Welcome to your daily NBA DFS digest at FakeTeams, gents. Every day I’m here with a handful of pro-tips to roster a winning team just a few hours from now.
You might be new to fantasy hoops, so let me tell you this: the world doesn’t end in LeBron James. Each night gives us a pretty good batch of surprising performances and leaves us in the dust with more than a few upsetting outings by those we played. First world problems, carry on. That’s the beauty of this game. There are so many matches going on every single day and such a big roster available that you can’t fixate yourself in the very same player on and on but instead you need to keep things fluid.
So read on, take note, play cool, and win the day. (Player salaries pulled from DraftKings.)
Love: (PG) Kyle Lowry, TOR ($8800, vs CLE)
Let’s recap Lowry’s 2019 year: excellent as a second-fiddle to Kawhi, chip on the cabinet and ring on his finger, Toronto’s all-time GOAT position solidified, arguably the no. 1 in this year Raps with Siakam still growing. Nice indeed. Klow keeps leveling up, though. This fool is playing more than 38 minutes per game on the year at age-33 and averaging more than 39 since he came back from injury on Dec. 3. In that time he’s dropped 20-plus points in 8 of his 14 games, got a trip-dub, two double-doubles, finished one assist short of two more, and averaged a 20-5-8-1 line on the month. Lowry is adept at shooting and scoring deep heaves (37.2% on 8.3 attempts) while keeping up both his overall shooting percentage of 42.7 and the one from the charity stripe at 86.5%. He’s finally leading the league in mpg with 38.1, which is simply nuts and has made him a completely matchup-proof guy in the L. Top-12 performer in the past two weeks with three finishes inside the top-10 and two as the second- and third-best performer of the slate. I wonder if Kyle is infinite.
Love: (SG) DeMar DeRozan, SAS ($7100, vs GSW)
Speaking of Raptor legends... DeDe is no longer playing north of the border but his game hasn’t dropped even a minimal bit. Who knows how many more threads will he don as the rumors keep pilling up and he might become a town-to-town dancing player during the remainder of his career, but he can still give fits to anyone. DeRozan is on a four-game streak of scoring 21 or more points and has grabbed 10 and 8 boards in two of those. DeMore you look at his numbers, DeMore you love DeMar. He contributes all across the boards and leaves no cat in the cold—his 20-5-5-1 on the year is something only 10 other players are doing, eight if we take Kyrie and Steph out of the group due to short playing time. To hell with those mid-range haters. Sure, Double-D is only shooting 0.6 threes per game, but he’s hitting 52% of his shots from the floor and his 57.9 TS% ranks 11th among those attempting at least 15 fga and 5 fta per game. I don’t know if San Antonio will end moving him—that will probably be the case as the Spurs are cooked—but whoever gets him will have plenty of reasons to carry a smile for while.
Love: (SF) Draymond Green, GSW ($6100, at SAS)
Daddy Draymond has been good this year considering the hell he’s playing in. Drop anyone in Golden State and they won’t have enough time to start running away, seriously. Papa Green, though, has taken care of the kids and is giving the Warriors all he can and then some. There were two potential versions of Dray on paper once Curry went down: Selfish Dray and Caring Green. The latter prevailed. Green embraced his old-mate, experienced-guy role and he’s playing to the tune of 9.5 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 5.6 apg, 1.6 spg, and 0.7 bpg while only turning the ball over 2.4 times per. Those numbers are ugly out of context, but put together are making Dray a 30-DKFP player with a 1.03-DFKP per-minute production. The price keeps low but the production is always there. Green is “only” a top-50 player in December but rare is the day he doesn’t light a cat in the stat sheet, be it boards, dimes, steals, or anything else you can think of.
Love: (PF) Kevin Love, CLE ($7500, at TOR)
Cleveland might trade Love but they will never run tired of him while still in town. Love is in the air. Love is also a dub-dub player, and far from done. He’s putting up 16.7 ppg and 10.6 rpg to keep the Double Action active on the season while dishing out 2.9 dimes per and getting a stock each game too. The shooting is great at 45/39/84 splits on 12 shots from the floor, 6.3 from three and 4.2 from the line. In the last two-weeks-and-change Kev has played seven games and even on short runs (three games under 30 minutes) he’s still averaged 41.9 DKFP, 20 points, 11 boards, and got himself four more dub-dubs. Add a few thisclose games to those (one with a 9-7-4 line, another with a 20-8-5, the other with a 30-7-4) and you see what I mean when I tell you to ditch the hate and bring Love to your life.
Love: (C) LaMarcus Aldridge, SAS ($7600, vs GSW)
Is this they new Berverley-Trezz? LMA-DeDe? Could easily be, if you ask me. Those two are monsters on the court and always come on the bottom-part of the pricing scale. The algorithm is dumb... If you don’t like LaMar because he’s old, or boring, or outdated, or plays for the Spurs, or whatever, that’s cool, but know you’re missing out big time. LMA is a top-25 player this month and a top-30 performer on the season. He’s put up scores of 45-plus DKFP in four of his last six games. He dropped 40 pops on the Grizzlies just before Xmas and while he’s not a dub-dub man I’m pretty convinced he could be if he just wanted to. He’s played 29 games so far and is still at 19.5 ppg to go with 7.5 rpg and 2.4 apg. His shooting is seriously mental: 51/40/83 splits launching 15.4 shots from the floor and two trips per. To say Golden State stinks is falling short of reality. Let LMA and DD cook today.
If you have any comment or question about the daily column, tonight’s games, players involved in them, or even season-long fantasy NBA topics, just drop it below or reach out to me on Twitter at @chapulana and I’ll get back to you as soon as I grab a keyboard!