NBA DFS: News, statistical trends, and best/worst DraftKings daily plays for Monday, Jan. 27th

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. On top of that, I’ll bring you some news, statsitcal trends from the past few days, some studs/duds from the last slate of games, and much more!

Hoop Land Times: News and notes from around the Association

• Kobe Bryant became eternal yesterday. I don’t think I have ever written something feeling as sick as I am right now. I can’t still believe I’ve just typed those words on my keyboard. I have had the worst few hours in a very long time this past night. I am not going to write a lot about what happened, or what didn’t. I can only dig as strongly as my neurons allow me to reach the deepest of my brain’s departments to find even the slightest of memories of Kobe I have stored in my hard drive. I will keep on doing day in and day out. I know I’m not speaking just for myself. I know you out there reading this, most probably if you’re around my age—what the heck, even if you’re way older or way younger—you had Kobe up in the altars of the greatest. Stay strong. We have plenty of stuff to go back in time and enjoy over and over again the moments who built Kobe’s career. Let’s try and get this column done. Let’s pay #24 homage. Peace.

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Duds and Studs: Last night slate roundup

• Emotional slate as none ever in the Association. No duds today, because feelings were running high as hell and I’m nobody here to blame people around the L.
• Dame Lillard had a game for the ages—seriously, it was the sixth-best of the season by DKFP. He reached 84 fantasy points in a massive 50-point effort shooting 60.9 (!) percent from the floor on 23 attempts, hitting 14 of the 16 freebies he was awarded. He added 13 dimes to the points, and also grabbed 6 boards and stole a ball. As many as 8 triples rounded the night.
• Even with that, Trae Young’s 77.5 DKFP returned a little bit more of value overall for his owners, as he came $900 cheaper than Dame. Nothing wrong with Trae’s 45-6-14-1 line, to say the least.
• Three more players (Domantas Sabonis, Kawhi Leonard, and Nikola Jokic) broke for more than 60 DKFP yesterday. Kudos to all of them!
• Shouts to Bruno Fernando and Michael Carter-Williams, because they were the ROI Kings while playing for the stinky Hawks and coveted Clips respectively. Priced at the lowest-ever number ($3K), Fernando still reached 31.5 DKFP to the tune of a sweet 14-12 dub-dub with a block. It all amounted to a 10.5 ROI that I’m sure more than one risk-taker out there enjoyed to the limit if he rostered Bruno. MCW came at $3.4K and finished with 36+ DKFP himself stuffing a 15-7-8 line in 22 minutes for a 10.66 ROI.
• Stupid note of the slate: we had two triple-doubles yesterday courtesy of Nikola Jokic (24-12-11 with 2 steals in 38 minutes) and Domas Sabonis (27-14-11 with a block in 41 minutes). Big men eat big time, I guess.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from the past seven days

• Lillard is impossible. His three games in the last week: 52.7 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 9.3 apg, 1 spg on 54.6% shooting from the floor and 95.8% from the charity stripe. Even averaging a price around $9.5K on DK he still was able to hand his bettors a ROI of 8.7 on those games. Simply put, that is plain nuts.
• One of the best values of the past seven days has been Clipper Landry Shamet. He’s played around 37 mpg with an under-$4K price on average in four games, averaging 28 DKFP those nights. Translation: 18 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 2.5 apg, and 0.8 stocks. Keep an eye there because the Clippers are one of those fully rotational teams that give heavy minutes to everybody.
• Another great value of late: Reggie Jackson. Only two games played in the last seven days, but oh boy has he thrived since coming back from injury. If Detroit moves on from Drummond/Rose/whoever else, Jax might bomb. Reggie has put up an 18-3-5-2 line with a massive 34.5% usage rate in that little sample. Let’s hope he keeps the run going. Same goes for another Piston, Langston Galloway, whose 10-4-2-2 is sweet on four games played in this span (the shooting percentage has been ugly at 38.2%, but even with that he’s producing nice numbers).
• If you’re looking to bolster your steals category, look no further than Kris Dunn. Somehow, the Bull is averaging 2.5 per game in his last four while playing extended time (30 mpg) and adding a nice and rounded 12-6-4 line to those thefts.
• If your mojo are blocks, though, you should consider tracking Jakob Poeltl minutes in San Antonio—they are low at 12.8 but the return has been massive with an average of 2.3 bpg in four games—and perhaps less risky and with higher upside all-around Daniel Theis’ game for the Celtics—the big man has averaged 1.8 bpg in his last four this past week while playing 24 minutes and posting a 13-6-3 line.

Gotta Win The Day: Best/Worst DraftKings plays for tonight’s slate

• Love: (PG) Reggie Jackson, DET ($4300, vs CLE): Mentioned Reggie above. He came back and he just straight put the opposition in flames. Jax has played only a couple of games but given his price and his ROI he’s the goddamn play to go with against a very sucky Cavs team. He’s dropped 22 and 14 pops in those two and he’s also averaged 3 boards, 5 dimes and 2 steals per. The usage is incredibly high and he’s already slotted as the starter of these Pistons, so there’s that. Check his status in case he misses the game, but it should not be the case on a three-day rest. Also don’t think of Jax as a slate winner. He will give you the ROI but he shouldn’t be expected to top 35-40 DKFP even in the brightest of days.
• Hate: (C) Steven Adams, OKC ($6000, vs DAL): No love at all for the Kiwi. He’s played just four games since Jan. 15 due to injuries and in two of those he only logged six and one minute. He was on the court for 23 minutes against Minny in his last game two days ago and he finished with... no points, one rebound, two assists, and—thank Kiwi Gods—four blocks to save face. Other than that, Adams has been pretty putrid lately but his price somehow as stayed way too high. He already had a pretty meh game against Dallas to close 2019 so I’m not trusting him tonight.
• Love: (PG/SG) Donovan Mitchell, UTA ($7900, vs HOU): Incredibly tasty price for an incredible tasty player in an incredibly tasty matchup. Houston gives up the fifth-most DKFP per game to its opponents, so you know what to do. DoMi is having the season: 34 mpg in which he’s averaging north of a 24-4-4-1 line that is currently only at reach of other 10 players (yes, the likes of LBJ, Luka, Giannis, etc...). Mitch is carrying a six-game streak in which he’s scored at least 22 points in each game he’s played—including a 46-burger against New Orleans on Jan. 16—and hit at least 3 triples in all but one of those games. The season-averages are literally what you must and totally can expect from him, because he lives by them. Sure bet to cross the 40-DKFP mark any day.
• Hate: Eric Gordon, HOU (SG/SF) ($6900, at UTA): For someone who is playing 30 minutes per game the production is horrific. I’m not making this up: Eric-G is averaging 0.72 (!!!) DKFP per minute on the court. That is insanely low, believe me. That is an Austin Rivers, Darius Garland, Harrison Barnes, P.J. Tucker, or Cedi Osman level of production, which is to say as ugly as it gets. Gordon can lit rims, sure, as his 14.7 ppg tell us, but that’s all he does and he’s needing 13.3 fga per game to get there as his splits come at a ground-level 36/34/69 line. There is no point in spending almost $7K in this fool. I have 54 players listed with better ROIs on today’s slate playable at the SG/SF positions and 46 (!) are cheaper than Eric-G.

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!