NBA DFS: Norman Powell and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Monday, Mar. 9th

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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• Nothing official yet, but Lance Stephenson is talking to the Pacers for a potential reunion leading up to the playoffs! Steph has played in China and with the game on pause due to Coronavirus he could find a way to become an NBA player again if he gets clearance from his Chinese team. We can only hope.
• Giannis will miss two or three days this week. Milwaukee has nothing to win forcing him in, and nothing to lose by keeping him out, so it makes all of the sense to be careful there.
• The Grizzlies have signed Jontay Porter, brother of Nuggets’ Michael Porter Jr. The pro-family keeps growing.
• Turned out Kyrie Irving might have been involved in this whole Kenny Atkinson firing... What a surprise.
• Related to it, Ty Lue could be the next Nets coach... precisely because it is Kyrie who has let the brass know about his interest in Ty coaching the team. Shouts to Irving for breaking teams at an all-time pace.
• I wouldn’t be surprised if the very own Kyrie ends being the player/coach of this team. I mean, that’s the only thing he has still to pull off, right? And even then I’m convinced he’d find the way to fire himself or something...

Duds and Studs: Last night slate roundup

• This league is so dumb. One night you have zero great performances, the next one you have so many you can’t even handle them. Ricky Rubio went bananas yesterday and reached 72.25 DKFP becoming the first Sun since Steve Nash (in 2005) to log a 12-12-12 trip-dub to the tune of a 25-13-13-3 showcase. I keep saying regression will eventually hit, but we’ll eventually reach the end of the season too and both things are converging to a point in which maybe Rubio ends the year at this level (?)
• Jrue Holiday got himself a 65.25-fantasy point bounty in 35 minutes of playing time falling short of both a dub-dub and a trip-dub by a hair with a 37-9-8-1-1 stuffed line. Luka Doncic also broke the 60-DKFP barrier reaching 64.5 goodies with a pretty sweet 36-10-8-1 line for the Mavs.
• Eight more players in the 50-to-60 DKFP clip: Booker (59.25; 36-5-8-1-2), Drummond (57.75; 28-17-1 with 3 blocks), Lowry (56.25; 30-5-8-3), Bam (54.5; 27-14-6 with a block), LeBron (54.25; 28-7-9 with 2 blocks), Domas (53.75; 20-17-6-1), Shabazz Napier (51.5; 27-4-7-4), and Paul George (50.5; 31-6-3-3-1).
• Three great value-plays with a surefire ROI King, Matthew Dellavedova, after entering the slate at just $3.2K and reaching 35.5 DKFP to the tune of a 14-2-11-1 dub-dub starting again for the Cavs. The other two: Napier (51.5 at 4.9K) and Rubio (72.25 at 6.9K).
• And the DOTS Award goes to... Jimmy Butler! Pretty ridiculous game by Jimmer who could only log 24 minutes before getting out and just grabbed 10.5 DKFP in that run after being tagged at $8.1K.
• Two more pretty horrific performers: Kristaps (24 DKFP at 9.3K), and Kawhi (32 DKFP at $9.2K).
• You won’t believe this but there were 18 (!) double-doubles via points and rebounds yesterday (Kuzma missed on it by two points, other four other players by one board) but just one with dimes (Delly’s 14-11, as LeBron missed on it by a single assist).
• Shouts to Ricky for breaking the game and logging a trip-dub to the tune of 25-13-13 and finding time to steal three rocks on top of that.
• Speaking of thefts, Dejounte Murray was mental stealing 6 balls while Garrison Mathews (who!?) got 5 steals himself for the Wiz in 17 minutes.

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

• It’s time to seriously considering playing Matthew Dellavedova on a daily basis. Four games in the past seven dates speak for themselves and talk high of Delly’s exploits. Matt is averaging 34.8 mpg and dropping nightly 7-4-10-1 lines while hitting a trey per game on a very ridiculous 11.5% usage rate. That last bit has everything to do with his new starting role and the fact that he’s sharing minutes with pretty high-level teammates now, but he’s taking advantage of that by dishing out double-digit dimes and grabbing a healthy amount of boards.
• Two more crazy performers of late, both with four games in the past seven days: Shaq Harrison is keeping it up to the tune of a 13-4-3-3-1 stuffed line in his 27.8 minutes, and Tyus Jones has stepped up a notch with a 12-2-6-2 average line in just 19 mpg of playing time a night.
• Silly cheap values: Shaq Harrison, Delly, Tyus, Glen Robinson III (15-5-2-1 in 29 mpg), Jerome Robinson (10-4-3-2-1 in 30), Mike Scott (11-8-3 in 31.3)
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Norman Powell (31-2-4-2-1 in 39.3), Caris LeVert (29-6-7-1 in 32.3), Sexton (31-4-5-2 in 40.5), Marquese Chriss (15-9-4-1-1 in 28.3)
• Some very expensive players not doing enough to help their owners: DLo (17-4-5-1 in 29.8), Harden (26-7-8-3 in 35.8), Mitchell (20-5-4-1 in 33), Butler (17-5-5-2 in 32)
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played in the past seven days): Josh Jackson (17 ppg in 20.5 mpg), Cedi Osman (16.5 in 38.8), Jeff Green (14.8 in 22)
• Cheap threes: Cedi Osman (3.5 3pm in 38.8), Bryn Forbes (2.8 in 24.5), Avery Bradley (2.7 in 32)
• Cheap boards: Ivica Zubac (8 in 17.3), Josh Hart (6.8 in 23), Bobby Portis (5.3 in 23.5)
• Cheap dimes: Matthew Dellavedova (9.5 in 34.8), Tyus Jones (6 in 19), Jordan McLaughlin (6 in 22.3)
• Cheap steals: Gary Harris (3.3 in 32.7), Shaq Harrison (3 in 27.8), Justin Holiday (2 in 21.5)
• Cheap blocks: Andre Iguodala (2 in 17.3), Derrick White (1.5 in 23), Danuel House (1 in 27.8)
• Cheap shooting: Duncan Robinson (59.1 fg% on 11.5 fga), Donte DiVincenzo (58.5% on 10), Brook Lopez (51% on 10.3)

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

• Love: (PG) Devonte’ Graham, CHA ($6400, at ATL): Vonte is far from a Golden Graham these days compared to what he did earlier in the season, but after a couple of stinkers after the break he’s leveled up a bit during his last bunch of games. Nothing mindblowing yet, but good enough to consider him at his current price. The last five games he’s played haven’t been incredible but have seen him average 20.6 ppg and hit at least 2 triples in five of five and 3+ in four of them with 4 in a couple. Scoring is not the problem even while the percentages aren’t great—basically because Graham is shooting his shoes and then some—and it’s been the rebounds what has dragged his production down a bit. The dimes are still there at more than 5 per night in his last five, so it’s a matter of finding teammates on the floor to bump up those fantasy goodies. Atlanta hands plenty of fantasy points to its opponents so we count on Vonte having a day tonight.
• Hate: (PF) Pascal Siakam, TOR ($8700, at UTA): Back-to-back games for the Raps and his biggest player. Hmm... Truth be told, Spicy P has been a little bouncy since the break—which doesn’t mean bad—posting fantasy scores all across the board ranging from 65.5 DKFP on Feb. 21 to 29 fantasy points the game after that one, and getting from 36 to 48 to 36 to 52 to 33 to 47 in his last stretch of matches. You see the variance, and if I learned something in high school was that series tend to follow a pattern, which in this case looks like an up-and-down-and-up-an—you get the idea—and should yield a down game tonight. Pair the two-games-in-two-nights thing with the fact that Utah (while mediocre as of late) is a tough out and I see no reason to spend big bucks in Siakam in this slate.
• Love: (SG/SF) Norman Powell, TOR ($6800, at UTA): On the contrary, Norman has thrived in his last few games and he’s not that important for Toronto, so they won’t fear running him to death now that he’s fully recovered. Since coming back on Feb. 28 his minutes have been ridiculous, logging 36 in his debut but ramping them up to 40, 38 (twice), and finally 43 yesterday versus Sacto. His fantasy points have followed the same trends, which is great. Powell has gone from 29 DKFP to 34, 40, 50, and 50 again yesterday. The scoring has increased steadily and he’s on the 30s now, hitting 4+ triples in his last couple of games, grabbing a couple or more boards a night lately, and also dishing out more than a few dimes and snatching some rocks to get some steals in his stat lines. The shooting has also been impossibly sweet with Norman attempting 18.4 fga in his last five games yet still hitting 53.1% of those shots from the floor. Nothing to hate here. Powell is a productive monster coming at a steep discount as the algorithm has yet to catch up to his true-talent level.
• Hate: (SF/PF) Bojan Bogdanovic, UTA ($6100, vs TOR): Where did baby-season BoBo go? Boj has yet to get off the pine, having started all 62 games he’s played this season. His minutes have remained the same from day one, but his production has dropped a bit since mid-December. The baseline keeps virtually at the same level, don’t get me wrong, but the upside he brought in the early days has been absolutely cut and capped out. We weren’t surprised when BoBo finished games hitting more than 5 triples back then, or when he reached 40+ DKFP any given day. Those performances are coming much less frequently now. Boj has hit 4+ triples just twice in the last 14 games going all the way back to the start of February. His line since the break reads 17-4-2 while it was at 21-4-2 before the ASW. You see there is not a lot of difference in terms of what he normally does, but the problem is he’s just not having explosive nights anymore. Find yourself a better averager (or even a worse one) who comes with higher booming chances, and you’ll be better off 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!