3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 12/27/19
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.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, SF, Milwaukee Bucks ($11,600)
Giannis Antetokounmpo has been nursing a back injury, but he's probable tonight, so we can expect him to continue to play through it.
He dropped 48.3 FanDuel points on Christmas Day. That's a down game by his standards, but in the previous four he had averaged 62.3 per game, so we don't need to be too concerned about the NBA's second-leading fantasy producer (58.4 FanDuel points per game on the year).
That's especially true since he draws a great matchup against the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta has combined a top-10 pace and bottom-five defensive rating this season, and they're allowing top-five marks in both points and rebounds while also giving up the 11th-most assists, most steals and second-most blocks per game. Giannis can fill it up in all five of those areas, and he should have no trouble bouncing back tonight.
Bam Adebayo, PF, Miami Heat ($9,000)
Bam Adebayo's breakout season has been a fun one, and things have really picked up for him recently. Nine games ago he hit the 50-fantasy point mark for just the third time this season, but since then he's eclipsed 50 in seven of nine.
The 49.8 FanDuel points per game he's averaging in that time (5.5-times value on today's salary) hasn't come as a total anomaly either — it's come with increased volume. Adebayo has played 37.7 minutes and averaged 13.0 field goal attempts per game in that stretch, which is up from 34.1 and 10.2 per game on the year. His usage rate is also up to 22.9% (from 20.1%).
Listed as a PF on FanDuel, Adebayo does play a fair amount of his minutes at the center spot (18.3 minutes in his last outing), positioning him well to take advantage of an Indiana Pacers team that allows the second-most FanDuel points per minute to opposing centers
Ben Simmons, PG, Philadelphia 76ers ($8,700)
A matchup with the Orlando Magic and their 27th-ranked pace isn't ideal, but Ben Simmons is still too cheap here. His salary is up $700 from Christmas Day, but that's enough of an increase, considering his average of 46.8 FanDuel points per game (5.4 per $1,000 of salary today) over the last seven.
Simmons has handled a big workload in that stretch, averaging 36.1 minutes per game and topping 37 minutes in all four that were decided by fewer than 17 points. Even though the Magic surrender below-average fantasy production to opposing point guards, Simmons is cheap enough to remain a great play on Friday.
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.
