3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 10/17/18

Anthony Davis, PF, New Orleans Pelicans

Price: $12,400

It's hard to overstate just how absurd a fantasy producer Anthony Davis was last year -- especially after DeMarcus Cousins suffered his season-ending injury.

In games without Cousins, Davis averaged 60.8 FanDuel points per. That would be good for first in the NBA by a big margin, as Davis led the league in that category with 55.1, and the next-best mark was 54.3. For context on how ridiculous 60.8 per game is -- Russell Westbrook only averaged 60.6 in his triple-double-per-game season, and we have to go way back before the advent of FanDuel to find someone with a better average than 60.8. It was last beat by David Robinson, who would have averaged 61.7 per game in his 1993-94 campaign.

Davis was highly consistent, topping 50 FanDuel points in 26 of his 33 Cousins-less games, but his unmatched ceiling is what really drove up his fantasy value. In those 33 games, he topped 90 FanDuel points three times. No other player hit that mark more than once in a season, and the last time someone had more than one of those games in a season was again David Robinson in 1993-94.

With production like that, it's not as much about whether Davis is a strong play -- it's about whether you can find enough reasons to not play him on a given slate.

Taking on a Houston Rockets team that played at an above-average pace last season, and priced somewhat reasonably on a slate that looks like it will be full of solid value options, tonight is not a night to fade the Brow.