3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on Wednesday 10/20/21
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 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.
Which top players should be the focal points of your lineups today?
Karl-Anthony Towns, C, Minnesota Timberwolves ($10,800)
The top fantasy game of the day is between the Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis.
Along with a lofty 229.5-point total, these two squads were top-six teams in pace last season, as well. While there is some uncertainty in exactly how the Wolves' backcourt will look in terms of usage between Anthony Edwards and D'Angelo Russell, there are no significant changes for Karl-Anthony Towns this season.
He still will lock down a role that was tremendous when all three played together. Towns (26.9%) was second in usage to Russell (27.4%) but blew all of his teammates out of the water with 1.34 FanDuel points per minute on average in that floor situation.
Dual-position eligibility this season doesn't lock you out of Mohamed Bamba to use Towns, so the big man should be a focal point of the slate.
Jayson Tatum, F, Boston Celtics ($10,200)
Jaylen Brown is still incredibly questionable to make his debut with Boston when they take on the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.
Brown has been in COVID-19 protocols and now has conditioning concerns, which makes it decently unlikely that he does play for the Celtics so early into the year. That should -- as it did last season -- shift a massive offensive workload onto Jayson Tatum.
Tatum saw a monstrous 34.5% usage rate in floor situations without JB last season. That was a team-best 3.6% increase from all situations, and he parlayed that into 1.33 FanDuel points per minute on average.
The pace of the Celtics' game is not ideal, but outside of Marcus Smart, there will be no one left on the Celtics' new roster who could reasonably be expected to eclipse 20 points tonight. Tatum's floor is as solid as any star on the slate.
Editor's Note: Jaylen Brown is playing and starting for Boston, but Tatum still remains a solid, top-tier option at the small forward position.
Bradley Beal, G, Washington Wizards ($9,400)
The independent Bradley Beal era begins in earnest this evening.
With Russell Westbrook dealt to the Lakers, Beal now just shares a backcourt with the agreeable Spencer Dinwiddie. As a result, his offensive usage this season could come at a league-high rate.
During floor situations without Westbrook last season, Beal averaged a stupid 39.9% usage rate. He turned that into 1.44 FanDuel points per minute. Both of those marks exceeded the season-long ones of Luka Doncic, whom we know is a one-man show and usually carries a salary north of $11,000 to prove it.
Beal himself had a five-digit salary for good chunks of last season, and that makes him an interesting buy-low opportunity on Wednesday. The Wizards will be terrible many nights, but there is minimal blowout risk this evening as just three-point underdogs to a Toronto squad without Pascal Siakam.
