pelicans. The Warriors are only 2.5-point underdogs in this one, so there's not a lot of risk that Curry sits the entire fourth quarter like he did yesterday.

Curry has still seen a spike in usage this year, on pace for a career high 34.7% usage rate through two games, and we shouldn't expect one of the greatest shooters in NBA history to keep up a .447 effective field goal percentage for long, considering his .581 career average and marks above .600 in each of the last two seasons.

This should be an up-tempo game, with the Pels opening the season ranked 8th in pace and 28th in defensive rating, and the steeply-discounted Curry should be in for a bounce-back game tonight.

Kawhi Leonard, SF, Los Angeles Clippers ($9,900)

The Los Angeles Clippers are clearly going to be judicious with Kawhi Leonard's minutes even while Paul George is on the shelf, adding some risk to his fantasy appeal in a lopsided matchup, but that doesn't take away his huge upside.

He played only 21 minutes in a blowout win over the Warriors but promptly dropped 60.6 FanDuel points in his next game. There's certainly some huge blowout potential tonight with the Clippers favored by 15.5 against the Charlotte Hornets, but Kawhi's efficiency and still moderate price tag go a long way to make up for that.

We shouldn't expect him to keep averaging 1.74 FanDuel points per minute like he has to open the season, but he's still a good bet for above-average efficiency in a matchup with a Hornets team that has looked abysmal to open the year, ranking 29th in both rebound rate and defensive rating.

Leonard is better suited for tournaments than cash games because of the real chance he plays under 30 minutes tonight, but his ceiling is easy to like.

Russell Westbrook, PG, Houston Rockets ($10,900)

Revenge game narrative or not, Russell Westbrook is underpriced relative to what he's done in a Houston Rockets uniform so far.

Having no trouble co-existing with James Harden, Westbrook has notched 59.7 and 58.5 FanDuel points in his first two games of the year, averaging a triple-double in just 33.0 minutes per game.

He's not seeing the usage that Harden is at 29.5% (compared to 36.5% for Harden), but he's making up for that on the glass as the leading rebounder through two games for a team that's rolling out a ton of three-guard small ball lineups. A 29.5% usage rate isn't exactly low, either, and it's not far off the 30.9% mark he posted last year, when he averaged 55.1 FanDuel points per game.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are coming off an impressive win last night, but Westbrook's former team isn't a huge threat to hold him back, with Houston favored by 10.0 points tonight.

Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.