NBA DFS: Bam Adebayo and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Wednesday, Sep. 2nd

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

• Welcome back to the ‘90s, folks! Denver beat Utah 80-78 in the first Game 7 of the first round and will face the LA Clippers starting tomorrow. Crazy-low scoring in a pretty rough game overall.
• The Celtics have the Raps pretty much against the ropes with yesterday’s W, putting the series at an unbalanced 2-0 for Boston that could look pretty bad for Toronto in two days if they can cut that distance in half...
• The Nets have already talked to their current interim coach Jacque Vaughn about the job for the upcoming season. Knowing how Brooklyn has operated during the past few years to build its system, it would make sense to go with him for at least a year, wouldn’t it?
• The Pacers are locked into hiring Mike D’Antoni as their head coach for the 2020-21 season, assuming Mikey doesn’t re-sign with Houston—which is not happening. It might take no longer than 24 hours to know if D’Antoni is still a Rocket, with Houston facing OKC tonight in a win-or-go-home Game 7.
• What about those spicy rumors talking about Giannis signing with Miami in 2021... in the context of the ongoing series between Milwaukee and the Heat with the South Beach Boys leading 1-0? Could this be the hammer-hit that gears Giannis toward Miami?

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• Ridiculous thing from yesterday’s slate: two players—Nikola Jokic and Jayson Tatum—finished exactly with 55 fantasy points. That was a little bonkers, as it is not often that this type of event happens. The Joker reached that mark with a 30-14 dub-dub that included 4 dimes, while Tatum did so to the tune of 34 pops, 8 boards, 6 dimes, and a theft. Kudos to both for their performances, which ended in Ws for each!
• Other than that, pretty tame slate—which makes sense, because the Nuggets/Jazz game didn’t even get to a combined 160-point total! Three players reached 40+ fantasy points, though: Rudy Gobert (19-18!), Siakam, and Lowry.
• The Raptors dropped their second in a row against Boston, but the ROI King award went to... OG Anunoby! Toronto is not going to get far if its players keep winning this fictional award, for sure, but at least they’d be winning something I guess... OG was legit the best scorer for the Raps yesterday with 20 pops, which he added to 7 rebounds and a steal. All in all, 32.25 DKFP performance at the sweet cheap price of $4.8K. Shout-out to Serge Ibaka and Gobert, other valuable plays.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Jamal Murray! Neither Murray nor DoMi lived up to the expectations yesterday with their Game 7 becoming a true retro-matchup that featured everything but scoring fireworks. Murray finished with 27 DKFP and Mitchell with 33, which sucked considering their second-highest and highest prices on yesterday’s slate.
• Only two dub-dubs via points and rebounds (Gobert’s monster 19-18 and Jokic’s 30-14) and none between points and assists.
• Shout-out to Lowry for leading the slate on steals (4) and to Daniel Theis for his 3 blocks.

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

• Love: (PG) Chris Paul, OKC ($8200, at HOU): See, even if this is Chris Paul and this is a Game 7 and Chris Paul has historically had pretty sad postseason results, Houston is at the other end of the court today and that means that Chris Paul is facing a pretty sad postseason team in and on itself. Nothing can go wrong for CP3, who truly deserves a break after a dodged career. Speaking of dogs... Paul has been a super value through this whole series averaging 40+ DKFP in the six games already played at just an average $8K tag, which is in line with today’s price. It is very possible that Chris repeats another 40+ performance scoring 20+ points to go with 6+ rebounds and 3+ assists, which is always nice to have in one’s lineup.
• Hate: (PG) Russell Westbrook, HOU ($8900, at vs OKC): I’m sorry, but the rust is weighing too heavily on Russ. Two games since his comeback, two duds of 27 and 25 fantasy points while tagged at $9.7K at least. The price is plummeting, and he can truly turn into a mega-value, but I’m just not seeing it happen. Houston is playing for its life, sure, but Westbrook will be limited in minutes (don’t expect more than 30) and it is not that he is playing super efficiently... He committed 7 (!) turnovers two days ago, has scored 7 and 17 points in his last two games, and has yet to grab more than 6 rebounds or dish out more than 7 dimes this series. Sucks to watch, but Westbrook is a clear fade these days.
• Love: (C) Bam Adebayo, MIA ($7900, at MIL): If you don’t think this is an absolute steal and value-play, then I don’t even know. We’re talking about an under-$8K player that has averaged 46.5 DKFP in his past three games and reached 43+ fantasy points in four of the five games Miami has played this postseason. Even if his “bad” game, Bam was able to finish with a stuffed 7-5-4-2-1 line. There aren’t many plays with such a high floor as Adebayo’s. You can pencil him in for a 15-15 any day of the week and it is not that Milwaukee did anything to prevent him to exploit them two days ago: Bam’s line read 12-17-6-2 and back before the hiatus he already had 19-13-8 and 14-13-5 performances against the Bucks. Nothing to hate here.

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!