3 NBA FanDuel Studs to Target on 2/5/21
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 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.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, PF, Milwaukee Bucks
FanDuel Salary: $11,200
The Milwaukee Bucks are pretty constant blowout risks, and they are that again tonight against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Milwaukee is favored by 10.5 points, which is a bit bigger than their average point spread this year (8.3). But Giannis Antetokounmpo emerges as the primary star on the slate. numberFire projects him to get to 54.5 FanDuel points, which is 7.6 more than any other player on the board.
Antetokounmpo didn't play in the first meeting between the two teams, a 100-90 win for the Bucks. That's not a great game for fantasy success, but the Bucks are -- naturally -- a better team and a better offense with Antetokounmpo (120.6 offensive rating) than without him (110.2).
Antetokounmpo's Bucks have 20-point and 28-point wins in their past two, games in which Antetokounmpo put up 57.8 and 33.8 FanDuel points, respectively. Prior to that, he had 60-plus FanDuel points in three straight.
We're dealing with a Cavaliers defense that is eighth in adjusted defensive rating this season. That's usually a negative, but in this instance, it should allow Giannis to log heavier minutes in a closer game and keep producing at an elite rate.
Nikola Vucevic, C, Orlando Magic
FanDuel Salary: $8,800
The Orlando Magic big man, Nikola Vucevic, isn't in the most flawless matchup (the Chicago Bulls are sixth in player-level adjusted FanDuel points per minute allowed to centers and ninth in rebounding rate), but he's still for a big boost in usage with Aaron Gordon out.
With Gordon off the court, Vucevic boasts a 31.4% usage rate and a per-minute average of 1.34 FanDuel points, via RotoGrinders' CourtIQ tool. That is a 3.2-percentage-point boost to his usage rate without Gordon.
That 1.34-FanDuel-point-per-minute rate would rank him 13th among qualified players this season and would be 6th-best among players on this slate tonight. While the over/under isn't amazing, it's not bad at 221.5 -- especially with a close 2.0-point spread. Vucevic is the player projected for the second-most FanDuel points of the night (46.9) behind Antetokounmpo.
Malcolm Brogdon, PG, Indiana Pacers
FanDuel Salary: $7,800
Malcolm Brogdon has gotten the short end of some blowouts recently. The Indiana Pacers lost by 20 on Wednesday and won by 18 on Tuesday, and Brogdon logged a total of zero fourth-quarter minutes across the two. That led to him playing just 28 minutes in each. Prior to that, he had played 36-plus minutes in seven straight games.
The limited minutes and production, then, has resulted in his salary has dropping from $8,400 to $7,800. That alone is enough to take a peek at him for tonight. There's a lot more to like than just the salary discrepancy, though.
The Pacers are now injected into a very promising matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans, who rank 22nd in adjusted defensive rating and below the NBA average in adjusted FanDuel points allowed to opposing point guards. Further, the total is 228.0 with a narrow 2.5-point spread. That gives the Pacers an implied team total of 115.25, a top-five number on the slate.
