3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 3/10/20

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 ($11,200)

There's some blowout risk playing Houston Rockets players tonight, but with this game's colossal 244.5-point over/under (and their 128.5-point implied total), the upside is there, blowout or not.

The Minnesota Timberwolves have been a treat of a matchup for fantasy purposes, playing at the second-highest pace in the NBA while checking in at 20th in defensive rating and 24th in total rebound rate. They've been playing especially fast recently, with the NBA's highest pace (106.5 — up from 104.0 on the year) and third-worst defensive rating (116.5) since February 1.

James Harden, of course, needs little introduction. Yes, he's underwhelmed with a few games south of 45.0 FanDuel points in the past couple weeks, but those little slumps have never been a sign of long-term doom and gloom this season. His biggest three-game fantasy stretch of the season (72.2, 67.5 and 77.8 FanDuel points) came surrounded by two sub-45 games before and two after. Harden is an upside play, and he offers that in spades against the Wolves.

Anthony Davis, PF, Los Angeles Lakers ($10,400)

Another guy whose recent up-and-down production shouldn't concern you is Anthony Davis. Sub-50 fantasy outings in four of his last five have kept his salary nice and reasonable, but he also went off for 71.6 in the other one of those five and before that had averaged 59.1 per game in his previous seven.

Tonight, he gets a Brooklyn Nets team that has mixed results against bigs, holding power forwards to below-average production but giving up top-five fantasy efficiency to centers.

This spot becomes particularly interesting with LeBron James listed as questionable. The Lakers are coming off a weekend that saw them play the other two championship favorites, and their next four games are also all against Western Conference playoff teams. We could see him rested tonight, and that would make Davis a virtual must-play at this price point.

Nikola Vucevic, C, Orlando Magic ($8,300)

A cheaper stud option, Nikola Vucevic, is becoming one of the most consistently underpriced high-end fantasy options.

At $8.3k, he needs 41.5 FanDuel points to return 5.0 per $1,000. He's done that in each of his last four games, five of his last six, and 10 of his last 13 — averaging 46.6 (5.6 per $1,000) over those 13. Even if we expand out to the entire season, he's averaging better than 5-times value with 42.1 FanDuel points per game.

The Memphis Grizzlies rank in the middle of the pack on the glass, with a 50.7 percent rebound rate, and in defensive rating (109.8; 15th). Vooch absolutely cooked them for 59.2 FanDuel points in the first meeting between these two teams, and while that's going to be much closer to his ceiling than his average performance here, he's just too cheap any way you cut it.

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.