NBA

3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 2/11/21

Brandon Gdula  —  @gdula13 Feb 11th, 2021
The Miami Heat don't have an elite implied team total, but there's a lot to like about Jimmy Butler. Who else stands out on this 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-salaried 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 a heavy salary to roster someone. Even with strong value plays in your lineup, getting a dud from a stud is likely going to leave your lineup lacking.

Let's get right into it and look at which top players should be the focal points of your lineups today.

Jimmy Butler, SF, Miami Heat

FanDuel Salary: $8,700

This five-game slate has a good selection of studs all things considered, but I'm -- as usual -- going to let the big picture drive the actual stud selections. Point guard is deep. I like Damian Lillard plenty, but we can get value there more easily than at the other positions. Shooting guard has two borderline studs in Victor Oladipo and Fred VanVleet, yet neither are flawless tonight.

Small forward, though, drops off after a big four, and not only that, but Jimmy Butler emerges from the pack.

Butler's Miami Heat will play at the Houston Rockets, who have been better defensively without James Harden (116.5 defensive rating with him but 109.4 without him). That new mark would rank them eighth on the full season, which is good but not damning. Butler has averaged a per-minute rate of 1.36 FanDuel points over 70 minutes against top-10 adjusted defenses this season, per my data.

numberFire projects Butler for 34.5 minutes in this game, and in six games since returning after missing 10 games from COVID-19 protocols, he has averaged 48.5 FanDuel points via 21.8 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 8.3 assists.

Domantas Sabonis, PF, Indiana Pacers

FanDuel Salary: $9,300

This one was a coin flip between Domantas Sabonis and Jayson Tatum, who are the two standout plays at power forward. Again, opportunity cost seems real tonight, and these two are a clear cut above the rest of the power forward pool from a floor and ceiling standpoint.

But Sabonis draws the absolute best possible matchup for power forwards, as the Detroit Pistons rank 30th in adjusted FanDuel points per minute allowed to the position. They're also just 22nd in estimated defensive rating but are a surprising 11th in adjusted defensive rating. Either way, though, those aren't outlier ranks in terms of difficulty, and that's generally what matters in NBA DFS.

Sabonis has put up at least 40 FanDuel points in four of his past five games, against some tough defenses in that stretch. numberFire projects him for 43.9 tonight, which is 4.72 per $1,000 in salary. That ranks him fourth among all power forwards and also slightly outperforms Tatum's 4.51 mark.

Joel Embiid, C, Philadelphia 76ers

FanDuel Salary: $10,800

This final spot was down to Joel Embiid or Nikola Vucevic among the centers and possibly Victor Oladipo at shooting guard, but of the three, the one who is most likely to break the slate is Embiid. Embiid's mathematical fantasy ceiling is 64.8 points, which is 6.1 points higher than anyone else's on the slate (Damian Lillard is next up).

And there's also a floor. The last time Embiid fell shy of 40 FanDuel points was on January 14th when he played through back tightness and put up 16.5 FanDuel points over 24 minutes.

Though the Portland Trail Blazers rank 9th against centers after adjusting for opponents, Embiid has still managed 1.49 FanDuel points per minute over nearly 180 minutes this season against top-12 center defenses. That is down from a league-leading 1.59 per minute, yet it's still elite for this slate.

Vucevic has the better matchup, but the can't-miss ceiling edge goes to Embiid. Strongly consider building around one of the two centers tonight.