NBA DFS: John Wall and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Sunday, Feb. 28th

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: John Wall (PG). The Rockets are back on the schedule tonight facing Memphis. The Rockers are, also, going to endure a game without Victor Oladipo. Dipo is sitting due to a right quad injury, so you bet who will be the main possession-eater tonight for the Rocks. Johnny Wally, that’s correct. And that’s great because Wall’s usage has gone down to 30% in the past three games compared to a massive 37% in the prior three. Every time Wall gets opportunities he thrives, so odds are he puts on another show today. Wall will play heavy minutes and log many touches, and every time Johnny plays 34+ minutes and gets his healthy dose of ball he tends to reach his customary 35+ DKFP. For his price, that ROI is already good, but you know he has it in him to put on an even greater explosion if things go his way.
• Hate: Karl-Anthony Towns (C). It is hard to hate a big man from a team that basically has between none and half-a-man worth giving the rock to on a nightly basis on top of KAT, but here we are. Towns comes with a freaking $10K+ tag attached to his forehead today in a game against Phoenix. He hasn’t been bad, of course, and his usage has hit 33% in three of his last four games, which is always going to help him rack up counting stats. That being said, though, KAT has only one dub-dub in points and boards in the last three games and it is not that he will be dishing out 11 dimes a day as he did against Milwaukee. At his price, for Towns to return any viable ROI to his fantasy GMs he’ll need to reach around 50 DKFP, something he has done just three times since coming back (10 games played starting Feb. 10). Not buying into this.
• Love: Jonas Valanciunas (C). Back to that tasty-looking WAS-MEM matchup, if there is someone poised to rack up points that must be Memphis’ biggie JoVa. See, the Rockets big man these days are the likes of... Justin Patton? PJ Tucker? Danuel House? LOL. Valanciunas is bigger and better than any of those fools in the paint. He just has to stand on his two feet right there in the zone and drop the orange through the rim. Easy job. Valanciunas has put up dub-dubs in all of his last six games, is averaging a 16-12-2 in the last couple of weeks, and his ROI is always nice with some 35 FP and upside for more (he’s reached 38+ in three of the last six).
• Hate: Draymond Green (PF/C). I love Dray cause he’s the weirdest of basketball weirdos. Just look at his line a couple of nights ago: 11-12-19-1-1 shooting 63% on 8 FGA, with 5 TOs. I mean, what the hell is that aberration? Dray is known for his triple-single lines with upside for dimes. Yes, dimes that is. Not boards, not points, not steals. Dimes. Green comes off dropping the franchise-high assist-tally with those 19 against Charlotte, and tonight’s game against the Lake Show is definitely going to have him pumped up. But I just can’t believe he will hit the FP leaderboard on such a high note once more. I mean, what are the odds? Sure, he’s been great three games in a row with 42, 43, and 51 FP, but man, I just find it really hard to believe he’ll be able to keep it up for long. He’s still cheap at $7.5K, but the price has gone quite up and anything below 35-to-40 FP would yield an average-ish ROI.
• Love: De’Aaron Fox (PG). From what the projections are saying, Foxxy is coming at a steep discount tonight. Fox is expected to hit 47+ FP on the day against Charlotte, which is nothing crazy to think about. Fox has been ramping up his game of late, reaching 45 DKFP on back-to-back nights against New York and Detroit on Thursday on Friday. He was on a bit of a slide prior to that with three of five games falling below 35 DKFP, but he’s getting it right again and clearing any potential doubts dropped on his name. This mate has scored 27+ in all last three games, has three dub-dubs in his last six, and he’s hit 2.4 3PG on average in his last five going back a week. Sweet play of the day.

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!