3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 12/2/19

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.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, SF, Milwaukee Bucks ($12,200)

Giannis Antetokounmpo is $1,300 more expensive than anyone else on the slate, but he's also the slate's most productive fantasy producer by a big margin, and he has a strong matchup to boot.

The Greek Freak leads the entire NBA with an average of 60.4 FanDuel points per game on the year, blowing out the slate's next-highest mark of 45.9 (Joel Embiid), which checks in at 12th in the NBA. Giannis' average comes from a combination of an insanely high floor and an elite ceiling as well.

He has only fallen below 50 FanDuel points twice on the year — once when playing just 20 minutes in a blowout in his last game, and once in his third game of the season, when he played 29 minutes. There's also blowout risk tonight, as the Milwaukee Bucks are huge 15.5-point favorites, but Giannis has still eclipsed 50 FanDuel points in four of the six games in which he has played fewer than 30 minutes. He has also topped 70 FanDuel points five times on the year, which is the most in the NBA, and he owns four of the season's top 10 single-game fantasy scores for any player.

Trae Young, PG, Atlanta Hawks ($10,000)

Tonight's matchup between the Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors should have no shortage of scoring. They both sit in the bottom-four in defensive rating (Hawks 29th, Warriors 27th) to open the year, while also both sitting above average (Hawks 12th, Warriors 15th) in pace. They both also check in bottom-10 in offensive rating, but they don't stack up quite as poorly (Hawks 27th, Warriors 25th) as they do on the defensive end.

Unsurprisingly, those defensive struggles also have the Warriors allowing top-10 fantasy efficiency to opposing point guards this year.

Trae Young has cooled off some from his ridiculous start, when he topped 55.0 FanDuel points in five and 60.0 in four of his first nine games, but he's still putting up great numbers, averaging 51.3 FanDuel points per game over his last five. That's already better than 5.0 per $1,000 at today's price point, and adding in one of the better matchups you could ask for makes him an easy pick against the Dubs.

Devin Booker, SG, Phoenix Suns ($8,300)

Devin Booker's game log is a bit of a roller coaster ride this season, but ultimately he's showing us what we've become accustomed to out of him: plenty of upside and a heavy reliance on offensive numbers.

Booker exploded for a season-high 61.9 FanDuel points four games ago, and his 37.0 FanDuel points per game aren't far off the 38.9 he's averaged over the last three seasons. That fantasy production is coming on the back of 24.5 points and 6.3 assists to go with 3.7 boards, 0.6 steals and 0.3 blocks per game.

Tonight's matchup is a solid one for those offense-heavy numbers, as the Charlotte Hornets have struggled to the tune of the NBA's third-worst defensive rating (114.4) to open the year, allowing the NBA's 10th-most points and most assists per game to opponents, despite their slow pace.

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.