NBA

3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 1/14/21

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-salaried 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 a heavy salary to roster someone. Even with strong value plays in your lineup, getting a dud from a stud is likely going to leave your lineup lacking.

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

FanDuel Salary: $11,200

It's just a five-game slate, so we're pretty light on studs. Usually, I like to look and see which positions are populated by only one stud, because then the opportunity cost of missing out on a big game there is hard to (or impossible to) match. Center isn't quite that because we have Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, but they're in a tier of their own, and with Embiid's salary a full $1,000 lower than Jokic's, he should be more popular.

Jokic, specifically, is in a really good spot against the Golden State Warriors as a 5.0-point favorite (the Philadelphia 76ers are favored by 10.5 points), and Golden State is bottom-10 in adjusted FanDuel points per minute allowed to centers since the start of 2019-20.

numberFire projects Jokic to get close to yet another triple-double: 24.4 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 8.3 assists with 2.5 combined blocks and steals for 54.2 FanDuel points. That's 4.84 per $1,000 in salary, which is an elite rate for such a high salary.

Christian Wood, PF, Houston Rockets

FanDuel Salary: $8,100

The Houston Rockets are going to be thin tonight after the James Harden trade, and we project just seven Rockets to play at least 18 minutes. Wood is projected for 33.2 minutes and 48.9 FanDuel points: 6.04 per $1,000 in salary. That value rating easily is best among players with a salary of at least $8,000 and is fourth on the entire slate.

Wood has played 63 minutes without Harden, and in that split, he's averaging 1.34 FanDuel points per minute with a 26.7% usage rate. Those are mostly in line with his full-season numbers of 1.27 and 27.7%, respectively, so there's only room to grow.

The Rockets draw a mostly generous frontcourt defense in the San Antonio Spurs, who are also just 22nd in estimated defensive rating. Wood's paths to both a floor and ceiling are wide open with his expected role.

DeMar DeRozan, SG, San Antonio Spurs

FanDuel Salary: $8,100

On the other side of that game, DeMar DeRozan rates out really well. He's just been generally more impactful this season than in past seasons. His per-minute FanDuel point rate is 1.21 this season -- up from 1.14 last season. That's despite a dip of 3.2 percentage points in his usage rate from 26.2% to 23.0% this season (his assist rate is up to 30.4% from 26.1%).

numberFire is projecting DeRozan to get to 5.01 FanDuel points per $1,000 in salary by way of 17.5 field goal attempts, 23.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, and 1.4 combined steals and blocks as a 7.0-point favorite versus a thinned-out Rockets team.

For as much flack as Harden gets defensively, there are some metrics that show him as a plus defender, and not having to handle him at all on the defensive end should allow DeRozan to come through with a high-floor outing.