NBA DFS: Jamal Murray and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Sep. 22nd

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

• It took them a last-second shot, but the Lakers dropped another L on Denver and now lead the WCF 2-0 after Anthony Davis hit a game-winning, buzzer-beater trey to get that sweet W. The Nuggets have come from behind before, sure, but the Lake Show is no joke.
• The very own AD said it: “It’s for sure the biggest shot of my career.” Indeed. Made sense he dedicated it to Kobe, who was the last Laker to have hit a game-winning shot in the playoffs all the way back in 2006!
• JaVale McGee got the start in Game 2 over Dwight Howard (hate it), but he played 11 minutes to Dwight’s 13 (love it, I guess). Neither was really good, and even Howard dropped his level quite a bit from his G1 performance.
• It looks like Will Barton is unlike to return during the WCF against the Lakers, potentially having played his last game of the season if Denver can’t make it to the Finals.
• This came out early on Sunday, but still. Gordon Hayward won’t be leaving the bubble again for his child’s birth later during the postseason. He will remain with the Celtics in Orlando for however long they stay alive.
• Kris Dunn is an upcoming free agent and he’ll be on the market a couple of months from now. Where he won’t be is training with Chicago once the grounds re-open, as he’s skipping those voluntary workouts. Yall worried, Bulls?
• Also opting out of workouts: Hornets’ Batum and Biyombo, which makes sense considering they are free agents. Willy Hernangomez and Dwayne Bacon, also pending free agents, are participating though.
• Former NBA-player Ty Lawson has been playing in China for a while but won’t be doing so anymore. The CBA has banned Lawson entirely from the league after he posted some chicken-wing-dealing pictures on a social network. LOL
• We finally got news related to the G League upcoming season. The league is planning a tournament featuring the Ignite team (made of elite-contract HS prospects skipping college) and other teams packed with undrafted FAs inside a November/December bubble.
• Michael Jordan is so bored he’s starting his own NASCAR team along three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin. Cool, I guess.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• Jokic led the slate on Sunday, but he couldn’t help Denver score a win. It was close, obviously, as it came down to a buzzer-beater from AD, but... alas. The Joker dropped 30 points on the Lakers, and added 6 boards, 9 dimes, and 4 (!) steals to that scoring performance.
• Anthony Davis, the man to murder Denver, finished second in the slate and was the only other player to reach 50+ DKFP. He did so to the tune of a near-dub-dub that read 31-9 with 2 dimes, a steal, and a couple of blocks.
• Two more players with 45+ DKFP: LeBron with a 26-11 dub-dub and Jamal stuffing a 25-6-4-2-2 line in 44 (!) minutes.
• In a short run on Sunday, the ROI King award went to... Danny Green! Danny has flown under the radar through the postseason and it is not that his G2 performance was close to world-beating, but he was still able to put on a solid 11-5 effort hitting 3 triples and stealing three rocks, enough to help the Lake Show to stay alive and ultimately snatch the W.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Michael Porter Jr.! No real duds in this game, truth be told. If anything, MPJ was a little disappointing after finishing with 15 points in 19 minutes but only 4 rebounds and nothing else in his stat line. Rondo also fell a little short of his prior games level finishing with a rather low 3-4-9 line.
• One dub-dub via points and rebounds (James’ 26-11) and none between points and assists.
• Jokic led the slate with 4 steals (Danny Green and Jerami Grant stole 3 themselves) while three players (LBJ, AD, and Jamal) blocked 2 shots each.

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

• Love: (PG/SG) Jamal Murray, DEN (vs LAL): It’s been a rough couple of games for Jam, but I’m betting on a get-right performance tonight. There is not a lot to like here after a super-dud in G1 and a relatively good performance in G2 (though he needed all of 44 minutes), but Murray has showed enough throughout the postseason as to make me not feel bad about this pick. Jamal was plain bad to start the series with a paltry 21-1-5 line but in a massive run two days ago he reached a much more palatable 25-6-4-2-2 stuffed line. I don’t believe those 44 minutes being there once more (no one even reached 40 for either team in the first two games) but if he can shoot a little bit better, avoid turnovers, and Jokic contributes as he did in G2 all points in the right direction for Murray hitting tonight.
• Hate: (PG) Rajon Rondo, LAL (at DEN): While Rondo had a monster run leading up to the WCF, he has put on back-to-back middling games against Denver. He’s been on the court 21 minutes in each of the two games that have been played, but he hasn’t reached double-digit assists and the scoring is not there with 7 and 3 points respectively. Without the points amounting to much and the dimes dropping from 10 Rondo’s value isn’t as high as it was just a series ago when he thrived against Houston. Nothing to like here, with Bron and Davis eating all of the bread and not even leaving the crumbs from others to pick.
• Love: (SF/PF) Michael Porter Jr, DEN (vs ATL): This is definitely a flier, and a volatile play as they get. MPJ has had a good and a bad games so far in this series. He kicked them off with a solid 14-10 dub-dub outing to which he added 4 dimes while shooting a putrid 33% from the floor, so he outperformed expectations. Then in G2 he laid an egg finishing with just 15 points and 4 rebounds in 20 minutes but he shot 66%. Can MPJ put the best of those two outcomes together (the shooting, the minutes, the efficiency,...) and avoid the worst of them (the turnovers, the fouling, the lack of dimes/boards/steals)? Denver needs this one, so I’m betting on another surprising performance and extended run from the rookie 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!