3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 11/19/19

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.

Anthony Davis, PF, Los Angeles Lakers ($11,200)

Anthony Davis is available at a fairly significant ($800) discount from LeBron James tonight, making him the more appealing play of the Los Angeles Lakers superstars.

He' only averaging 3.0 FanDuel points per game fewer than LeBron, ranking eighth in the NBA with 50.4 per game. We can also likely expect that to improve moving forward while he's playing 34.8 minutes per game.

His 1.45 FanDuel points per minute are his fewest since the 2015-16 season, and while some of that drop can be attributed to playing second-fiddle to The King, there are also areas that are likely just variance. His .493 effective field goal percentage, for example, is on pace to be a career-low. His career-average sits at .528, and he posted marks of .552 and .540 (the two best of his career) in the last two seasons.

Tonight, he draws an Oklahoma City Thunder team that is playing on the second half of a road-road back-to-back, and a tired OKC frontcourt isn't a huge threat to slow him down.

Damian Lillard, PG, Portland Trail Blazers ($9,800)

Damian Lillard is coming off one of his worst fantasy performances of the season last night, but a matchup with the New Orleans Pelicans tends to be something of a cure-all for struggling fantasy performers.

The Pels are playing at the NBA's fourth-fastest pace to open the year, and they've paired that with the third-worst defensive rating and fifth-worst rebound rate. That high-paced inefficiency has done wonders for opponents' counting stats, and New Orleans is giving up the 2nd-most points (120.0), 5th-most assists (25.5), 6th-most steals (8.5), and 13th-most rebounds (46.4) per game to opponents.

Dame can fill it up in all of those areas, averaging 28.6 points, 7.1 assists, 4.9 boards and 1.1 steals in 38.3 minutes per game on the year. A back-to-back can be a concern for someone who plays as many minutes as Lillard, but his 34.5 last night were his second-fewest of the season, and we've seen him play 37.0, 40.4 and 38.8 the three times he's been on the second half of a back-to-back this season.

Buddy Hield, SG, Sacramento Kings ($7,900)

Buddy Hield disappointed in his first couple games with De'Aaron Fox on the shelf, but on Sunday he blew up for 57.2 fantasy points.

That explosion wasn't much of a surprise, considering his first two games sans Fox saw him average 18.0 field goal attempts (including 12.5 3-point attempts) in 37.4 minutes per game. His usage rate is up to 27.7% in minutes with Fox off the floor this season, and it's easy to like getting that kind of usage paired with minutes into the high-30s for fantasy purposes.

He's another guy with a promising matchup, as well, as the Phoenix Suns are playing at a top-10 pace this season, giving up above-average offensive numbers despite their surprisingly solid defensive rating.

Hield's salary has jumped up from $7,000 following Sunday's breakout, but it's still not high enough to reflect the upside that his heavy offensive workload brings.

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.