3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 1/7/19

Damian Lillard, PG, Portland Trail Blazers

Price: $9,200

The Portland Trail Blazers are taking on the New York Knicks tonight, meaning Damian Lillard will spend much of the game being defended by Emmanuel Mudiay.

To Mudiay's credit, he's making some strides on the defensive end. After ranking dead-last (78th out of 78) among point guards in ESPN's Defensive Real Plus-Minus metric last season, he's improved to 73rd out of 95 this year. That puts him on pace for his best finish since his rookie season -- as far as percentile goes -- after he finished 56th out of 64 in the 2016-17 season and 40th out of 53 as a rookie.

That's all to say Mudiay is a terrible defender at the NBA level. And you can't afford to defend Dame terribly.

Lillard hasn't been posting massive fantasy numbers, topping 40 FanDuel points in only 5 of his last 11 games, but he's still getting up plenty of offensive volume. He's attempted at least 20 field goals in five of his last eight games, and with such a favorable matchup in front of him, we can expect him to be called upon for a similarly large workload tonight.

The Blazers' 116.5-point implied total is Monday's highest, and Lillard should have his fingerprints all over Portland's high point total.

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.