NBA

3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 1/27/20

Who's worth paying up for on Monday's six-game NBA slate?

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.

James Harden, SG, Houston Rockets ($10,500)

This one gets an obvious "if James Harden plays" caveat, as he's nursing a thigh injury. Russell Westbrook will be on the shelf on the second half of a back-to-back here, and even a banged-up Harden is more than worth $10.5k without Westbrook.

Averaging an NBA-best 57.5 FanDuel points per game overall, Harden's average jumps to a ridiculous 63.4 per game in five contests without Westbrook. This is the cheapest Harden has been priced all season, and he'll be an obvious steal if he plays.

If he doesn't suit up, Houston will be missing two players who account for 45.6% of their field goal attempts and 61.8% of their assists on the season. If that is the case, treat Eric Gordon like a stud, even though he's only priced at $4,400.

Luka Doncic, PG, Dallas Mavericks ($10,900)

Luka Doncic has seen his salary drop under $11k despite the fact he's still produced solid numbers in recent games. His 44.7 FanDuel points in his last outing wasn't anything special, but he had averaged 58.0 per game across his previous four.

His 38.4% usage rate in January is right in line with his 39.0% from last month, and his minutes are up to 34.6 per game on the month -- more than he's averaged in a month since a four-game October sample.

The Oklahoma City Thunder aren't anything special as far as fantasy matchups go, but they don't warrant Doncic's salary continuing to fall like this, and he's a relative bargain tonight.

LaMarcus Aldridge, PF, San Antonio Spurs ($8,000)

LaMarcus Aldridge struggled to the tune of 21.0 fantasy points on Sunday, but overall his recent production and volume are both still very encouraging.

The previous five games had seen him average 41.5 FanDuel points on 16.0 field goal attempts per game. He's also played north of 34.5 minutes in four of the last five, and with the San Antonio Spurs sitting as modest 2.5-point favorites against the Chicago Bulls, he should get a full workload tonight.

That workload should also be easy to translate into production, as no team in the NBA allows more fantasy points per minute to opposing power forwards than Chicago does.


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.