NBA DFS: Goran Dragic and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Saturday, Sep. 19th

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

• The Lakers did what the Lakers were expected to do and got the W yesterday in the WCF series opener against Denver, getting a 1-0 lead. Not that it is bad for the Nuggets, though, as they have proved to be better coming from behind that anyone else...
• No drama around this game, although coach Mike Malone bitched a bit about the Lakers getting a lot of calls and being awarded a ton of free-throws trough the night. They shot 40 compared to Denver’s 26.
• Dwight and JaVale came back to log minutes starting and off the bench after a while, playing 10 and 16 rounds of the clock respectively.
• Now for the important news: the NBA announced Giannis as the 2020 MVP, which makes him a back-to-back winner. Also: he’s one of 11 back-to-back winners of the award, and one of three (Jordan and Olajuwon) to get both the MVP and DPOY awards in the same season.
• Only Giannis and LeBron got first-place votes in the MVP race. LeBron, though, seems to be pretty pissed off with having not finished on top. Seriously?
• Gordon Hayward has been upgraded to “questionable” for Game 3. The Celtics are down 2-0, which means they need to win, which also means they could either run Hayward down to death in a do-or-die effort, or play it cautiously not risking having a cold body out there in a crucial game.
• The Warriors seem to be as high as a Georgia pine on Deni Avdija for the upcoming draft, valuing the European over the likes of Ball and Wiseman. Who knows if that’s true, though. Golden State will probably try to generate all of the smoke to hide their real plans and land the best potential trade/prospect when decision time comes.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• It was obvious that Anthony Davis was going to thrive against Denver, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday. AD led the slate with 56 fantasy points and a 37-10 double-double to which he added 4 assists. Davis shot 57.1% from the floor including a trey and shot a monster 15 (!) freebies. The usage read 40.3% by the end of the game, which is just bonkers.
• LeBron disappointed a bit, but was also the only other player to break the 40-DKFP barrier without the Lake Show truly needing more from him. He still finished close to a trip-dub with a 15-6-12 line that pretty much killed the Nugs.
• All of MPJ, Jokic, and Murray fell way short of expectations and at-or-under 35 DKFP. Not the best performance by the Nuggets best three players, who will need to step up their game if they want to put on a relatively serious battle in the WCF.
• In a losing effort yesterday, the ROI King award went to... Michael Porter Jr.! The fact that MPJ was the best Nugget speaks volumes of how little chances Denver had of snatching Game 1 from LA’s hands. Porter was good in his 29 minutes finishing with a neat 14-10 dub-dub, although he could only shoot 33.3% from the field coming off the bench. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was a great value from the Lakers, dropping 18 pops himself.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Nikola Jokic! The same as I expected AD to excel, I expected Jokic to suck big time against the Lakers. And well, here we are. Jokic finished with a paltry 21-6-2 performance for 31 DKFP that were super low for his price, making him the worst value of the slate. Not that Murray was much better, though, finishing second from the bottom of the ROI leaderboard yesterday...
• Two dub-dubs via points and rebounds (AD’s 37-10 and MPJ’s 14-10) and one between points and assists (LBJ’s 15-12).
• Nobody stole more than two rocks, and also nobody block more than two shots.

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

• Love: (PG) Goran Dragic, MIA (vs BOS): The Dragon has been great for Miami through all of the bubble games, and it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon. Goran is averaging 37 DKFP per game since the start of the playoffs, and most importantly, he’s reached 46 and 36 in the last two games against Boston. His lines: 29-7-4 and 25-3-5 with three triples in each of those games. Dragic is playing 34+ minutes per game, starting, and handling the ball on offense to kick things off on a possession-to-possession basis. He is not entirely expensive yet he offers a huge upside tonight as he’s done during all of the playoffs.
• Hate: (PG) Kemba Walker, BOS (at MIA): I’d truly love to see Walker succeeding in the postseason once for all now that he’s part of a serious team with aspirations, but it is not that he’s helping the Cs as much as you’d expect, with bouncing performances all around the place. Kemba showed his ceiling against Philly (50 fantasy points in Game 4), but he’s also put on some serious duds through the postseason (Game 6 against Toronto, 19 DKFP in 51 minutes...). He hasn’t been bad against Miami with 32 and 41 fantasy points averaging a 21-5-4 line, but has done so playing 43 and 34 minutes with out-of-the-norm (high) usage rates, so it’s hard to see him sustaining the performance levels.
• Love: (SF) Jayson Tatum, BOS (at MIA): If there is anyone able to bring Boston back in this series, that must be Jay. If Tatum doesn’t play to the superstar level he’s shown to have in him, the Cs are cooked for good. Tatum already has reached 60+ fantasy points in three of his last four games, and he posted a 35 fantasy tally in Game 2 against Miami. That was the first time he didn’t get a dub-dub in his last six games, which talks about a rather impressive postseason run. He will get back on track today; Boston needs it and well, at the end of the day, Tatum is basically a 50+ fantasy-points player with ease. Perhaps the 67 DKFP of Game 1 are a little too much (he stuff the line with a 30-14-5-3-2 performance), but I don’t think getting to 55+ is out of the equation tonight.

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!