NBA DFS: Chris Paul and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Monday, Aug. 24th

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

• Boston and Toronto mollywhopped Philadelphia and Brooklyn respectively with their brooms, swept them, and will now face each other in the East second round. Bring it on baby!
• The Clips are in a concerning position after dropping Game 4 to Dallas and letting the series become a three-game set of games from this point on with everything tied at 2-2. Speaking of concerns, talk about these 1-3 Nuggets...
• Although the Raps are happy with the 4-0 they are not so happy with Kyle Lowry and his injured ankle. We’ll see what happens but I’m pretty much convinced Toronto won’t like him to miss time against the Mighty C’s.
• Luka made history yesterday with his game-winning, trip-dub performance on Game 4. Only Elgin Baylor and LeBron James had done both things themselves in the same postseason game. Luka is 21 years old.
• It is not clear that Brett Brown will make it back to Philadelphia as the head coach of the Sixers. He’ll be hydro-fired in a matter of hours; watch it happen.
• Another day, another game that Russ has been ruled out of. Oh boy, could the Rockets be in trouble here...

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• In a night when both Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell went mano a mano and dropped 51 and 50 points respectively on each other, somehow, Luka still found a way to lead the slate in fantasy points with 92.75 DKFP. LOL. Doncic played a monster 46 minutes, scored 43 points—including a game-winning trey—and also grabbed 17 rebounds while dishing 13 dimes out. It was absolutely incredible to watch it unfold. If this is what he’s doing at 21 then what can we expect him to accomplish in five years? Jeeeeeeeez.
• As I already introduced, Jamal Murray (82.25) was unstoppable yesterday hitting 50 pops (9 triples!) and pairing those with 11 boards and 7 assists. DoMi was awesome but fell way short of that tally with 66.5 points. The other fool with 60+ was Tatum, who helped bury the Sixers with a nice 28-15 performance.
• Six more players finished in the 50-to-60 fantasy point-clip yesterday: LeVert, Ibaka, Kawhi, JoJo, Lou Will, and Kemba. All of three (Siakam, Jokic, and Norman Powell) reached 44+ DKFP.
• I picked him as one to Love yesterday and indeed he became the ROI King of the slate. You know who he is already... Jamal Murray! With all of his flaws and inconsistency, Jam is a killer. For some reason, the algorithm keeps undervaluing and overlooking Murray and that’s why he was the most valuable play from yesterday’s four games. He reached a freaking awesome 82+ DKFP while tagged at just $6.8K with a 50-burger that included 11 rebounds, 7 assists, and a block with zero turnovers. He was followed by—although not too closely—by Ibaka, Powell, and Trey Burke.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award goes to... Paul George! I’m cheating here because the true DOTS was Kyle Lowry, but he got injured 9 minutes in so he gets a free pass. Putrid P though... George was atrocious once more scoring 9 points on 21.4% shooting. Thank god he grabbed 7 rebounds and dished out 3 dimes because he was really bad for the Clips, and still stayed on the court for 45 minutes. Freddy VanVleet, with Toronto basically in round-two already, dropped a sound dud too.
• Back-to-back six dub-dub nights on points and rebounds (Tatum, Ibaka, Gobert, Murray, Embiid, Horford) with one between points and assists (Siakam’s 20-10).
• Luka Doncic triple-double was just a stupid 43-17-13 effort that also included 2 steals and a block. Kudos to the kid, he’s just insane.
• Embiid led the slate with 3 steals as Boston stole the series from Philly while Montrezl Harrell was the top shot-blocker with 3.

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

• Love: (PG) Chris Paul, OKC ($8000, vs HOU): Finally, Chris Paul and OKC found their way to a W a couple of days ago and made Houston nervous. CP3 had had a nice Game 1 already reaching 51 DKFP and he went on to get a good 45 in Game 3. That kinda tells me Game 2 was a fluke and he’s a true 40+ DKFP performer in this series, even more with Russ still out for tonight’s affair. Chances are Paul hits 20+ pops, 6+ boards, and 5+ dimes once more, which is already a great baseline with tons of upside if OKC has really found the key to defeat these Rockets. The price is a little bit high, I know, but the potential return makes up for it nicely and OKC will be looking for that series-tying win as hell today.
• Hate: (SF/PF) Khris Middleton, MIL ($7900, at ORL): Even though Orlando somehow stole Game 1 from Milwaukee it was always clear that this series were going to give the Bucks no problems at all. That’s good for them, but that’s bad for fantasy purposes. Khris is playing 31 minutes per game at most and hasn’t topped 38 DKFP in any of the first three games. It makes sense though, at he’s not forcing anything. He’s scoring his casual 10+ points and grabbing some boards and sharing some assists, but that’s pretty much it and it is not that the numbers are mega-bonkers. That’s why you fade Middleton. If you want a surefire floor-guy, then you can always go with him because it is hard to watch him dropping a big egg, but the upside is cut too short to pay his full price a reasonable move.
• Love: (PG) Malcolm Brogdon, IND ($7500, at MIA): Miami is dominating Indiana and is a low-key threat to Milwaukee for their second-round upcoming series. Do you know who is a threat to Miami, though? Mr. President. Brogdon was good on games one and two but he leveled up as hell in his last performance reaching all of 68.75 fantasy points to the tune of a masterful 34-7-14 line in which he also shot 64.7% from the floor. He’s played 37+ minutes each and every game and since the restart he’s crossed the 40-DKFP mark in 5 of the 9 games he’s played. Indiana’s offense comes down to Brogdon and Dipo these days and Malcolm is carrying a huge load, so you know fantasy goodies are coming no matter what. Oh, and there must be some pride in that body as to fight for avoiding the sweep today, too.
• Hate: (PF/C) Jusuf Nurkic, POR ($8000, vs LAL): The Blazers had to put on such an effort to reach the playoffs that they look uber-drained these days. Nurkic—even with Zach Collins out—has absolutely dropped his level of play against the Lakers averaging 28 DKFP in the first three games and only topping 25 in Game 1 (16-15 dub-dub). He’s just done, probably the same as Portland. The Lake Show is limiting his outings to under-double-double levels easily, and the best combined line he’s posted against LA in the last two games would read 10-8-3... which is not cutting it for me at his price.

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!