NBA DFS: Buddy Hield and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Saturday, Mar. 7th

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

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• Joakim Noah is a Los Angeles Clipper. You read it right. Noah signed a 10-day contract to play in Los at the sweet age of 35 years old. It might go for nothing, but the idea is to make it a season-long deal that would see Noah finish the year with the Clippers and probably make the conference finals if not more.
• Not that it is going to ruin him, but the NBA hit Mark Cuban with a half-million, $500K fine for criticizing the league’s officials not long ago. He’s already been fined—at least in known fines—for nearly three million dollars. Crazy numbers.
• Trae Young sat out yesterday’s game with flu-like symptoms. Trae Young also went on Twitter to tweet “I ain’t THAT sick y’all... Relax lol”. Coronavirus is already too deep into our collective minds. Be safe out there and wash your damn hands, folks.
• The Lakers are not done. Not only did he set up a battle between JR Smith and Dion Waiters in the shape of some tryouts, but they also ended signing the latter and now the whispers are out there saying that they plan on bringing JR to the team too by cutting some other fool out. These Lakers are starting to make me want them to get that chip.
• The Knicks are interested in trading for Chris Paul this summer. The Knicks also plan on re-signing Moe Harkless, who is just 10 years younger than Paul. Makes absolute sense and the plan they’re trying to follow is very clear, amirite?
• Not set in stone, but Embiid should be back next Wednesday with the Sixers facing Detroit. Philly breaths.
• Another comeback: Jusuf Nurkic is finally back and will debut on the season this upcoming week next to Dame, CJ, Melo, and the rest of the Blazers bunch. Will he become the final piece to a playoff berth and postseason run? He’ll definitely need to gear up quickly as hell with under 20 games left.
• A non-comeback: Karl Anthony-Towns will remain out at least two more weeks and get re-evaluated then. Start to consider him a potential fantasy dump because I’m not entirely sure how much does he have in his tank for the rest of this season. Wolf voices say he will be back playing, but we’ll see to what extent they want to risk anything at all with the year already mega-lost.

Duds and Studs: Last night slate roundup

• A day to remember that of yesterday. Absolutely no single soul could expect what happened. Aron Baynes started for the Suns—Deandre Ayton was out injured—and he led the slate with a monstrous 69.5 DKFP performance to the tune of 37 points, 16 boards, an assist, a steal, and two blocks to go with 9 (!) triples on a 52.2% shooting night from the floor with 23 attempts to his name. The usage went all the way up to 31.5% and he logged a not-incredibly-high 36 minutes to get there. All hail they Bayn.
• Three more guys on the 60s DKFP: LeBron got 63.5 with a 37-8-8-3 line, Kristaps reached 62.75 in a 26-11-4-3-3 all-around contribution, and Caris LeVert went nuts for 60.75 fantasy points with a stupid 27-11-10 trip-dub.
• Seven players inside the 50-to-60 DKFP clip: Hassan (58 DKFP; 23-20-1-0-4), Giannis (57.75; 32-11-6-1), Butler (53; 28-8-6-3), Beal (52.75; 35-3-4-2-1), CP3 (51.75; 21-3-12-3), Vucevic (51.5; 28-12-4-1), and Booker (50.75; 23-5-12-1).
• No need to tell you who was the ROI King of the slate... Aron Baynes dropped 69.5 DKFP while priced at the minimum $3K. That’s nuts. Baynes basically broke the game. His ROI was 23.17 yesterday, which not only is the largest of the year, but also beat the second-highest mark (Jahlil Okafor’s 19 back in January) by more than four points. That’s insane—and unrepeatable, so don’t fall for it!
• Three more players with awesome ROIs: Shaq Harrison (48.5 DKFP at $3.5K), Andre Iguodala (33.25 at $3K), and Jerome Robinson (25 at $3.2K).
• And the DOTS Award goes to... D’Angelo Russell! DLO entered the slate priced at a very rich $8.8K but could only rack up 15.75 fantasy points in his 23 minutes of playing time. Quite the dud.
• Other slate-ruiners: Luka (39.5 DKFP at $11.3K), Tatum (34.75 at $10K), Donovan Mitchell (21 at $7.7K), Randle (20.5 at $7.6K), and Bogdanovic (12.5 at $6K).
• Tons of dub-dubs. We saw 14 via points and boards (Bam and JaVale missed on it by one and five points, five other players by a single rebound), and four via points and dimes (DeDe, McLaughlin, and Dinwiddie missed on it by one assist).
• Kudos go to Caris LeVert for getting his first career triple-double after dropping a 27-11-10 line on the Spurs in just 31 minutes of run. Call it efficiency.
• Somehow it’s becoming a tradition to mention Thaddeus Young in this space, but he does such weird things nightly that one just has to include his name here. Thad logged a stuffed 6-7-3-4-1 line yesterday that might be low-volume but had a little bit of everything. He led the slate in steals along with Dewayne Dedmon with 4.
• Four guys logged 4 blocks: Bam, Kristaps, Myles, and Hassan—who also had a very sweet 23-20 dub-dub.

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

• Watch out for Shaq Harrison. He is only the second coming of a Shaquille since O’Neal and he’s stepped up his game lately. In four games during the past seven days Shaq has averaged a rather nice 12-2-2-2-1 line scoring 2.3 triples per in just 22.3 mpg for the Bulls. Not bad at all considering his cheapity-cheap price.
• More established names as Mike Scott and Tyus Jones keep thriving. One flying more under the radar I always loved since his Florida days: Chris Chiozza. The price/availability is laughable yet in his last three games CC is posting up 12-4-3-1 lines in just 21.7 short minutes of run.
• Silly cheap values: Shaq Harrison, Chris Chiozza, Denzel Valentine (12-4-1-1 in 19 mpg), Rudy Gay (14-6-2 in 26).
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Kristaps (33-12-4-1-5 in 36.7), Norman Powell (29-4-2-2-1 in 38.7), Kevin Huerter (15-3-8-2-1 in 35), Sexton (30-4-4-1 in 40), Zo (22-9-8-2 in 35.8)
• Some very expensive players not doing enough to help their owners: DLo (16-5-5-1 in 30.3), Aaron Gordon (11-7-6-1 in 35.7), Donovan Mitchell (18-5-5-1 in 33), Ingram (20-4-3-1 in 36.3)
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played in the past seven days): Duncan Robinson (17.5 ppg in 33.8 mpg), Bobby Portis (15 in 22.8), Danuel House (14.3 in 28.7)
• Cheap threes: Duncan Robinson (5.5 3pm in 33.8), Mychal Mulder (3.3 in 30.3), Mike Scott (2.7 in 29)
• Cheap boards: Willy Hernangomez (8.3 in 19.7), Dragan Bender (7.3 in 21.8), Delon Wright (6.3 in 27.5)
• Cheap dimes: Joe Ingles (6.7 in 28.7), Jordan McLaughlin (6.3 in 22.5), Tyus Jones (6 in 19.8)
• Cheap steals: Justin Holiday (2.8 in 19.5), Gary Harris (1.7 in 32.3), Cody Martin (1.7 in 31.7)
• Cheap blocks: Nerlens Noel (2.7 in 16), Thomas Bryant (1.7 in 19.3), Derrick White (1.5 in 23.3)
• Cheap shooting: Dario Saric (64.7 fg% on 9.7 fga), Bobby Portis (57.6% on 11), Rudy Gay (54.9% on 10.5)

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

• Love: (PG) Trae Young, ATL ($10100, at MEM): Coronavirus or not, I’ll keep this pick up until Trae plays again. I don’t care about questionable or probable or whatever status he carries with him. Young has been a top-20 player on the season and top-10 if we don’t count the few games he had to leave early due to injury. If you want an even stronger reason to go with him tonight, well, let’s say Young never misses on scoring big-time fantasy goodies on back-to-back games. Trae had a rough one last Monday against Memphis (under 24 DKFP in 29 minutes), but not once in the season has Trae logged two consecutive games getting 39 or fewer DKFP on both—imagine the odds of him doing so against the same team twice on back-to-back games. That’s insane, and that single occurrence happened back at the start of December. If we consider a “rebound-game” one that happened after scoring fewer than 30 DKFP, Trae has averaged 56.5 KDFP in the five such games he’s had this season. Oh, and at the end of the day the Grizz are on the lowest-third of NBA teams when it comes to preventing opponents from racking up fantasy points.
• Hate: (C) Andre Drummond, CLE ($8400, vs DEN): Consider me the no. 1 Dre supporter around these places. Not since he moved from Motown, tho. It doesn’t take a bright mind to make the quick math: six games as a Cav, under 157 minutes combined, an average of 26 mpg, and only one match played in the past seven days (also the first one in which he broke the 29-minute mark). I don’t like this just one bit. In the six games with Cleveland Dre has gone from Doctor to undergraduate, plain and simple. He’s averaged a paltry 37 DKFP, far from his season-long 49 per prior to the trade, yet the price has remained quite high for the return. Only two times has Drummond scored more than 37 DKFP in the past month, and these Cavs are so random that you don’t even know what you’ll get. Denver is a tough-as-nails matchup and Jokic has been playing nice lately, so yeah, as much as it pains me I’m fading Dre today.
• Love: (SG/SF) Buddy Hield, SAC ($5400, at POR): Cheap, low-maintenance play this one. Since my Buddy was moved to Sacto’s bench he has been straight killing it. Read that again, especially the “moved to the bench” part. Now you understand the low price and why I started this blurb as I did. Hield won’t probably win you the slate, but he will help big time for virtually no money while bringing massive upside attached to his forehead. Don’t expect more than 30-to-35 DKFP, but count on a why not case in which he goes totally off and drops 40 sweet fantasy goodies for you if everything goes right. It’s been six games in a row in which Hield has scored 14+ points and hit at least 2 triples, but his averages in that span are much better at almost 18 points and more than 4 triples per. He’s grabbing 3.8 boards and dishing out 2.1 assists a night too, and obviously he will keep getting all the chances he can handle as the leader of the second unit. The Kings are on the rise and fighting for a playoff spot—yes, believe me or check the stats—so Buddy better keep it up for a chance at playing in late-April.
• Hate: (C) Rudy Gobert, UTA ($7600, at DET): It’s all about hating big men today, it seems, which will probably turn out bad for me. Anyways. Something is wrong with Utah and something is wrong with Gobert. The French Giant is on a serious slump since coming back from the AS break. Eight games played since then, and only one dub-dub when he had missed on the feat just a handful of times prior to that. In his last five he’s finished three nights with 9 points and four with 9 or fewer boards. That’s ridiculously bad for someone with Gobert’s season numbers. The span-highs of Rudy in that stretch are just 20 points and 14 boards... against Cleveland and New York respectively. Only the blocks are saving him but how sustainable is averaging 3.5 bpg in his last four? Fading Utah and Gob to death.

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!