NBA DFS: Bam Adebayo and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Wednesday, Sep. 23rd

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

• For the first time in ages, the Nuggets won by dominating the scoreboard from the get-go instead of pulling off a comeback, cutting the Lakers advantage in half. The series is now 2-1 LA, which means Denver still has room to drop to 3-1 and pull another three-game upset.
• Murray told media that he feels Denver should be up 2-1, and he’s not wrong. In fact, both the WCF and ECF could very well be 2-1—even 3-0 if you push me—for any of the four teams involved. It’s been close as hell.
• Important news here: it is all but official that next season won’t start earlier than January. Per the very own Adam Silver, “my best guess is that even though it will be the 2020-21 season, that season won’t start until ‘21.” Gonna be a could, though winter to endure for us hoop fanatics.
• The Chicago Bulls have made it official: former Thunder head coach Billy Donovan is the new Chicago coach for next season. There is a new front office in place too, so expect fireworks in terms of roster moves as who knows what is in all of these people heads...
• Ty Lou is getting headlines as one of—if not the—the strongest candidates to take on the Houston Rockets head coaching gig. We’ll see if the Rocks are willing to pay top-dollar for Ty, though.
• The Cavaliers are open to trading their no. 5 pick in the 2020 draft. I don’t have any idea what the Cavs are doing. Oh, and Andre Drummond is most probably opting in for the remaining season in his current contract (player option).
• Things are getting hot in Los Angeles, as it’s been reported that some role players from the Clippers see themselves as good Paul George while feeling PG13 is getting a special treatment. Uh, oh. Fire those trade guns Clips, fire those trade guns!
• Buddy Hield might ask for a trade out of Sacramento and Bogdan Bogdanovic is weighing his future options as a restricted free agent. Not looking good for the Kangz.
• Steven Adams and Dennis Schroder could turn into trading chips for the Thunder they receive sweet offers. It sure feels like the rebuilding is about to hit light-speed.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• After a good amount of games without a trip-dub, we finally got one. LeBron led the slate and did everything on his hands to try win yesterday’s G3 for the Lake Show, but no luck for LBJ. James finished with a neat 30-10-11 line including 2 steals and 2 blocks while shooting 60.9% from the floor and hitting a trey. The turnovers were high at 6, though, with a monster 35.4% usage rate.
• The only other player to hit 60+ DKFP was the winning Jamal Murray! He reached 61.5 fantasy points to the tune of a near-trip-dub himself with 28 pops, 8 boards, and 12 dimes in a silly 43 minutes of playing time. Great get-right game by Jam and one much needed by Denver to bring the series to a 2-1 LA.
• Nikola Jokic finished with 45 DKFP coming from a nice 22-10-5 performance, with AD falling way short of his average level at just 31 fantasy points and Jerami Grant the only other 30+ DKFP player of the game.
• Wildly unexpected value play yesterday, as the ROI King award went to... Jerami Grant! Okay, okay. Grant is a starter for these Nuggs, so it wasn’t something out of left field, but Jerami reached 35 DKFP at just $4.8K making him return a really high value for his owners. He dropped 26 pops on the Lakers while grabbing 3 boards, dishing out a dime, and stealing a couple of rocks. Jamal Murray, even carrying a rather high price tag, was another super valuable guy.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Anthony Davis! The talk was about Davis being tired, but the man went on to log 43 freaking minutes... He could score, and finished with 27 points, but he was null on the boards with just 2 rebounds and only provided an assists and a steal. Pretty lame game for AD.
• One dub-dub via points and rebounds (Jokic’s 22-10) and one more between points and assists (Murray’s 28-12).
• Shout-out to the King for his 30-10-11 trip-dub. Not enough to get the win, but good for some stat-padding, I guess.
• Rajon Rondo led the slate with 3 steals while only LeBron got to block 2 shots.

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

• Love: (C) Bam Adebayo, MIA (vs BOS): I know this is pretty chalky, but Bam has been sublime against Boston. Three games, three top-3 finishes with 43, 46, and 58 fantasy points (the latter two led the slate). Bam is doing everything in this series, from scoring (22 ppg), to rebounding (10.6 ppg), to assisting (4.6 apg) while shooting a great 58.5% from the field. Honestly, he only has to hit a three and he’d have done everything possible against the Cs, no joke. Boston has no answer for Adebayo and it will stay that way for whatever games the ECF go on. Lock and surefire play to build your lineups around these days.
• Hate: (PG) Goran Dragic, MIA (vs BOS): The Dragon started the series with a great 47-DKFP performance in just 39 minutes of playing time. Since then, he’s only dropped and dropped his numbers in back-to-back games going from 47 to 37 to 17 in his last one. Boston is deploying Marcus Smart on Dragic and he’s basically eating the Euro alive. Dragic could only score 11 points and hand out 5 dimes in G3, and it is not that things should change in Game 4 with Gordon Hayward in better shape now after a three-day resting span and Smart potentially fresher too.
• Love: (SG) Tyler Herro, MIA (vs BOS): It’s all about the Heat in today’s column, right? See, Herro’s price has been going up and up steadily through this series, and it makes all of the sense. Off the bench, Herro has reached at least 30 DKFP in all three games versus Boston. He’s yet not to return huge value for his owners, scoring 12, 11, and 22 points in those three matches, and pairing those with 11, 9, and 3 boards. The assists are also high for the minutes and role he plays, and he seems to be everywhere around the court in any given play at any given moment. Herro makes no sense, and he’s helping Miami reach unexpected heights this offseason. Bet on him keeping it up.

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!