NBA DFS: Collin Sexton and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Feb. 23rd

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: Collin Sexton (SG). Sex has been exactly what we expected him to be: a scoring bucket-getter without much more upside in the remaining cats more often than not. It’s been a while since the Cavs faced Atlanta (Jan. 2) but the truth is that Sexton had one of his top-5 performances of the season against the Hawks back then reaching 41 FP on the day to the tune of a 27-2-3-3 line shooting 56% on 18 FGA and hitting a couple of treys while not turning the ball over at all, which he has done just twice this season. Sexton has played 35+ minutes in all of Cleveland’s last five games, has not scored fewer than 23 points in any of those matches, and is also averaging 3 boards, 4 dimes, and a steal in that span. The turnovers have gone up in the last two, and the price has gone down, but the Hawks are a cupcake of a matchup (dead-last in fantasy defense) so it makes sense to exploit this play.
• Hate: Kristaps Porzingis (PF/C). Porzingis missed yesterday’s game due to some back issues that left him out of the rotation. That means Dallas is on a back-to-back, and though Porzingis comes in rested—with injury concerns, though—the Mavs are facing the Celtics tonight. Boston is not exactly murdering people out there, but they’re still tough with the fourth-best fantasy defense through Monday and KP, well, has sucked a bit. Porz is averaging just 38 FP this season in his 17 games played, his line is at a low 20-8-1, and he’s basically making it through seer scoring more than anything else. In the last five games he’s played, Kristaps has been as bouncy as you can imagine: 36, 63, 22, 51, and 32 have been his DKFP of late, which can’t get more random. He can give you 30 points, or he can go down to 15. He can grab 10 boards, or fall to 5. I just don’t trust him tonight, with the back issues, on a back-to-back game for true-OG Luka, and against the Celts. Spend your budget on more solid plays.
• Love: Kyrie Irving (PG). For someone who could very easily hit 45+ FP today, an $8.8K price tag sounds very ridiculous, if you ask me. Irving and Harden have swapped roles, with the former taking more on SG duties and the latter handling the rock more and creating for the rest of the Nets. Not that the move has affected Kyrie that much, though. Most importantly, Brooklyn is playing Sacramento tonight, the same as they did last week when Irving dropped 40 pops on the Kings... in just 31 minutes of playing time! We can’t expect Kyrie to hit 9 treys again, obviously, but the 40-4-3- line shooting 68 percent from the floor is not that crazy when you consider the season-long averages Irving has put together: 28-5-6-1 shooting 53%. The upside here is massive with KD still out and the Kings on a horrid seven-game losing streak.
• Hate: Tobias Harris (PF). This came down to Tobi and Jerami (fade him too), but I ultimately picked the former because he’s almost $1K more expensive than the latter. Tobi has been great this season, don’t get me wrong, and I’m more of a stan of his than a hater. That being said, Tobi has gone down of late basically because JoJo and Ben are back available and playing next to each other while sharing the court with Harris. That is always going to eat into Tobi’s production and usage (the rate has gone from 28% four games ago to just 20% on Sunday). The FP have gone from 58 to 47 to just 33 last time out. Harris comes with dub-dub upside, but if he doesn’t hit he will kill your budget and your chances at a winning lineup, and it is not that crazy to think he can miss on the feat. Prior to February Tobi had just two dub-dubs in 18 games played, and was averaging a more real 36 FP per game compared to 42 in February and 49 in the last four matches, which will be more than impossible for him to sustain.
• Love: Clint Capela (C). Another cheap-but-great play from the Cavs-Hawks game. Captain Cap has been amazing in Atlanta this season. The cameras will always put Trae in the spotlight, obviously, but Clint has capitalized on playing next to Young as much as one can. Cap’s putting up numbers this season with a 15-14 average line to go with 2+ blocks while shooting 60 percent from the floor, basically because he doesn’t know the meaning of “three-point range”. The Cavs have a big stud in Jarrett Allen manning their paint, but Capela is matchup-proof these days. It’s been six games in a row for Clint dropping dub-dubs, he’s averaged 20-13 lines in that span in just 29 MPG, and his percentage has sky-rocketed to a ridiculous 74% in those six matches. No turnovers, no foul trouble, a bunch of blocks, and the eventual dime/steal makes Capela the ultimate sneaky man to love.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 9 (Feb. 15 to Feb. 21)

• One week ago we crowned Giannis as the best player of the past seven days with an average of 64 DKFP. That’s peanuts compared to this week’s cream of the crop, with as many as four players finishing with higher averages: the very own Giannis, Harden, Dame, and the leader Joel Embiid (70 FP on three games played).
• JoJo did it in three of four possible max. games played, sure, but even then his line of 35-15-5-1-2 was absolutely bonkers. That being said, Embiid was the more bouncy of the top-4 players with a deviation of almost 20 FP between his three fantasy scores this week with none of the other three even reaching 10 FP of deviation. Embiid also led the FP/min leaderboard with a stupid 1.91 mark; Giannis and Dame finished second and third with 1.83 and 1.81 respectively.
• James Harden was probably the best player all things considered. Four games, an average of 65 DKFP, a variation of just 8 FP (his FP were 72, 68, 54, and 67), and an average 32-9-11-1 near-trip-dub line was all he did. Nothing mindblowing, amirite?
• Jamal Murray finally got it right by getting into the top-3 in PPG with 35 pops a day, joining Dame (36.3) and JoJo (35.3).
• Russell Westbrook was the lone player to average a trip-dub this past week. He closed the seven-day span with an 18-12-13 line, while Jimmy Butler fell 0.2 dimes short of pulling off the feat himself. Jimmer’s line: 20-10-10. Kudos to the man anyways.
• Silly cheap values: Derrick Jones, Campazzo, Cam Payne, Bazemore, Robin Lopez, Jordan McLaughlin, Robert Williams, Wanamaker, Okoro
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Cedi Osman, Bagley, Covington, Bertans, Whiteside, Ross, Oubre, Crowder
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Ingram, Booker, Fox, Jaylen Brown, Middleton, Valanciunas
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played in the past seven days): Duncan Robinson, Campazzo, Tristan Thompson, Muscala, Derrick Jones, Temple, Zubac, Paschall, Bjelica, Cam Payne, Connaughton
• Cheap threes: Duncan Robinson, Cam Payne, Danny Green, Anfernee Simons, Tyler Johnson, Campazzo, Forbes
• Cheap boards: Willy Hernangomez, Zubac, Tristan, DWight, Robert Williams, Derrick Jones, Roby, Isaiah Stewart, Robin Lopez
• Cheap dimes: McLaughlin, Cam Payne, Augustin, Toscano-Anderson, Satoransky, Kira Lewis, Campazzo, Caruso, Ellington, Wanamaker
• Cheap steals: Bruce Brown, Okoro, Thybulle, Robert Williams, Dennis Smith Jr., Campazzo, Bazemore
• Cheap blocks: Robert Williams, Temple, Jaden McDaniels, Derrick Jones, Marc Gason, Birch
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): Temple, Muscala, Derrick Jones, Naz Reid, Willy Hernangomez, Duncan Robinson, Forbes, Shamet, KCP, Maxey

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!