NBA DFS: Christian Wood and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Monday, Dec. 28th

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, statistical 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

• The Clippers made history yesterday after getting demolished by Luka’s Mavs 124-73 and having their worst defeat ever. That’s bad, but it was worse by halftime when both teams went to the locker room with the score at a stupid 77-27. Insane in the brain.
• Shout-out to Steph for reaching 2,500 career-treys yesterday. That makes him the third most-prolific three-point shooter in NBA history only behind Reggie Miller and Ray Allen. Quite a top-3.
• Karl Anthony-Towns is already missing games to injury... and Kevin Love was forced out of yesterday’s game with a calf injury too. Hate to see it.
• Melo won’t face LeBron tonight as he won’t fly to LA with the Blazers due to safety/COVID reasons. Sad day, this one.
• Dion Waiters is considering retirement. He announced it on IG while showing his flashy gold NBA-champ ring. LOL.
• Bummer news: Marquese Chriss broke his right leg practicing in the Bulls facilities prior to yesterday’s game and will miss the remainder of the season. It looked like Chriss was finally putting his game together in GS but it just isn’t meant to be for the man...
• Steve Nash acknowledged Jarrett Allen’s importance and abilities by saying the young big man will eventually fill his bag... but he didn’t say whether that tasty contract will be handed by Brooklyn or by other franchise. Allen and the Nets couldn’t agree to an extension earlier this month, so he’ll be a restricted FA next summer.
• No. 1 pick Anthony Edward became part of the #AdidasFAM. Kudos to him for getting those sweet dollars just two games into his first pro-season.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s slate roundup

• If you know anything about me, you know I have a very strong love/hate relation with Julius Randle. It’s a little bit of Dr. Julius and Mr. Randlewus with this man, but the former was the one who showed up yesterday and led the slate with 61 DKFP to the tune of a stupid 29-14-7 dub-dub, once more reaching his 2020 highest-mark on dimes. Randle has started the season with a few bangs, can’t lie about it. He also hit three (!) triples and 10 of his 11 attempted freebies while blocking a shot on top of all that.
• Five more kiddos on the 50-to-60 DKFP clip, with none reaching those six-by-ten digits though: Giannis (27-13-5-3), Drummond (24-14-3-3-2), Steph (36-2-6, 5 treys), Ingram (28-11-6), and LaVine (33-7-3-2-2 with 4 treys).
• The ROI King award went to... Raul Neto! My condolences if you have never heard of Neto and faded him as your last-added DFS play yesterday at just $3.1K. Neto (he’s a Wizard, by the way) started in place of a resting Russ and dropped 22 pops on the Magic to go with 4 boards, 5 dimes, and 3 steals for a combined 40+ DKFP. Marc Gasol finally got it right as a Laker scoring 40+ DKFP too, but he did so at $1K more than Neto so he has to be relegated on this one in favor of Raul.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Paul George! Quite the horrific day for the Clippers as a whole and Pandemic P in particular. PG13 put up all of 17+ DKFP in his 24 minutes of playing time while helping the Clips logging their worst defeat ever. I guess 15 points, 2 rebounds, and 4 assists are George’s floor, but hey, you won’t skip this section if you keep putting up those numbers at your monster tags in DK, mate. A few more stinkers from De’Aaron Fox (15+ DKFP) and D’Angelo Russell (9 DKFP).
• There were as many as 12 dub-dubs via points and rebounds (too many to list; shouts to Richaun Holmes for handing us the cheapest one of the slate) and none (!) between points and dimes (CP3 and DeRozan finished with 12 and 10 dimes but both scored just 8 points).
• No triple-doubles yesterday even though we had a packed day of games. Luka came the closest to it with a 24-9-8 line against the stupidly-bad Clippers—if only for a day.
• More silly numbers: two Pelicans (Zion and Zo) both were able to steal five rocks each, while Myles Turner led the blocks leaderboard for the second time this season with five.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from the preseason

• The season has just started, so we don’t have much data to look at these days. That being said, the preseason games held not long ago provided us with some interesting things worth considering while sheets start to fill with meaningful numbers.
• We’ll get back to the usual seven-day trends once we have enough games on the season log, which will almost be by the start of the new 2021 year when we flip the calendar page.
• Until then, here are some quick bits from the preseason—and during the next few days, we’ll look at some early trends from the first bunch of regular-season games.
• Only 13 teams have played the max-four games during this shortened preseason. Combining all players from those 13 franchises, a total of 114 different players have logged at least a minute of preseason-ball.
• Two Lakers lead the way in preseason per-game minutes: Kyle Kuzma (33.9) and Talen Horton-Tucker (31.6). Makes sense, considering LBJ and AD weren’t in the mood for—or need—many preseason fireworks. Kuzzy better levels up his game, because THT is coming strong, though.
• Marquese Chriss has ball-hogged like a champ for the Warriors, logging the highest usage rate of the preseason at a monster 40.5 percent to the tune of 8.7 fga and 1.3 tov per game.
• Speaking of Warriors, it looks like Steph Curry was eager to get on the court. He’s closed the preseason scoring more than anyone (min. 3 games played) at 22.7 ppg in 26.1 mpg.
• Other than THT (20.5), no real “surprising” player has finished this short preseason with a high ppg average. Terry Rozier and Jordan Clarkson both hit 17.0 ppg, but they are already vets known for heating up here and there.
• Another heater: Buddy Hield. He’s closed the preseason hitting 3.8 3pm per game for the Kings, and we’ll see how the season develops for him and Sacto after he was thrown to the bench during last year.
• When it comes to bonkers numbers, Josh Richardson played three preseason games attempting 3.7 treys per game and scoring on 73.3% of those shots. No one shot better than 67% on at least 3 3pa per contest.
• In this season of giving, Ja Morant was this close to finishing with the lone points-dimes dub-dub of the preseason closing his run with a 17-9 line (9.8 apg, that is).
• Nikola Vucevic was in fact a dub-dubber for the Magic, racking up a 19-12 average line. Domantas Sabonis and Andre Drummond dub-dubbed too. More interesting: Thunder’s rook Aleksej Pukusevski closed his preseason stint at a very neat 11-9 with 1.3 spg to spare.
• Andrew Wiggins is now a blocking machine (2.0 bpg), tied for second in the preseason leaderboard in that department (?). Knick Mitchell Robinson led the pack at 2.5 bpg in his four games playing 25.1 mpg.
• God bless Trae Young, turnover deity. Trae averaged 4.8 tov per game in 25.7 mpg while still putting up a 13-5-3-1 line. Talk about stuffing the sheet.

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

• Love: Christian Wood (C). I was watching Houston against Portland yesterday and I could only get enamored by Chris Wood. Sure, James and CJ were bombing away and scoring in bunches, but Wood was incredible and if I’m honest, the best man out there for my liking. Wood put up a 31-13 dub-dub, made Harden’s life better than after-hour clubs, and was active all around the court. He’s also the seventh most-expensive C-eligible player of today’s slate, which makes no sense. Take advantage of the algorithm and play the hell out of Wood, who is much more athletic than Jokic and could end extenuating the Joker while racking up goodies.
• Hate: Al Horford (PF/C). Good old Al didn’t have his best debut playing for the Thunder a couple of days ago. Horford finished 3-13-3 with a block added to that line, but that is not going to be enough for someone in the $6K realm in DK. You’re not going to play Horford as your no. 1 big man, of course, but you should also fade him as a “cheap” option no matter what. Horford is cooked as hell, and there is a reason Daryl Moorey lost no time in getting rid of him once he got Philly’s reins.
• Love: Jordan Clarkson (PG/SG). Exactly at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to Horford (read above) you can find Clarkson. It’s only been two games, but playing off the pine for the Jazz and in low minutes (22.6 MPG) J-Clark hasn’t lost a step compared to what he was doing last season after getting traded to Utah. Clarkson has averaged 19 pops and 5 boards in his first two games of the year, and is putting up 1.24 DKFP per minute on the court, which is the same efficiency as that of Caris LeVert, Michael Porter Jr., or Anthony Davis just to name a few. Keep in mind he’s going to give you 20-to-25 minutes of playing time and limited goodies, but seriously consider him to close your lineup holes for cheap.
• Hate: Donovan Mitchell (PG/SG). For someone priced at $7.6K, DoMi is just not cutting it with his 37 DKFP per game. He’s better than the average player dropping 1.1 DKFP per minute of playing time, but that’s still low for a kid logging 34 MPG to kick the year off. Mitchell’s average line is nice at 20-2-5-2-1 and he’s not the ultimate guy to hate, I know, but it’s about expectations, floors, and ceilings in DFS, and not until I see DoMi get back to his dominating ways will I be putting him on my lineups. OKC should boost his numbers, so let Spida marinate for a day and come back to him later this week if he truly performs to the levels we know he can reach and has in him.
• Love: Mason Plumlee (C). Blake Griffin is out, Jahlil Okafor is questionable, and Sekou Doumbouya is probable for tonight’s Pistons game against Atlanta. The Hawks also have both Capela and Gallinari tagged as probable/questionable to make it to the court, and the main beneficiary from Detroit’s side should be Mason. Plum is somehow averaging a stupid 10-8-5-1 line this season while shooting 71.4% from the floor and has yet to go to the free-throw line. Atlanta has the worst defense so far this season, and Plumlee should log a ton of minutes and get plenty of chances. Even if he doesn’t end being the most efficient of plays out there, his extended opportunities should make up for 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!