NBA DFS: Jayson Tatum and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Monday, Feb. 3rd

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

• Shout-out to the Chiefs fans out there. Congrats on that Sup! As for the San Fran people, keep your heads up, cause the team looks poised to stay battling for the chip next season and beyond.
• A bunch of injury-related news during the past few hours. Luka Doncic will miss six games going forward due to the injury he sustained a few days ago, and that puts his All-Star appearance in doubt. The timeline kind of fits and shouldn’t leave him out, but who knows if he’ll opt to rest it out to come back at 100% with the Mavs.
• Kyrie and Trae injured themselves on the same night but it doesn’t look like they’ll be out for long, and definitely no longer than one or two weeks at most.
• This one is much more smelly: Derrick Rose got injured and didn’t return yesterday. Do we believe this was a legit injury? Is there anything trade-related going on? Hmm...
• It looks like Cleveland was hurting to trade Kevin Love... only to found out that nobody was willing to give up any sort of asset for him. Close the book on Love. He’s and will remain a Cav until the season is over.
• Sweet whispers regarding Golden State listening to potential D’Lo suitors.
• Mo Wagner is back! Sorry, but I love the kid.

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Duds and Studs: Last night slate roundup

• Another monster game by Jokic (hi, haters!). Sure, the contests went to overtime but the Joker logged under 40 minutes in which he went totally off charts for 39 points, 10 rebounds, 11 dimes, 3 steals and 2 blocks while shooting 69.6% from the floor on a huge 23 attempts. He was untouchable in fantasy scoring with 82 DKFP... that were not part of the main slate of games. LOL.
• We got to enjoy a very Harden-esque game from James in which he shot 24 rocks and hit 7 triples for a total 40 pops. He added 10 rebounds and fell just one assist short of the trip-dub finishing with 9 dimes for 73 DKFP. Cold world. The other 60+ DKFP performer of the night: Giannis with 69.75 DKFP to the tune of a 30-19-9-1-1 performance. Another aaaaaalmost-trip-dub.
• Not inside the 60-DKFP club, but yesterday we got to watch Dre Drummond post his 400th-career dub-dub with a 21-17 game. He’s on pace to finish his career with more double-doubles than games played.
• You don’t see this every day: Terence Davis rewarded his bettors with an incredibly high 12.34 ROI after reaching 39.5 DKFP while priced at just $3.2K. He did so by finishing with 31 points (6 triples), 4 rebounds and one assists. He played 28 minutes and it wasn’t quite surprising considering the Raptors way of handling rotations.
• Brook Lopez finished 42 DKFP priced at $3.9K (17-4-1... with 9 BLOCKS !!!), and Jevon Carter also broke for a 10+ ROI with 30.5 DKFP at $3K (15-4-2-3). Shouts to those who opted to play these guys because they couldn’t have gotten more for such low amounts of money.
• The dud of duds came from Jrue Holiday. With a massive $8K tag hanging on his forehead Holiday went precisely on a vacation and even while playing 33 minutes he could only finish the game with 23.75 DKFP after dropping 11 points, 3 boards, and 6 assists against Houston. Maybe he’s doing it on purpose so he doesn’t get traded? Hmmm....
• Some more middling performances: O.G. Anunoby (13.75 DKFP at $5.1K), Ersan Ilyasova (13.5 DKFP at $5K), and P.J. Tucker (12.75 DKFP at $4.4K).
• We saw 11 dub-dubs on points and rebounds (silly Derrick Favors finished with a 9-11 line...), and none via assists (weird). We only have Jokic’s trip-dub, but here were three players (Giannis, Lonzo, and Harden) falling one assist short of trip-dubbing, and another one (Bruce Brown) staying two away from reaching it.

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

• Keep an eye on Thomas Bryant’s exploits with the Wizards because in his last three games he’s been the most valuable player of the league (one-week span). He’s averaging 37 DKFP at under $5K, playing 26 minutes per contests, and putting up lines on the 19-9-3-0-1 average. Mo is back from injury though, so we’ll see if Bryant loses some of his value with fewer opportunities.
• The usual suspects Jakob Poeltl and Danuel House Jr. keep thriving. In other news, the sky is blue.
• Always loved Patty Mills and I find myself loving him even more these days. In the past week of games he’s played in three and he’s averaged an 18-1-2-2 line in which his 2.3 steals per game are second to just Norman Powell’s 2.7 in that span. Combine that cat with his triples (he’s hitting 4 per game!) and you have some specialist right there.
• Joel Embiid is struggling quite a bit and I don’t know where these Sixers are headed toward. He’s kept his price tag super high ($9.5K) during his past three games but he’s averaging just 36 DKFP with an average 19-10-2-0-1 line that is way low for that price. The ROI is ground-level low.
• Another couple of underperformers during the past seven days: Derrick Rose and Devonte’ Graham. Both are north of the $5.5K price yet none of them is averaging more than 26 DKFP in their last three games. That hurts to pay for. The same kind of low ROIs are those of Tobias Harris, Nemanja Bjelica, Daniel Theis, and Goran Dragic just to name a few dud(e)s out there.
• Gotta appreciate John Collins growing like a madman lately. The Hawk is putting up numbers these days: 23.7 points, 14.3 boards, and some neat 65% shooting clip on shots from the floor (15.7 fga) all make him very very appealing.
• Not sure if Denver would be willing to move Jerami Grant to bring in some piece before the trade deadline, but he could fetch some nice return. Grant has averaged 15 points, 4.3 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.5 steals, and 2.8 blocks in his last four games. Nobody in the league has done that in the past week (Hassan Whiteside is the closest) and even lowering the bar a bit to a line of 15-4-1-1-1 only eight reach those marks (min. 3 games played): Valanciunas, Ayton, Beal, Drummond, Harden, Smart, Fox, and McCollum. Crazy names.

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

• Love: (SF/PF) Jayson Tatum, BOS ($7500, at ATL): Even though Tatum has been playing low-volume ball lately (under 27 mpg in his last four missing time in the middle of that run) he’s still produced to great levels with three out of four games in the 40s DKFP. J-Tat has dropped at least 20 points in his last five games, and he’s averaging 6.2 boards and 3 dimes in that span. The fact that he’s shooting 48.5% from the floor is also nice considering he’s hitting at least a trey per game and averaging 2.8 triples per in the last five. The usage rate is sky-high as always crossing the 30% mark easily, and these Hawks stink big time so it’s probable that he has an explosion today. Even if he goes on limited minutes (he shouldn’t) he would still be in a position to score himself some big fantasy goodies.
• Hate: (PG) Devonte’ Graham ($7500, vs ORL): I already introduced you to Graham’s struggles in the section above. This cereal is Golden no more. Devo is on an extended slump going back to Jan. 15, which is to say a two-week-plus one and counting. He has logged a 35-plus DKFP game only once since then, and every cat has suffered a hit in that streak of middling performances. He’s averaging 12 points, under 3 boards, and almost 7 dimes per game, but all those numbers fall short of his season-average line of 18-4-8. The season-long shooting average from the floor was already bad at 37.2% but it’s been even worse in that six-game span with a hard-to-believe 30.4 percentage... His usage has also suffered a hit dropping to between 16% and 19%, and he better step up his game if he wants to make the MIP finalists list eventually.
• Love: (PG) Malcolm Brogdon, IND ($6300, vs DAL): Very nice potential ROI here with Malcolm straight in the Middle of the slate. Dallas is missing Luka, and while Porzingis should be in these Pacers still look like a much better team managed by a Brogdon that could eat from every cat. He missed a bunch of games after getting injured on Jan. 22 but in the couple of matches he’s played since coming back he went for 43 and 33 DKFP on 36 and 33 minutes respectively. No issues with the playing time then, and in every game he’s played more than 30 minutes this 2020 year he’s averaging 39 DKFP. I told you, that is some great return for the silly-low price and the matchup tonight. Not the most dangerous guy at scoring, but definitely a killer on the dimes/boards columns.
• Hate: (SF/PF) Tobias Harris, PHI ($6900, at MIA): Sometimes undervalued, sometimes overvalued, sometimes key, sometimes an afterthought. Ugh. Can’t stand this type of player, seriously. I want to love Harris and I think he is often forgotten while he does a nice job, but he is just not cutting it enough. His 1.02 DKFP per minute on the court speak volumes of his contributions: average at best. He’s playing 34.4 mpg on the season with 19.3 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 2.9 apg, and even 1.4 stocks, but even that is leaving him at the middle point of things. His current eight-game run is nothing to be too proud of, with averages of 32 DKFP in almost 36 minutes of playing time and only two 40+ DKFP games (though he needed 41 and 38 minutes to reach them...). Scoring on the 15 pops these days and rebounds around 7 per with crazy bouncy dimes numbers from 1 to 4 to 1 to 4... Not trusting ToHa against the stacked Heat.

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!