3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 9/9/20

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 today.

Nikola Jokic, C, Denver Nuggets ($9,900)

The performance of Jamal Murray has impacted Nikola Jokic dramatically. When Murray shot 52.9% against the Utah Jazz in Denver's first-round series, and as he was feeling it shooting the ball, he occupied 30.1% usage, which led surprisingly led Denver. Jokic failed to eclipse 51 FanDuel points in any of those seven games against Utah.

However, at the moment, Murray is badly struggling with his shot and giving up the basketball as a result. Only shooting 36.8% from the field, Murray's usage has plummeted to 23.6%. "The Joker" once again leads Denver in usage at 31.6%, and as a result, has scored over 51 FanDuel points in two of three contests. Jokic has been the better, more reliable scoring option in this series, and should be a priority on this particular slate because of alternatives. No other center in the FanDuel player pool saw more than 21 minutes, so especially in cash games, set and forget the Denver big man.

Paul George, SG, Los Angeles Clippers ($8,200)

Paul George was incredibly outspoken about how comments on social media were so mentally damaging inside the Orlando bubble, and how it badly affected him. His shooting stats back that up, as George shot terribly against the Dallas Mavericks last series, at only 34.6%, and just 27% from three-point land.

Things changed five games ago, however, which is the sample size since George disabled comments being allowed on his Instagram on August 23rd. George has shot 49.6% from the field in that period of time, and has been an especially great 43.6% from three in that time period. 59.7% of George's FanDuel points per minute production comes from scoring, so his shot is especially important to his fantasy production, and right now, he is hot from the field, and it has translated to smashing his implied value on FanDuel each of the last two games.

Jaylen Brown, SF, Boston Celtics ($7,800)

On a team of talented scorers like Jayson Tatum and Kemba Walker, it may be surprising that Jaylen Brown led Boston in a pivotal Game 5 in both point scoring (27 points) and shot attempts (18). But, Brown has been trending upwards for a while in terms of fantasy production, and the heavy minutes he has been seeing in this series (36.2 minutes per game) have not hurt matters.

Brown only averaged 0.89 FanDuel points per minute against the Philadelphia 76ers, but that is up to 0.97 against the Toronto Raptors in this series, which is good for third among Celtics starters behind Daniel Theis, who does not play as many minutes as Brown, and Tatum, who has a much higher salary. When making a decision in this area on FanDuel as well, Brown's 0.97 FanDuel points per minute in this series is actually quite higher than Pascal Siakam's rate (0.83), which may come as a surprise given how vastly different that is from the regular season. Both of those players--and many other Celtics and Raptors--are likely to see nearly 40 minutes again in a must-win Game 6.

Austin Swaim is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Austin Swaim also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username ASwaim3. 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.