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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: Anthony Edwards (SG). I can’t love this kid any more than I already do, but here we are. Ant is a freak. He’s playing 35 minutes in his second year as a pro, which is nice, but the playing time is of no importance when it comes to the full picture. That’s because this fool is putting up a ridiculous 23-8-3-1 line per game while basically leading his own team above the likes of KAT and D’Lo. That’s right. He’s averaging 1.14 FP/min, he’s attempting 20+ FGA per game, and although the shooting has yet to stabilize on a higher mark, the truth is that this man has excelled in most games this season only failing to reach 40 DKFP once against Denver two games ago... when he still was able to finish the day with a ridiculous 14-11-1 contribution. Just imagine.
Plays at the Forward positions
- Love: Julius Randle (PF/C). A little bit of disrespect to the Randlewus on today’s slate. The Knicks, facing the lowly Pacers today, will field a Randle that is tagged with the 14th-highest price among all eligible players at a low-for-what-he-does $9.4K. I mean, Jules is putting up a spicy 21-11-6 with a block per game in 37 MPG, and those minutes aren’t going anywhere with Thibs manning the squad. Randle has one of the highest FP averages when removing scoring from the equation, but it’s not that he’s been bad at that with 42/37/84 splits and a healthy 26.2 USG%. The 3.3 TOs a night stink a bit, but there is nothing stopping Randle in approaching 50 DKFP tonight—he’s dropped at least 42 DKFP in all but one game this season.
- Hate: Jayson Tatum (SF/PF). Not to pick on Tatum, but I mean, when the very own Marcus Smart calls you out and tells media that you should pass the freaking ball, maybe you should pass the freaking ball. Why? Maybe because Jay Tat is shooting a rather putrid 39/27/77 splits through seven games while attempting a stupid 24+ FGA and 8+ 3PA a day, that’s why. Tatum is fantastic, of course, but he’s averaging 45 DKFP to date only because of his ridiculously high 38 MPG and bonkers 32% usage rate so far this season, which is already four percentage points against no. 2 ball-hog Jaylen Brown. The Magic suck, so even if Tatum has a great bounceback game today there is a chance Boston is up 45 points by halftime (not happening) and Tatum sits for a good chunk of time. Nothing to like here.
Picks at the Center position
Love: Mo Bamba (C). As great as Mo looked in the first games of the season, things are starting to regress to the mean for Bamba. The price is still low because it actually never got to become sky-high, but Bamba’s three-point outings went from 3 3PM to 2 to 0 his last time out a couple of days ago against Minny, when he even failed to reach 10 points for the first time this season. The rebounds are there, sure, but they are coming in way too bouncy ways (he’s grabbed from 3 to 18 never playing fewer than 27 minutes). The blocks are at a high average, but that’s because he’s got three games of swatting 3+ shots while three more in which he could only block one or none. Bamba seems to be finding his true self, but there is still some rawness and randomness in this man’s game and I’m not fully buying into it yet.
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!