Top-Five NBA Fantasy Performances of the 2020 Season (So Far) with Rayen Patnaik

Yes, I said “so far…” because the NBA is coming back. Please don’t tell me otherwise. It’s been over two months since the NBA was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. There has been some optimism in recent weeks, so we can all hope for and enjoy some summertime NBA.

We are going to take a trip down memory lane and take a look back at the five best NBA fantasy scoring performances this season. We will use FanDuel scoring and if you didn’t know by now, that’s the official scoring the NBA uses as well. 

Before we start, try to give a guess who made the list. SPOILER: Giannis isn’t on it.

5. James Harden, Nov. 30

Checking in at No. 5 we have The Beard putting up a monstrous 82.6 NBA fantasy points in a matchup against the Atlanta Hawks. In just 31 minutes, Harden put up a casual 60 points, three rebounds, eight assists, three steals and a block. Those numbers are all phenomenal but the most impressive stat was Harden’s +50 while he was on the floor. The Rockets scored 158 points and blew out the Hawks by 47. 

11/30/2019 was a four-game saturday slate and in the $375K Sat NBA Shot Machine ($100K to 1st), James Harden was 69.0% owned.

Quarantine James Harden Update

James Harden looks as slim as ever as he has been doing a lot of cardio, balance exercises, body control drills and yoga. It seems like Harden has a lost a ton of weight.

4. Karl-Anthony Towns, Oct. 25

The Minnesota Timberwolves have had a season to forget yet again. After a flurry of midseason trades, the Timberwolves have jettisoned 10 players from their opening night roster. Towns is now the second-oldest player on the team behind James Johnson. Unfortunately, he has had an extremely tough time during quarantine as he lost his mother due to coronavirus. With mumblings about the NBA leaving out the worst teams, we might have seen the last of Towns and the Timberwolves this season. They have an exciting young nucleus with a duo D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley and an early draft pick to look forward to next season. Let’s look back at one of the bright spots early on the season against the Charlotte Hornets. Towns scored 83 NBA fantasy points in just 28 minutes. He put up a whopping stat line of 37 points, 15 rebounds, eight assists, four steals and two blocks. 

On this nine-game Friday Slate, Towns was 31% owned. The other 69% of you really missed out.

3. Ben Simmons, Jan. 20

Ben Simmons had a career game earlier on Martin Luther King Day. He put up a 34-point triple-double and added seven stocks (steals plus blocks) to carry him to 84.4 NBA fantasy points. Fun fact, this was actually the second-best fantasy performance of the night. Simmons has been a fantasy stud whenever Joel Embiid has been out as he showed against Brooklyn in this game. It was overlooked how serious Simmons’ back injury was in February, and Brett Brown recently said Simmons was vomiting because of how serious the back injury was. It sounds like Simmons is healthy and will be good to go when the NBA resumes action. Highlights below.

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2. Damian Lillard, Jan. 20

Lillard put Simmons’ performance in the rear-view mirror later on MLK Day against the Golden State Warriors. He went on to break Kemba Walker’s record for most points on MLK Day as he scored a career-high 61 points in an overtime thriller. As daily fantasy players, we love narratives, and the Lillard MLK narrative will be one that should be used every year because of how absurdly impressive this stat line was. Lillard accumulated 61 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists and went 16-for-16 from the charity stripe. In my opinion, Lillard deserved to be January’s Western Conference Player of the Month and it was an absolute travesty that it went to LeBron. I really hope Lillard gets a chance to carry the Trail Blazers in the playoffs depending on the final format chosen by the NBA for return to play.

1. LeBron James, Nov. 1

Overtime usually translates to fantasy goodness for players involved in that game. This was one of the best games of the season by far as we saw Luka Doncic and LeBron go back and forth all night long. One of the most enjoyable moments was seeing Luka and LeBron switch to defend each other. LeBron was sensational as he put up 39 points in a triple-double with 16 assists which carried him to 88.4 NBA fantasy points. 

In the FanDuel $400K Fri NBA Clutch Shot ($100K to first), LeBron James was only 6.2% owned. He wasn’t in the winning lineup either. 

Comment below if you rostered any of these performances and if they translated into any big wins for you.