3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 1/7/20
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.
Andre Drummond, C, Detroit Pistons ($10,300)
Trade rumors or not, the Detroit Pistons are not taking it easy on Andre Drummond — he played over 40 minutes in the second half of a back-to-back in his last outing.
Drummond ranks second among all centers with an average of 48.4 FanDuel points per game on the year, and his game continues to expand. His 17.4 points per game are a career-high, his 15.9 rebound and 2.6 assists per game are both the second-highest marks of his career, and his 3.9 combined blocks and steals per game are the most of his career.
He should have little issue continuing to roll tonight against a Cleveland Cavaliers team that has allowed top-10 fantasy efficiency to centers while sporting the second-lowest defensive rating in the NBA.
De'Aaron Fox, PG, Sacramento Kings ($7,800)
De'Aaron Fox has shown a pretty good combination of a high floor and high ceiling lately. Excluding a game that saw him leave early with an injury, he's averaged 38.7 FanDuel points per game across nine contests since returning to action in December, scoring at least 35 in six of the nine.
The Sacramento Kings' 28th-ranked pace tends to hold back their fantasy value, but a matchup with the Phoenix Suns should help negate that.
The Suns check in at 9th in pace and 19th in defense rating, surrendering the NBA's fifth-most points per game. As of this writing, this matchup's 226.5-point over/under is the second-highest on the slate.
Serge Ibaka, PF, Toronto Raptors ($7,500)
Another stud on the cheaper side, Serge Ibaka's fantasy value continues to get a huge boost with both Pascal Siakam and Marc Gasol on the shelf.
Playing without that duo for the last nine contests, Ibaka has turned an average of 31.7 minutes into 32.6 FanDuel points per game. That's not huge production by any stretch, but four of those games were blowouts of at least 15 points, two of which saw him play fewer than 30 minutes.
Tonight's game has against the Portland Trail Blazers has only a one-point spread, meaning Ibaka should be in for a full complement of minutes. That's especially valuable in this matchup, as Portland owns the NBA's sixth-worst total rebound rate and has allowed the second-most fantasy points per game to opposing power forwards.
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.
