NBA

3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 2/27/20

Who are some of the top players to pay up for on Thursday's four-game 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.

Anthony Davis, PF, Los Angeles Lakers ($10,800)

It's a four-game slate, LeBron James has been ruled out, Anthony Davis is just $10.8k, and the Los Angeles Lakers are up against the Golden State Warriors.

You probably don't need any more convincing than that. But just in case: Davis has gone from an average of 1.30 FanDuel points per minute with a 27.7% usage rate and 14.5% total rebound rate in 1200 minutes with James on the floor to 1.51 per minute with a 34.8% usage rate and 15.5% rebound rate in 499 minutes with LeBron off.

His salary is unchanged from where it usually is ($10.6k and $10.8k in his last two outings), and the Warriors check in at 25th in defensive rating and 29th in rebound rate this season. Don't overthink it.

C.J. McCollum, SG, Portland Trail Blazers ($8,800)

With Damian Lillard on the shelf, C.J. McCollum has dropped 51.8, 71.8 and 44.2 FanDuel points over his last three games. That's at least 5.0 fantasy points per $1,000 of salary today in all three outings, with an average of 6.4x.

No shocker there, either, as he gets a huge bump in volume and fantasy efficiency when playing without Dame. We see McCollum go from 23.0% usage and 0.90 FanDuel points per minute to 31.7% and 1.23 if we look at all of his minutes with and without Lillard this year.

Lillard is still out, and McCollum's price tag has, for some reason, still not climbed high enough to reflect that, despite the outstanding three-game run he's on. A matchup with the Indiana Pacers isn't ideal, but McCollum is more than cheap enough to make him a terrific play anyway, especially on a four-game slate.

Tobias Harris, SF, Philadelphia 76ers ($7,000)

With Ben Simmons out and Joel Embiid likely out as he undergoes an MRI today, the Philadelphia 76ers are low on offensive contributors. That duo has combined for 25.2% of the team's field goal attempts on the year.

Tobias Harris' 25.1% usage rate with Embiid and Simmons off the floor is tops for any 76er that has played at least 15 such minutes, and in that 202-minute sample, we've seen him average 1.11 FanDuel points per minute. That's not huge efficiency, but it is a jump from his 1.03 fantasy points per minute overall.

Harris will also get a plus matchup to make the most of a potential expanded offensive role, as he's up against a New York Knicks squad that has surrendered the NBA's sixth-highest effective field goal percentage to opponents.


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.