NBA DFS: Nikola Jokic and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Aug. 25th

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

• No more four-game days this season... and most probably this year.
• Miami shut down Indiana and completed a sweet sweep. Watch out for the Heat putting Milwaukee in trouble once the second round tips off.
• We only have one second-round matchup locked in (Celts vs. Raps) but this is thing will start to go down soon soon. The Lakers are virtually there, Milwaukee is too, and the only questions come from the other three West series. We’ll know by the weekend.
• The Sixers fired Brett Brown yesterday. Super surprising, amirite? Tyronn Lue has been floated as a potential replacement, although he’s also on New Orleans’ and Nets’ radars. Other names: Jay Wright and Dave Joerger.
• It looks like The Process is finally over, which doesn’t mean that Philadelphia is willing to move from either JoJo nor Benny. The franchise is not thinking about trading any of its two cornerstones, which... whatever.
• Shaq has signed a multi-year extension with TNT to stay with the Inside the NBA crew. Just in case you’re into that.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• In the last four-headed-monster night of the season, who else than James Harden could lead the fantasy slate... while eating a fat L? The Beard posted a great 32-8-15-4 line hitting 6 treys... and committing 6 turnovers for a total of 74 DKFP. Not bad, but not enough to keep the Rockets ahead as they dropped their game to OKC to make the series a tied affair. Looks like someone is missing Russ...
• Giannis and Vucevic were the only other players to enter the 60-fantasy point realm. Giannis had a reverse-Harden line of 31-15-8 in 33 minutes while Vuc put up a serious 31-11-7 hitting six triples himself.
• Just three more fools were able to reach the 50-to-60 clip: LeBron (30-6-10 in 28 minutes; LOL), Myles Turner (22-14) and Victor Oladipo (25-8-5-5).
• It might hit you as surprising to find this name as the one snatching the ROI King award today... Victor Oladipo! That’s right. Dipo won the trophy thanks to his 53 fantasy points priced at only $6.3K. That has been the thing with Dipo since the restart: low prices because he’s been kinda shaky and volatile and never truly at the peak of his powers with lingering health issues around him. Another swept Pacer, Myles Turner, finished second in the ROI King ranks followed by Mario Hezonja and Markelle Fultz.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award goes to... Damian Lillard! I’m sorry but I can’t excuse Dame even if he had to leave the game injured. He played 26 minutes but he could only reach 19.25 DKFP, which... ugh. The line was reading 11-1-4-1 when he left the game and that was all Dame did at a monster $10.9K. Another pretty bad play was Jimmy Butler, same as Gallinari and Anthony Davis to a certain extent.
• The dub-dubs went up a bit from past nights with eight of them on points and rebounds (Bam, Giannis, Myles, Nurk, Shai, Vuc, PJ Tucker, Khris Middleton) and two between points and assists (Harden and LeBron).
• Oladipo closed his weird season leading the slate in steals with 5 (props to him for his dope 25-8-5-5 stuffed line), and special mention of Myles Turner and his slate-leading 5 blocks.

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

• Love: (C) Nikola Jokic, DEN ($9400, vs UTA): The Joker ain’t joking, and his price tonight is far from a joke indeed. So has been his production, though. Even in a middling series in which Denver is down 1-3, Jokic has mostly delivered game in and game out. He’s posted 53-, 51-, 32-, and 47-DKFP performances in those four games with a single bad performance among them in which he only played 32 minutes. Jokic is a virtual lock to hand you a nice dub-dub with the points reaching the 25 mark and the boards around 10. Also, those sweet dimes. It is not that Denver should enter the court today poised to win... it is that the Nuggets need to win to keep forcing games and potentially make it to the second round. It’s win or go home from this point on, so expect Jokic to bomb out.
• Hate: (SF) Paul George, LAC ($8200, vs DAL): You know how it goes: you hate a bona fide star, he goes and burns you. But hey, what Putrid P has been up to I just can’t accept. George is shooting 27.3% from the floor against Dallas and 21.2% in the last three games, in which he has scored 14, 11, and 9 points while playing 31, 37, and 45 minutes. There are no excuses here, folks. Paul has been bad. Full stop. He will eventually get his shit together, sure, but when that will happen is hard to know considering how deep into this slump he is now. And watch out, because Dallas might flip the table today and get the 3-2 lead in the series putting these Clips against the wall. No way I’m betting on Pressured P.
• Love: (PG) Mike Conley, UTA ($6700, at DEN): Conley’s price has gone up and up, and it makes all of the sense considering his exploits of late. Mikey left the bubble, saw his newborn baby, came back, and started a killing spree that is yet to stop. In the two games since coming back and only two he’s played in the playoffs he’s dropped 27 and 26 pops, dished out 4 and 4 dimes, and hit at least 4 treys on each of those. The shooting percentages have been insane at 69 and 61 percent respectively, and he has done all of that in just 24 and 31 minutes of playing time. Ridiculous. Go have a baby if you want to become employee of the month, folks. It works.
• Hate: (SF/PF) Michael Porter Jr., DEN ($5700, vs LAL): Not the hottest of hates here because the price is low, but postseason-MPJ is far from seeding-MPJ. Coach Malone is barely using him these days and he didn’t even start in Game 4. He’s gone from playing 31+ minutes to 15 and 23 in the last couple of games and he’s no longer even a 10-point threat nightly. Sucks to see, but it is what happens with rookies and high-stake games. You gotta go through them and there will be growing pains. Looking forward to a fruitful 2021 true-blooming year.

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!