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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, and players to target/fade if you want to win tonight’s slate of games!
Gotta Win The Day: Best/Worst DraftKings plays for tonight’s slate
Picks at the Guard positions
- Love: De’Aaron Fox (PG). Smart (?) people will make you believe Fox is having a rough start to the year. Don’t believe them. Surely, we’d like to have Foxy putting up numbers, but it’s not that he ain’t putting up numbers, though. It’s been a matter of stars aligning for him if you ask me. Fantastic debut with a 27—5-8-0-1 packed line but 5 & 5 TOs and PF (still 45+ DKFP). Then a stuffed 12-3-5-5 line although he shot 26%... a 17-5-6 in which he only went to the line once and committed a once-in-a-lifetime 7 TOs... and finally another nice 18-2-9-1 packed outing only shooting 35% from the floor. Seriously, if it’s not one thing, then it’s another, and that just won’t stay that way for long. Give me Fox righting his wrongs as soon as tonight.
Plays at the Forward positions
- Love: Jimmy Butler (SF). The disrespect never ends, I’m afraid. Jimmer has the 11th-highest salary of tonight’s slate behind those of Lillard (stinking), LeBron (banged up and missing time), Paul George (good not great), Russ (needed LBJ out to thrive), and Harden (more than bad so far). Yikes. Butler hasn’t even needed to attempt even one three-pointer per game (0.8) to reach 23.3 PPG in his four games. He’s pairing those pops with a high 7-5-3 rest-of-line. He’s shooting 48% from the floor and 86% on freebies while having a more than healthy 28% usage rate to this day. The DKFP per minute on the court (and he’s playing a bulky 35 MPG) are sitting at a 99th percentile 1.32 mark. And Butler has yet to stop ramping up going from 36 to 40 to 52 and lately 55 DKFP this season. Chef’s kiss.
- Hate: Kelly Oubre Jr. (SG/SF). Five games four KOJ, four of them starting, and not so neat results for the freshest of Hornets doing it out there. Oubre has topped at 35 DKFP (twice) and one of the times he reached that outcome it happened coming off the pine facing the stinky Cavs. Not liking it that much, folks. Oubre’s shooting is simply not there yet (40/33/82 splits on 13/7/2 attempts) and he’s not getting as much ball as he’d probably like in this offense (18.5 USG%). The problem with Oubre is that if the Wave Papi is not hitting every single shot he takes, then he’s worth peanuts because he just doesn’t contribute on any other front: 5 RPG, 1 APG, and that’s it for him. Not the most expensive of players, but surely one with a rather low ceiling considering he needs bombastic shooting explosions to reach sky-high DKFP tallies.
Picks at the Center position
Love: Richaun Holmes (C). How DK sees Richaun: 47th-highest salaried player. How I see Richaun: 25th-best fantasy-point projection. That’s some gap right there, folks, and I’m always going to trust my calculations and screw the algorithm while exploiting these chances. Holmes is playing a “low” 27 MPG, yes, and his usage is down at 15.2%, yes, but Richaun is also putting up a silly 14-11-2 line with 2 blocks on top of it, hitting shots at an unreasonable 72/100/85 splits, and averaging 1.35 (!!!) FP/min through four games. Three dub-dubs for the man already with the other game finishing at a nice 6-10-2-1-3 outcome. Nothing to hate here.
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!