NBA DFS: Joel Embiid and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Thursday, Jan. 30th

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

• Plenty of hoopers are changing their uniform numbers in honor of Kobe Bryant. The league is going over each of the cases individually because it is rare—virtually unprecedented—for the NBA to allow such changes in-season. No matter what, no problems so far and all asked-for changes seem to have gone through. Kudos to the Association and the players involved for such a classy move.
• Little scuffle between New York and Memphis players at the end of yesterday’s game that ended in nothing other than Marcus Morris saying some overly stupid words after the game... Censor this man’s mouth, please.
• Oladipo, oh my Oladipo. How much have I missed you...

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Duds and Studs: Last night slate roundup

• Both Lillard (70.5 DKFP) and Westbrook (65.5) gave us the top-two performances of the night in the same game. Dame was ballistic getting his first triple-double ever to the tune of 36 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists (including 6 triples and a steal) while Russ has his average mental night dropping 39 pops, 10 boards and 6 dimes himself (to go with 2 steals and a block). Sweet pair of outings.
• Somehow Dennis Schroder finished with 45 DKFP off the bench. Quite an effort considering he played 30 minutes and still got to a massive 24-4-9-1 line on an impossible 61.5% shooting from the floor. Perhaps the fact that he was facing the Kangz helped him a bit...
• DeRozan made me look like a fool with a 51-DKFP performance, third-best of the slate. At least the line is nice to look at finishing at 38-5-5, with no treys at sight as always.
• Incredible flop (no pun intended) by James Harden, who entered yesterday’s slate priced at $10.6K yet could only return 36 DKFP in 38 minutes of playing time. The line was stuffed (18-5-4-2-2) but he shot a ridiculous 27.8% from the floor and it was all about Russ and Dame this time.
• Clint Capela was also high on price ($8.2K) yet was limited to 17 minutes and only got 10.75 DKFP for a 1.31 ROI. More miserable ROIs: Eric Gordon’s 2.40 (17.5 DKFP at $7.3K) and Buddy Hield’s 2.68 (19 DKFP at $7.1K).
• If you have not heard about Chandler Hutchinson you will after yesterday’s game. He wasn’t mindblowing, sure, but he gave his bettors the best ROI at 9.77 after getting to 31 DKFP on 28 minutes while priced at just $3.2K yesterday. He finished with a 21-3-2-1-1 line contributing all across the board and shooting 71.4% from the floor for the Bulls.
• Reggie Jackson kept playing above his price (23-3-5 and 37 DKFP at $4.5K), as did Taurean Prince (42 DKFP at $5K), and Tomas Satoransky (25.5 DKFP at $3.3K) among others.

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

• Shouts to Danuel House. The Rocket has played four games in the past seven days and holds the third-highest ROI among those to have appeared in as many games. He’s played an average of 30 minutes with an average 12-6-2-2-1 line and shooting 40.3% from the floor on a low 14.4% usage rate. The role is growing, so keep an eye on him going forward.
• Dorian Finney-Smith is taking quite the advantage of Powell being out of Dallas. DFS is playing more than 27 minutes per game and although he is only finishing 10.5% of the team’s possessions he’s still thriving on the boards with 7.8 rpg in his last four games. He’s adding 6.3 ppg, and most notably 0.8 bpg to the rebounds.
• Duncan Robinson is hitting 5 triples per game on a ridiculously low 15.3% usage rate. He’s done that in his past three games while averaging 4.3 rpg, 2.7 apg, and 0.7 spg. As hot as they come.
• A handful of potential buy-low candidates for season-long leagues and value picks for those playing DFS contests (min. three games played in the past seven days; average stat lines in those matches): Elfrid Payton (12-6-10-2-1), Shabazz Napier (10-7-9-2), Jeremy Lamb (18-4-2-2-1), and Cam Reddish (17-5-1-1-1).
• On the other hand, here are some atrocious performers (keep in mind what they usually do) of the past seven days, just in case you want to track them to sell or avoid them before it’s too late: Darius Garland (11-0-3), Kristaps Porzingis (15-5-2-1-1), Coby White (9-3-1), Evan Fournier (17-4-4-1), and Terrence Ross (9-4-1-1-1).

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

• Love: (C) Joel Embiid, PHI ($9300, at ATL): Definitely not the cheapest of players, but most probably one of the safest bets of the day considering the beast and the opposition. JoJo came back after 22 days off the court due to injury and he already played 26 minutes against Golden State. The outcome? A very delicious 24-10 dub-dub with his season second-best shooting percentage from the floor at 69.2% on 13 attempts. The turnovers were high at five on the night, but nothing to be worried about. The minutes will be bumped up starting tonight and the Hawks are a cupcake giving up the most fantasy points to their rivals on the year. Injured or not, Biid has broken the 40-DKFP mark in all of his past 13 games going back to Dec. 10 averaging 50.4 of them and playing like a top-10 performer in his slates. I mean, not a lot more left to say.
• Hate: (PG/SG) Collin Sexton, CLE ($6900, vs TOR): It’s starting to get really ugly with Sexton and perhaps what can help the Cavs the most is to really go and trade Thompson and Love once for all so the young guys can crap the field without any consequences nor remorse. Sex isn’t cheap and much less rewarding these days. The production on a per-minute basis is atrocious at 0.91 DKFP, with the augmented problem of Collin being on the court 32 minutes nightly. He can score (19.5 ppg on the season) but other than that the rest of the line reads 3-3-1 and that, my friends, isn’t cutting it. The environment surrounding him is no bueno at all and that cuts his upside a ton. If he could pair those scoring numbers with some bulkier rest-of-cats he’d be a pretty valuable asset. Sadly, that’s not the case in Cleveland.
• Love: (PG/SG) Donovan Mitchell, UTA ($7200, at DEN): Good discount for some unexplained reason that one going with DoMi today. Unexplained because Mitch has dropped 46.5, 51.75, and 40.25 DKFP in his last three games while scoring at least 25 points in each and logging 33.4% or a higher usage rate in all of those matches on an average of 35 minutes of run. Simply put, he’s been a top-10 performer in the past five days. Expanding the research two weeks back to Jan. 16 we find Spida averaging 29.8 ppg, 4 rpg, 3.3 apg, and hitting at least 3 triples in six of the seven games he’s played in that span. The production has been good at more than 1.2 DKFP per minute on the court and if Utah wants to keep the wins up tonight the Don will need to get extended run.
• Hate: (PG/SG) Marcus Smart, BOS ($6200, vs GS): Shooters gonna shoot! Tell Smart, who is being... well, far from smart actually. Marcus is throwing 6.5 3pa per game this season yet hitting only 34.4 percent of them, and the same goes for his overall attempts (11 fga at 36.9%). Somehow, the free throws are falling at a 83.1% clip. Anyways, Smart is playing 31.5 mpg and starting for the C’s, with the problem that he’s playing at Sextonian levels with an average of 0.90 DKFP per minute on the court. Makes sense, considering his low scoring outcomes (12.1 ppg) and the averagish numbers in the other cats at 3.6 rpg, 4.8 apg, and a face-saving 1.5 spg. While Golden State should help him get back on track I’m not entirely sure that’d be the case. It’s been five games in a row in which Marc hasn’t reached 35 DKFP and his average line in those five matches reads 9-6-5-1-1. Can he get much better? Considering those averages are almost all improving on what he’s doing on the season, I hardly believe in it.

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!