3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 11/15/19

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.

James Harden, SG, Houston Rockets ($12,500)

James Harden has dropped 60-plus FanDuel points in each of his last five games, while no other player has scored 60-plus in more than five games for the entire season.

The addition of Russell Westbrook has not done anything to hurt Harden's offensive volume, as his 24.1 field goal, 13.8 3-point and 15.1 free throw attempts per 36 minutes are all on pace to be career-highs. His 40.5% usage rate matches his league-leading mark from last season, and that also comes with a slight uptick in assist rate (40.2%).

Tonight's matchup isn't an easy one, as the Indiana Pacers sport a top-10 defensive rating while playing at a bottom-five pace, but Harden's absurd offensive numbers, averaging over 40 points on 25-plus field goal attempts in 38.2 minutes per game over his last five, make him a tough fade in any matchup right now.

Nikola Vucevic, C, Orlando Magic ($9,000)

After a slow start to the season, things have picked up for Nikola Vucevic in recent games. He's eclipsed 45.0 FanDuel points (5.0 per $1,000 of salary today) in three of his last four, averaging 49.3 per game in that stretch.

His 31.8 minutes per game are up slightly from last year's 31.4, so it makes sense that his fantasy production is back up near the 45.4 FanDuel points per game he averaged in his 2018-19 campaign.

Vooch is shooting just a .486 effective field goal percentage, which is well down from last year's .549, and over a small 11-game sample, we shouldn't read into that number as much more than variance. This recent bounce-back is more in line with what we've seen from him over a much bigger sample (80 games last year), and we can feel good about taking advantage of this low price-tag while it lasts.

Jason Tatum, PF, Boston Celtics ($8,200)

The Golden State Warriors have really been a matchup to attack this season, and their 117.2 defensive rating is significantly worse than even the league's 29th-ranked mark (114.6). They're allowing top-10 marks in all of points, rebounds and assists per game on the year, conceding huge numbers across the board.

Jayson Tatum has seen a slight drop in production with Gordon Hayward on the shelf over the last two games, but don't let that sour you on his fantasy upside moving forward.

He still saw a strong workload in those games, averaging 19.0 field goal attempts in 34.7 minutes per game, but he just couldn't get his shot to fall and averaged 0.78 FanDuel points per minute. He's averaging 1.06 per minute on the year and was up to 1.17 per minute with Hayward off the floor before those two games.

Regression is going to hit and bring Tatum's fantasy value way up, and a matchup with the Warriors if the perfect time to bet on that happening.

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.