NBA DFS: Nikola Vucevic and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Feb. 2nd

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

• Another day, another postponed game. The match between Denver and Detroit was canned from yesterday’s slate after positives coming from the Pistons side just before tipoff. There were 21 postponements in January, and this is February’s first... one day into the month. Long season ahead, folks.
• Gary Harris wasn’t going to play against Detroit due to a left adductor strain, and coach Malone gave no real timetable for his return.
• Players of the month: Jokic and Harden. Watch out for a potential MVP run by the former, because the Joker isn’t exactly Joking around.
• Headline of the night: “Mavs to have full roster for the first time in 425 days“. That’s no good though, as it means KP is available and that in turn means Dallas will play worse than they can only because of the Porz presence.
• KAT and Juancho are nearing a comeback, but they are expected to run some practices before that happens, per coach Saunders.
• Tom Thibs dropped the hammer on Kevin Knox. He said KK is out of the rotation now that all Knicks’ players are healthy and available. Uh, oh. Cold World, Kevin.
• Speaking of New York things: Washington is not considering trading Beal, but the Knicks are seemingly interested in the guard. The problem, per NBA execs, is that while New York has the draft picks to make an appealing offer they don’t have good enough players to send the Wiz in exchange for Beal. Remember the Knicks have been rebuilding for like eight or ten years now, yet here they are still. LOL
• Aaron Gordon was injured two nights ago and he’s now going to miss four to six weeks. Orlando, it’s time to make a move.
• Steph Curry lives in a dream inside his mind, as he is still thinking about the championship these days... Wes Goldberg asked him about his and GSW’s chances at the chip, and that’s what the guard thinks, so, yeah, whatever.
• Not happy enough holding an All-Star game, the NBA is now planning on also going forward with both Dunk/Three-Point Contests next month... Oh, lord.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s slate roundup

• Two small-ish guys at the top of yesterday’s fantasy leaderboard, with three in the top-5. Let’s not rush stuff, though. Fox led the slate with 63 DKFP to the tune of a 38-12 dub-dub on points and dimes with 4 boards and a steal to spare. He also turned the ball over six times, though, which sucked to watch. The other minion to break the 60-FP mark was CP3 with 62 himself thanks to a 34-9-9-2 near-trip-dub shooting 70 percent on 20 FGA and hitting his couple of freebies. Five TOs for him on the dirty side of things.
• Trae was the other point to rack up points (56 FP) yesterday with his 25-4-16-2 double-double. It was all about biggies and wings in the 50-to-60 FP clip: Jarrett Allen surprised starting at C with a 23-18 and 5 blocks, Randle came back to a do-it-all role with a sweet 23-11-7-2 line, and Butler couldn’t look better in his second game after returning with a resounding 25-9-5-4 all-around contribution.
• As many as 21 (!!!) players in the 40-to-50 range, including Keldon Johnson (25-10), Holmes (17-10 with 6 swats), and Monk (36 pops with 9 treys).
• The ROI King award went to... Malik Monk! Tight fight at the top of the ROI leaderboard. You could go with Nassir Little’s 47 DKFP and I wouldn’t complain, but I’m going with Monk and his 49 DKFP to the tune of 36 points, 4 boards, and 2 dimes in a night in which he dropped 9 treys on Miami in a winning effort. Mental game from the Monk, who some fools around the Internet say has no place in the Association... GTFOH. Jarret Allen, Josh Richardson, Hart, Melton, Portis, and Tyus were also great value plays.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Giannis Antetokounmpo! Gotta love it when everything works this well. Giannis was the most expensive player eligible yesterday, and all he could do was reaching 33 DKFP. Sucks. That was the lowest fantasy score among players tagged at $8.4K+ and only Dame approached Gianni’s mediocre ways with 36 FP himself. LaVine, AD, Booker, and Dipo were other horrid plays.
• There were 12 dub-dubs via points and rebounds (six fools fell just one rebound short of getting there, and Haliburton couldn’t score more than 5 points) and four between points and dimes (Trae, Tyus, Fox, and Garland).
• No triple-doubles yesterday, with CP3 getting so close to it that it was frustrating to watch him miss on it with a 34-9-9 line. Thad Young was on the low but got close to it too with a 13-8-8 low-maintenance line.
• More silly numbers: Jimmy Butler stole 4 possessions, and three players (Jarrett, Noel, Holmes) blocked 5+ shots with Holmes the only reaching 6.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 6 (Jan. 25th to Jan. 31th)

• For the first time this year we have a fantasy leader not named Luka... yet we’re still stuck in the Euro-beat as it is Giannis who’s at the top this time. The Greek played 3 games this past week and all he did was average 67.6 DKFP to the tune of a 32-15-7-1-1 line. Not bad, as he even logged a seemingly impossible-to-reach-in-Milwaukee 38 MPG and still put up a 1.78 DKFP/min mark. Only Dr. Dre was able to average more points per minute at 1.81 among those playing more than four minutes per game.
• Giannis’ 32 pops a game were good, but the leader on the scoring department was no other than Brad Beal. Beal keeps building his case for a trade although he won’t admit his desire, and he did so in his four games played through the last seven days putting up 35.8 PPG. Beal is shooting a freaking ton of shots (28.5 FGA), which is why he’s not even close to the highest-scoring efficiency (1.26 PTS/shot). Trae Young led the week there with 1.73 PTS/shot among players attempting 15+ FGA per game.
• One thing is not the same as the others in terms of MPG. As many as 11 players have been on three games this past week while averaging at least 37 MPG, but it was quite surprising to find Gary Trent Jr. tied-second in the leaderboard with a monster 38 MPG on the week. That didn’t quite work for his fantasy upside, though, as he averaged the fewer DKFP (31.9) per game among players with 35.5+ MPG last week...
• Silly cheap values: Kaminsky, Zeller, Maledon, Whiteside, Nader, Watanabe, Anfernee, Baynes, Bacon
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Reggie Jackson, Anthony Edwards, Lonzo, Trent Jr., Hield, Alexander-Walker, Kanter, Jeff Green, Haliburton
• Some very expensive players not doing enough to help their owners: Sabonis, Curry, Randle, Irving, Capela, Vucevic, Porzingis, Jerami
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played in the past seven days): Anfernee, Rivers, Maledon, Diallo, Ingles, Nader, Nowell, Pacon, Whiteside
• Cheap threes: Anfernee, Maledon, Ingles, Muscala, Forbes, Rivers, Monk, Korkmaz, Connaughton, Finney-Smith, Timothe, Watanabe
• Cheap boards: Zeller, Baynes, Howard, Birch, Tristan Thompson, Poeltl, Kaminsky, Iggy, Looney, Whiteside, Robert Williams
• Cheap dimes: Monte Morris, Ingles, Iggy, Kaminsky, Wanamaker, McLaughlin, Zeller, Looney, Alexander-Walker, Okoro, Lonnie
• Cheap steals: IThybulle, Alexander-Walker, Bacon, Stanley Johnson, Garrison Mathews, Campazzo, Rivers
• Cheap blocks: Alexander-Walker, Poeltl, Robert Williams, Pokusevski, Dwight, Birch, Bitadze
• Cheap FG% (min. 9 FGA): Rivers, Anfernee, Miles Bridges, Nowell, Nader

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

• Love: Nikola Vucevic (C). If you read the news above, or if you pay the minimum attention to the League, you know what’s popping in Orlando. Aaron Gordon will be out for the next month-plus and that means that Vucevic will eat all and then some. Niko is good by himself and was already logging a usage rate above 27% on the season, but that will only get higher going forward finishing over the 30-percent mark nightly. Expect Vucevic to rack up fantasy points just on sheer usage now that he’s going to be on the court for 36+ minutes every day and shooting 20+ FGA while pulling down boards like a mad man.
• Hate: Russell Westbrook (PG). Whether 40 DKFP are good or not for Russ’ value is up for you to really judge. Those would not entirely cut it for me from a ROI standpoint, considering the likes of Dame, Curry, and even Jaylen are part of this slate and could finish much higher than Russ. See, Russ said after beating Brooklyn that he’s finally back for good and fully healthy. Even if that’s the case, though, I’m not trusting this fool’s game as much as I did in years prior. Sure, he started the year in impressive fashion getting trip-dubs left and right, but the Wiz are mega-lost these days, have issues with the whole Beal drama, and I’m not really happy being around Russ. I’d let him and the Wiz settle a bit before touching them.
• Love: Jaylen Brown (SF). The Warriors are tonight’s foe, and that could mean a cut-in-half upside for the Celtics stars if things get too out of hand early. The good thing about Brown, though? He just lit up Cleveland a few days ago for 43 FP in a freaking 19 minutes of playing time scoring 33 pops on them while shooting the rock more than once per minute and hitting 65 percent of his 20 FGA. LOL. Brown has reached 40+ FP in all but one of his last five games (he finished with 38 against LAL last Saturday), is rested off that rivalry-game and comes with a nice 30-4-3-1 average baseline in the past couple of weeks (six games played). Not bad for such a discounted price.

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!