NBA DFS: Pascal Siakam and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Saturday, Feb. 6th

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

• Kevin Durant is the latest victim of the league’s health and safety protocol. What started with KD missing the start of yesterday’s game ended with KD playing 19 minutes before getting canned from the match entirely.
• Christian Wood suffered an injury a couple of days ago and is now week-to-week. The Rockets are supposedly worried about Wood’s potential long-term health issues and fearing he might be made of glass. Cold World.
• No timetable for Karl-Anthony Towns return. Ugh.
• Matthew Dellavedova dismissed any sort of retirement talk, while Kyle Korver did the opposite by stating he gotta honor the game and just play for the sake of it.
• The Cavs are not interested in buying Andre Drummond out this season. Sorry, Nets.
• Thaddeus Young is getting interested from around the Association and could find his name in trade rumors heavily as we approach the deadline, which makes sense considering he’s been reborn in Chicago this season as a playmaker.

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s slate roundup

• Ridiculous game by Niko—not Jokic—Vucevic yesterday in a slate in which he was the only player to break for more than 65 FP and reached 77 DKFP. The line was monstrous with 43 points (including 4 treys), 19 boards, and 4 dimes with a block to spare. Orlando is going nowhere, is missing bodies, and all it has in its lineup is pretty much Niko and rookie Cole Anthony with Fournier potentially on the trade market. Play Niko in fantasy contests daily, folks.
• Usual suspects in the 60+ range, with Siakam reaching 65 DKFP to the tune of a 33-11-6-3-1 performance, and Giannis scoring the same points for 64 DKFP (33-12-4-1-4 all-across-the-board contrib).
• Five players in the 50-to-60 FP clip, including a mighty LaMelo Ball who put up his best game as a pro so far: 34 points, 4 rebounds, 8 assists, 2 steals, and a block for 59 DKFP. Ball shot the rock 27 times (!), hit 51.9 percent of those attempts, scored 4 treys, and missed just one of his three FTA. No turnovers on the night for Ball either on 29.1% usage rate as a starter (at the SF spot, no less) for the third game in a row.
• The other ones: Al Horford, Tatum, Kawhi, and BojBog.
• The ROI King award went to... Al Horford! Good old Al heard the rumors about a potential buyout-and-signing with his former Celts, and he put on some work yesterday. Horford finished with a packed 26-7-8-2-3 line for the barren Thunder (only the minimum 8 players were available for OKC) and reached 57 DKFP on a night where he was tagged at just $6.1K. Alex Len, Isaiah Roby, and Isaiah Stewart were other lower-scoring, cheaper values.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Bradley Beal! Stinker of a game this one from Brad. Beal finished with a putrid 7-3-3-3 line shooting 7.1% from the floor (yes) on 14 FGA and wasting 25% of Washington’s offensive possesions. The DKFP mark sat at a horrid 21... Durant gets a soft pass as he was forced out, but Irving, Westbrook, Sabonis, Brogdon, and Middleton all turned out to be fatal plays.
• There were 10 dub-dubs via points and rebounds (Ayton missed by two points, Iggy by 4, and four more fools by a single board) and three between points and assists (stupid McConnell fell one point short... and Butler, CP3, and Cole Anthony by a single dime).
• No triple-doubles yesterday, with Jimmy Butler getting way closer thanks to a stuffed 14-8-9-3-1 line. That’s a shame. No other player came even remotely close, tho.
• More silly numbers: Delon Wright and Tatum led the steals leaderboard with 4 thefts each, while Alex Len was the only player to swat 5 shots.

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: Pascal Siakam (PF/C). Siakam has not played any back-to-back this season, and Toronto comes off a game against a stout Nets squad yesterday in which Pascal logged one of his season-high marks in minutes with 39. That’s cool and all, but don’t read too much into it. Siakam demolished Brooklyn all by himself, scored 33 pops, grabbed 11 boards, dished out 6 dimes, and added 3 steals and a block to that line for a total 65 DKFP. His season-high fantasy tally, that is. Siakam is expected to play today against the Hawks, and even if he coasts through the game odds are he excels for the second night in a row. It’s been five games straight for Siakam hitting 30+ DKFP, and three of four finished with him at-or-above 40 FP.
• Hate: Jerami Grant (SF/PF). The Pistons face the Lakers tonight, and if you know anything about the Lakers is that they feature both AD and LBJ at the forward positions. No joke, folks. Grant is averaging 40 FP on the year, but you should ultra-drop his ceiling tonight with a matchup against the team giving up the fewer fantasy points to opponents and two studs on top of that. And just in case you need more reasons to fade Grant, you only have to peek at his numbers in the past four games going back, precisely, to his Jan. 28 match against this very same LA team: the average line in that span reads 20-2-3, the average FP 30, and only a 44-DKFP performance against Utah saves him from the other three 27-or-fewer-FP games...

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!