NBA DFS: Jaylen Brown and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Friday, Sep. 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

• Jokic got in foul trouble, Davis got back to his real self, Denver was a one-man squad—Murray—and LeBron was never going to let the chance to put the Lakers 3-1 up slip, helping them to the W yesterday. The Nuggets have come back from this same point in back-to-back series this postseason, but what are the odds they pull it off once more? Actually, what are the odds any team wins three out of three (or four, or five, or...) against these Lakers? Yikes.
• Shout-out to Dwight for starting Game 4 over JaVale! Superman truly deserved the nod, and as we’ll see in the slate breakdown later he absolutely excelled at it. It was his first start since April 28, 2017!
• Nick Nurse spoke yesterday and talked about how re-signing Fred VanVleet is one of the franchise’s priorities this offseason.
• The Sixers seem to be down to either Mike D’Antoni and Tyronn Lue for their head coaching position. As long as D’Antoni has interested the position, it should be his to lose per the latest reports. The franchise also thinks it could poach James Harden from Houston is Mikey becomes the head coach.
• It seems Billy Donovan is pumped up with rebuilding the Bulls and bringing glory back to Chicago. We’ll see if that’s the case when he’s 5-25 with 30 games played next season...
• Tons of talented players—and mostly upcoming free agents to-be—are opting out of the voluntary workouts organized by non-bubble teams these days: Kris Dunn, Evan Turner, Nico Batum, Andre Drummond, Tristan Thompson, Blake Griffin, Derrick Rose, Christian Wood, Jeff Teague, Mitchell Robinson, etc...

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• As weird as it is, both LeBron and AD finished with the exact same fantasy-point tally yesterday and thus co-led the slate. LBJ reached his mark in 38 minutes, so he gets the slight edge over AD (40 minutes). James put up a 29-9-8 near-trip-dub while Davis finished at 34-5-3-3 stuffing his line all across the board. None of the two got to 50 DKFP, though.
• The only other player into the 47+ was Jamal Murray in what ended being a losing effort by Denver. Jam dropped 32 pops on the Lakers while grabbing 3 boards and dishing out 8 dimes and blocking a shot. Not enough for his team to get that much-needed W that would have brought the series to a 2-2 tie.
• Coming from a Tyler Herro explosion it was always going to be hard to find a better value-play yesterday, and ROI King award went to... Dwight Howard! And he was worlds better than Herro, believe it or not. Sure, the fantasy points were lower than Herro’s, but so was Dwight’s price. DH played 22 minutes but he amassed a nice 22-11 dub-dub to go with a steal and an assist while starting his first game in more than three years! Rajon Rondo and MPJ were two more kinda-good values.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Nikola Jokic! Night to forget for Joker, who although played all of 35 minutes got in foul trouble as earlier in the series and could only hit 16 points and grab 7 rebounds yesterday. The most worrying thing about him and the Denver gameplan was the fact that he only shot 13 field goals, which... meh. Jerami Grant finished with 13 shots, and KCP shot 12 for the Lakers. You can’t win or at least attempt to with your best player not shooting the ball at all, my Nuggs.
• One dub-dub via points and rebounds (Dwight’s 12-11) and none on points and assists.
• LeBron led the slate with 3 steals, and Torrey Craig (!) was the one with the most blocks at 2.

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

• Love: (SG/SF) Jaylen Brown, BOS (vs MIA): Brown wasn’t very good in Game 4 and that probably cost the Celtics the game or at least a closer shot at getting the W. Now, Boston is down 3-1 and needs everyone at a hundred percent or more to force Game 6 and keep this thing run going. Jaylen hasn’t been great against Miami, but he showed his ceiling in Game 2 when he reached 50 DKFP in 43 minutes dropping 26 points on the Heat and stuffing the line with a 26-7-5-3-1 performance that saw him do a little bit of everything while shooting 64.7% from the floor on 17 fga. That’s the Brown Boston needs, and the one I expect to show up tonight.
• Hate: (C) Bam Adebayo, MIA (at BOS): Hard to hate on the second-best player of the Heat, and much less with him being a biggie with daily double-double upside, but here we are. Adebayo got screwed in the wrist during Game 4 and although he’s been cleared and will start Game 5, if things go well for Miami and somehow put the Cs to rest early, it would be reasonable for them to not force Bam into any risk or long run, keeping him safe for the Finals. Not saying he won’t get his usual 40 DKFP, but the value might not be there if just the smallest of things go wrong (which is to say, go right for Miami) for him.
• Love: (SG/SF) Jimmy Butler, MIA (at BOS): I’m not going to use many words here. Jimmy Butler is one game from making the Finals. Jimmy. Butler. Do you think he won’t do all and then some to lock Miami in? Dude.

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!