NBA DFS: De’Aaron Fox and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Thursday, Feb. 18th

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 on top of that, I’ll bring you some statistical trends from the past week of games!

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

• Love: Chris Boucher (C). Chris keeps coming off the bench for the Raps, but the truth is that no one can argue about that being the wrong decision. Bouch is playing 25+ minutes in February and in his runs he’s putting up a 15-8-1 more than tasty baseline. This man is always tagged with salaries in the 5K-to-7K realm, which more often than not turn him into a nightly bargain. That’s because even though his average 38 DKFP per game might look a little bit low, they always hand huge ROI marks to Chris’ fantasy GMs. In all games this month he’s played 20+ minutes, Bouch has always scored 12+ points, has three trip-dubs (six games), and has 1+ assist and 1+ block in all of them including a couple of five-block performances in the last week.
• Hate: Bam Adebayo (C). Thin slate which means we gotta go hard and drop some hot hate picks. Bam’s the one today, so sorry about that one Bayo. Bam is great, don’t get me wrong, but he’s been averaging around 40 DKFP this month with just a couple of games above 50 FP, which just sucks for someone as expensive as Bam playing the C position. The dub-dub threat is always there, and he has incredible upside on the assists cat, but there is a high risk baked in this play for the price he demands. Not that Sacramento has a murderer's row on its paint, but still.
• Love: De’Aaron Fox (PG). Speaking of Kangz, let’s move on to their lone actual King. Foxxy’s 2021 season has been terrific on the bright side of things. The algorithm started to catch up by mid-January, but it was perfectly reasonable considering this man’s exploits. Fox has played above average on a per-minute basis for 13 games in a row now—since Jan. 17—and he has yet to score fewer than 19 points in February. His line this month: 28-3-9-1 shooting 50 percent from the floor on a massive 21 FGA per game while hitting 77% of his 6 FTA a pop. Very serious stuff.
• Hate: Fred VanVleet (PG/SG). God bless the Lord of Randomness. FVV reached 53 DKFP two days ago against the Bucks after putting on three consecutive below-35-FP performances prior to that. Obviously, he was in the 50s twice before going on that bad run, and that’s FVV right there for yall to enjoy—or not. When FVV hits, FVV hits. But when he misses, he sinks your freaking lineup left to right. Vleetos’ last game was great, but it was also the fruit of a huge-volume night in which he shot 22 FGA (his season-high sits at 23) but wasn’t otherworldly hitting 54 percent of those for a modest 67 TS%. I’m not buying into that type of game happening back-to-back for Fred.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 8 (Feb. 8 to Feb. 14)

• A tight, tight race at the top of this past week’s fantasy leaderboard with Giannis averaging 64 DKFP and Luka coming in second at 62 FP, both with 4 GP. While Giannis did it mostly on PTS and RBD with a touch of stocks (32-13-5-1-2), Luka thrived at the trip-dub-slash with a 36-8-9 baseline but just below 2 stops per game. That being said, Giannis averaged 1.74 FP/min while Luka fell way short of that mark at 1.62. Edge Giannis.
• Luka’s 36 PPG were insane, but Zach LaVine kept proving how much of a heater he’s been all year long by finishing with 35.7 PPG himself in 3 games played. ZLV keeps putting up 28-5-5 lines nightly, something only he, Durant, Curry, and Luka are doing this season, and something only nine other players have done in NBA history at least once.
• You know the L has become a true make-or-miss league, right? Well, tell Minny’s own Malik Beasley. Malik put up the highest 3PG mark of the week with 5.8 long-rangers per game, even more than Curry and ZLV (5.5 and 5.3 respectively). One of the very few bright Wolves lights.
• Joel Embiid’s week was impressive. He averaged 55 FP with a variation of just 7 FP in his 3 GP. Dame put up the highest FP mark (46) with the smallest variation (6 FP) among players with 4 GP.
• Silly cheap values: Saddiq Bey, James Ennis, Justin Jackson, Grayson Allen, Dylan Windler, Satoransky, Bacon
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Lou Williams, Terrence Ross, Josh Hart, McConnell, Valanciunas, Horford, Dejounte, Kyle Anderson, Joe Ingles
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Karl-Anthony Towns, Ben Simmons, FVV, Tobias, Ingram, Drummond, DeRozan, Kanter, Lowry, Ayton, Jerami
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played in the past seven days): Bey, Justin Jackson, Grayson, Forbes, Aaron Holiday, Semi Ojeleye, Jaylen Nowell, Cory Joseph, Nnaji
• Cheap threes: Bey, Grayson, Forbes, Nnaji, Justin Jackson, Ojeleye, Sterling Brown
• Cheap boards: Harry Giles, Dwight, Sterling Brown, Windler, Derrick Jones, Willy Hernangomez
• Cheap dimes: McLaughlin, Augustin, Justin Jackson, Chuma Okeke, Sterling Brown, Raul Neto, Damion Lee, Baynes
• Cheap steals: McLaughlin, Kira Lewis, Connaughton, Campazzo, Danny Green, Grayson
• Cheap blocks: Noel, Gafford, Jaden McDaniels, Isaiah Stewart, Biyombo, McGee, Gasol
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): Bey, Justin Jackson, Grayson, Forbes, Aaron Holiday

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!