NBA DFS: Rudy Gobert and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Jan. 19th

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

• Durant and Dame were named players of the week, and in the case of the latter, he could very well be on his way to repeating for the next four weeks as CJ McCollum has been ruled out for a month with a hairline fracture in his foot. These Blazers are definitely cursed.
• Dame, by the way, passed Kobe in the all-time three-point leaderboard. Steph Curry also bulked up his numbers on that front yesterday and is now just 12 treys shy of reaching Reggie Miller’s career mark. A couple of good shooting performances and he’ll snatch that no. 2 spot... with 400+ triples still to be scored in order to get to the top where Ray Allen awaits.
• Another long-term absence will be that of Caris LeVert, who will supposedly miss from six to eight weeks as he’ll most probably undergo surgery soon.
• The Wizards keep getting players testing positive for COVID and games postponed. At this pace, they will barely play half of the season games... but we can only hope the best for those guys and that everyone ends on the safe and right side of things once they go through the incubation period.
• We keep waiting on Kyrie... Next chance: Wednesday.
• Turns out the only untouchable players for the Nets in any Harden-trade were KD, Kyrie,... and Joe Harris! Not Dinwiddie, not Allen, not LeVert. But JoJo..
• Speaking of trades, the Rockets will most probably end flipping PJ Tucker sooner rather than later. Call me crazy, but his words of late and the Rockets' own season aspirations just call for it. They are supposedly asking for three second-round picks in return.
• Cavs sophomore Kevin Porter Jr. will be molly-waived by Cleveland after his locker was given to recently-acquired Taurean Prince... and the second-year went bananas about it. Fools abound.
• It escaped me yesterday, and it is not that important because the trip-dub feat is quite watered-down these days, but Luka’s triple-double two days ago served to put him above Mike and onto the 15th spot in NBA history. He’s done so at a freaking 21 years of age.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s slate roundup

• The expectations for yesterday’s affair between Brooklyn and Milwaukee were overly high with this matchup projecting as the upcoming ECF... and it truly delivered. Giannis led the slate with 65 DKFP, and Harden finished second with 61 FP himself. The Greek put on a great 34-12-7 effort but he couldn’t get his Bucks the W, while Harden’s 34-6-12 was similarly good (only flipping board for dimes) in the second Nets W since The Trade. Durant didn’t reach the sixty-mark, but he put up a great 53 FP to the tune of a 30-9-6 near-dub-dub.
• Nine players were able to cross the 50-DKFP mark, including AD (17-17-7-2-3 stuffed line, although he shot a putrid 37.5%), DLo (slate-leading 6 treys), Trae (finally), Capela, Oladipo (32 pops in his debut), LaVine, Aaron Gordon, and Dame.
• The ROI King award went to... Kevin Huerter! Not the literal best play of the day, as others had higher ROIs, but Huerter put up the most DKFP (45 FP) while being relatively cheap. Huerter dropped 17 pops on Minny and paired those with a 6-8-4 rest-of-line including hitting 3 treys and turning the ball over just once in 40+ minutes of playing time. Shouts out to Nunn, DeAndre Jordan, Gay, Capela, and Dipo too.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Steph Curry! Absolutely atrocious days for three top-dollar players yesterday, led by Steph. Curry could only reach 39 DKFP on the night, and on the other end of the court, LBJ was also mediocre with 33 FP himself. Sandwiched in between, Luka finished the day with a paltry 35 DKFP score that didn’t cut it for his owners either. Wiggins, Siakam, and FVV were other players you should have definitely avoided.
• There were 13 dub-dubs via points and rebounds (DeAndre Jordan got the cheapest one, Mitchell Robinson missed by 4 points, and five more players missed by a single rebound) and five between points and dimes (no cheapies, with Dejounte missing on it by just a single point).
• No triple-doubles yesterday in which was a rather frustrating night on that front. Why? Dejounte finished with a 9-9-11 line, Trae was 20-8-13, Aaron Gordon 18-17-9, Dray 7-8-9, and Lowry 23-9-7. Seriously.
• More silly numbers: five players finished with 4 steals, and John Collins led all players with 4 swats on the night.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 4 (Jan. 11th to Jan. 17th)

• If you remember what happened last week, Doncic was—along with Brad Beal—the only player to average 65+ DKFP per game, although he played just three games. Well, Luka has improved on that and this past week, in three more games, Doncic (33-13-12-1-1) has averaged a stupid 75 DKFP. Only Jokic (27-12-10-4-1) came remotely close to Luka with 68 FP himself.
• Kevin Durant only got to share the court once with newly-acquired James Harden, but KD led the week among players with 3+ games played in PPG notching 34 pops a night in three games. Doncic and Dame were the only other players to average 30+ PPG in the past seven days.
• Myles Turner missed Sunday’s game but he still played 3 other times last week averaging a stupid 4.0 BPG. Noel ranked a distant second with 2.8 BPG in four games. LOL
• Enes Kanter’s über-efficient season might see a drop in per-minute numbers now that he will be starting for Portland, but Kanter kept up the highest DKFP/min average among players valued below $5.5K during the past week putting up a 1.46 mark. Clarkson, Tillman, and Boucher were some other overly-efficient per-minute players during the last seven days.
• The algorithm has yet to catch up with LaMelo Ball’s game, no less than the youngest of trip-dubbers in NBA history. Ball has played four games this past week putting up an average of 43 DKFP at just $6.2K. Somehow, the Hornets keep playing him off the bench and starting Rozier and Graham...
• Silly cheap values: Alexander-Walker, Quickley, Bruce Brown, Tillman, Tate, Grayson Allen, Vincent, Poeltl, Achiuwa, Okoro, Dort
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Boucher, Duncan Robinson, Myles Turner, Clarkson, Fox, Danny Green, Wood
• Some very expensive players not doing enough to help their owners: Ingram, Trae, Paul George, Porzingis, VanVleet, Gobert, John Collins
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played in the past seven days): Alexander-Walker, Gabe Vincent, McDermott, Quickley, Marcus Morris, Lu Dort, Caldwell-Pope, Kennard
• Cheap threes: Isaiah Joe, Marcus Morris, Dort, Caldwell-Pope, Kennard, NAW, Vincent, Redick, McLemore, McDermott, Trent Jr., Knox
• Cheap boards: Achiuwa, Bruce Brown, Biyombo, JaMychal, Jaxon Hayes, Zubac, Poeltl, Roby, Birch
• Cheap dimes: Iguodala, Tate, Quickley, Aaron Holiday, Vincent, Kennard, Caruso, DJ Augustin
• Cheap steals: Okoro, Tillman, Dort, Vassell, Connaughton, KCP, Sumner
• Cheap blocks: Noel, Gasol, Poeltl, Biyombo, Tate, McGee, James Johnson, Favors, Pokusevski
• Cheap FG% (min. 9 FGA): Bruce Brown, McDermott, NAW, Marcus Morris, Trent Jr., Redick, Okoro, Quickley, Bacon, Dort

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

• Love: Rudy Gobert (C). The Jazz are low-key having a great start to the season, currently sitting in the no. 3 seed of the Western Conference with a 9-4 record only behind both LA teams and 1.5 games above no. 4 Phoenix. Part of that success has been a Croissant that has needed to overcome Donovan Mitchell's slow start and who is putting up nightly dub-dubs. Gobert is averaging a 12-13-1 line to go with 2.7 (!) blocks per game. I don’t think I need to mention it, but KAT is the only other player averaging that line although he’s only played 4 games... Gob has been straight dominant this year, to say the least. Rudy has grabbed 10+ rebounds in all games but one of the 13 he’s played and he’s dropped 14+ points in six of them, including the last two. Gobert is a 35-DKFP-floor player with upside for 45 if he gets to the 20-15-high-blocks line... and it is not that Steven Adams will give him fits tonight.
• Hate: Zion Williamson (PF/C). Zion, on the other hand, will be going against Gobert in the paint in today’s super-thing slate of—two—games. If you have yet not realized, Zion has completely ditched his mid- and long-range shooting in favor of murdering foes in the paint (I have written about it here). And I love that, don’t get me wrong, but I just can’t bet on Zion getting plenty of goods facing such an interior beast as Rudy has been for years and still is. Zion has attempted all of two three-pointers this season, and not even going that far from the rim he’s just attempting three percent of his shots from beyond 10 feet... which makes Williamson a dunk/layup-or-die player. He will grab some boards and dish out some dimes, but realistically he should fall on his lower-upside side rather than hitting his ceiling against the Jazz.

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!