NBA DFS: Jimmy Butler and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Sep. 8th

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 Celtics destroyed Toronto yesterday winning Game 5 by an astonishing 22 points and found no answer from the Raps all game long. One more W and Boston will be one of your ECF contenders.
• The Nuggets fell a middle finger short of upsetting the Clips, but it wouldn’t be. Los Angeles got that W, setting up a 2-1 Game 4 in the favor of Hollywood’s poor brother two days from now.
• Miami can close its series against the Bucks today if they get the W, which is most probably going to happen with Giannis being truly questionable to play, or have any substantial impact if he does.
• The Lake Show or the Pocket Rockets will take their series’ lead tonight entering Game 3 1-1- so far.
• There were some critical voices out there when it was announced that Brooklyn would go with Steve Nash as its head coach for next season, but it looks like most analysts are starting to agree the move is the right one with Kevin Durant backing up the decision and having worked with Nash in the past—in Golden State.
• The Jazz are giving us the full transaction-experience. They went from Gobert “causing” the league to go on hiatus, to Mitchell clashing with the Frenchman, to both liking each other, to now being nothing-but locked into bringing everybody back and extending all pending contracts including Bogdanovic, Ingles, O’Neale, DoMi, and potentially Gobert one year from now.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s Slate Recap

• All for nothing. Yikes. Jokic was the only player to break the 60-DKFP barrier yesterday finishing with a 32-12-8 dub-dub against the Clips while hitting 3 treys on 24 fga, but Denver couldn’t get that W by the final horn. Truth be told, it was a one-man effort as Jamal Murray was pretty meh and the Nuggets second-best player was MPJ.
• Kawhi, on the other end of the court yesterday, was the second-best play of the slate with his 53.3 DKFP to the tune of a 23-14 double-double to which he added 6 dimes, 2 blocks, and a middle finger. He played all of a massive 42 minutes, but it is not that LA did not need all of them, though.
• Only four more players finished with more than 40-DKFP yesterday, including Paul George (32-4-4 with 5 triples), Jaylen (27-6), Tatum (18-10), and Porter Jr. (18-10 in 23 minutes).
• The effort was good on a personal level but not for the Nuggets, as the ROI King award went to... Michael Porter Jr.! In a super-short run of only 23 minutes, MPJ was still able to reach 40 DKFP thanks to a great 18-10 dub-dub, adding 3 steals to that line and committing only 1 turnover on 33.9% usage rate coming off the bench. It wasn’t the greatest of days for ROIs, though, as the next-best guy was Brad Wanamaker who only got 25 DKFP himself...
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Pascal Siakam! The price wasn’t insane, that’s right, but the outcome was putrid at the very least. Siakam has looked really bad lately and yesterday he laid another big egg with his 17 DKFP with only 10 points and 4 rebounds. Lowry was really bad too, and this could have turned into a shared DOTS award easily with Kyle reaching just 23 DKFP himself, also scoring just 10 points and dishing out 5 dimes. Ibaka came third in the DOTS ranks. Not the best day for the Raps...
• Not a bad day on the double-double department, with four dub-dubs via points and rebounds (Kawhi, Jokic, Tatum, MPJ) but none between points and assists.
• While Gary Harris led the slate with 4 steals, three more players (MPJ, Jaylen, FVV) finished with 3 of them... yet no fool blocked more than 2 shots.

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

• Love: (SG/SF) Jimmy Butler, MIA ($8500, at MIL): These have been Butler’s fantasy tallies against Milwaukee: 53, 30, 50, and 29 two days ago. If you know anything about series, then you know where I’m getting to: a booming game is coming Butler’s way. Jimmer is not a fool. He put on a show to get the series started with a 1-0. Then slowed down a bit with the Heat taking the 2-0 lead. Then felt the urge to put the 3-0 up so the series was virtually over—nobody has ever recovered from such a hole. And then he again slowed down the other day. It’s all about wrapping this up today with that last W, and you bet Butler will do everything in his hand to give his Heat the win. Picture a 30-5-5 line for Jimmy, getting back to his usual 30%+ usage rate tonight and with Giannis banged up and not posing much of a threat, and KMidd most probably not playing to the level he showed two days ago.
• Hate: (PG) Russell Westbrook, HOU ($8400, vs LAL): Russy was horrific in Game 2. He shot 26.7% from the floor with the Lakers daring him to take shots all around the court, which he did while missing time and time again. The 13 rebounds kinda “saved” the day for him, but other than that he could only score 10 points and finished with under 35 DKFP... You have to think he will tame himself today and not take whatever look LA offers him, but it’s been a while since Russ was at his best version as he’s been kinda middling in bubble-ball averaging just 33 DKFP since the start of the postseason while almost always priced at over $9K. The tag has gone down a bit, which is reasonable, but he still doesn’t make much sense to pay for these days.
• Love: (PG) Rajon Rondo, LAL ($3900, at HOU): Nobody expected Rondo to play to the level he did two days ago in his second game inside the bubble. The outcome wasn’t mindblowing, but 37 fantasy points on fewer than 29 minutes and priced at just $3.3K turned into the most-valuable play of the slate. The price is still low for Rondo’s upside, and it is not that Rondo’s line was insane, so chances are he can put on a repeat performance once more at least. Rondo dropped 10 points and dished out 9 dimes against the Rockets, stole 5 rocks, and grabbed 3 boards. Again, those are reachable numbers and the Rockets won’t just focus on defending RR with LBJ and AD roaming around. Great and cheap play with tons of upside to fill your lineup.

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!