NBA

3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 11/22/19

Jason Schandl  —  @JasonSchandl Nov 22nd, 2019
James Harden may be on Friday's slate, but it's Luka Doncic who draws the more favorable matchup. Who else should you pay up for tonight?

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.

Luka Doncic, PG, Dallas Mavericks ($12,100)

Luka Doncic's 56.9 FanDuel points per game rank third in the NBA to open the season, and while that does put him second on the slate (behind James Harden's 57.7), a superior matchup pushes Doncic over the top.

Doncic is handling a massive workload for the Dallas Mavericks, sporting a 35.2% usage rate while playing 34.3 minutes per game, and he's converted that to averaging nearly a triple-double, with 29.9 points, 10.6 boards and 9.4 assists (to go with 1.4 steals) per game.

Tonight, he brings that into a matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers, who rank an unremarkable 19th in defensive rating (109.8), while Harden draws a much stiffer test against the Los Angeles Clippers and their top-10 defense.

It's not just scoring that should be easy to come by against Cleveland -- they also sit just 26th in total rebound rate, putting the sophomore in another good position to drop a triple-double.

Bradley Beal, SG, Washington Wizards ($9,800)

The Washington Wizards don't look like an especially dangerous threat in the Eastern Conference, but their style of play is likely to keep them generating a ton of fantasy production throughout the year.

Their 114.0 offensive rating is the second-best in the NBA, and they combine that with the league's fifth-fastest pace (105.1). Combining those factors, they're second in the NBA with 119.7 points scored per game, while their 28.3 assists per game are a league-high.

Bradley Beal is the focal point of the offense, averaging over twice as many field goal attempts per game (23.1) as the second-best mark on the team (11.6), and he's also averaging a team-high 6.7 dimes. He's eclipsed 50 FanDuel points three times in the last four games (averaging 55.2 per game in that stretch, and while the Charlotte Hornets' relatively slow pace won't help him out, their 23rd-ranked defensive rating will.

Donovan Mitchell, SG, Utah Jazz ($8,700)

The Golden State Warriors check in dead-last in defensive rating at 116.1 through 16 games, and even though they play at a middling pace, they've still given up the league's third-most points per game (118.9). They're also giving up the most assists per game, and that predictably has them giving up top-eight marks in fantasy points per minute to both guard spots.

Donovan Mitchell continues to make strides in his third NBA season, and while his assist numbers are down slightly with Mike Conley in town, his 24.9 points and 5.7 rebounds per game are both career-highs, and his 3.9 assists per game are only slightly below his previous best (4.2).

His price tag has hit a season-high for tonight's game, but $8,700 is still totally fair for a guy averaging 40.1 FanDuel points per game. And since it's already fair in a vacuum, drawing one of the best matchups available gives him a nice boost on Friday's slate.

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.