NBA DFS: LaMelo Ball and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Sunday, Feb. 7th

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

• Tom Thibs doesn’t know how to stop. Just a few weeks ago he brought old pal Taj Gibson to New York, and now the Knicks are just mere hours away from completing a trade for Derrick Rose. Shout-out to the Knicks for keeping killing Immanuel Quickley's promising season. LOL
• Buddy Hield couldn’t hit a triple yesterday, closing his streak at 87 games. It’s now Curry’s 84-game run the one leading the way, and given who he is and how the Warriors sucks, who knows how further down the line can this man extend that ride...
• Durant was forced out of the Nets game a couple of days ago due to health and safety protocols, but all Brooklyn’s members seem to have tested negative—including KD—and they all should be back and available to play next Friday (KD missed yesterday’s affair with Philly).
• Great news for the Pacers and the NBA and the world we live in as a whole: Caris LeVert joined the team yesterday, and HC Nate Bjorkgren said that he has been watching practices and holding the ball lately. No active practicing for CLV yet, but he’s getting closer after the health scare he suffered after the trade. Great to hear.
• Everybody is bashing the NBA for their money-grab approach to the All-Star Weekend in these pandemic times. Not Obi Toppin, though, who is aiming to make it to the Slam Dunk Contest. Rooks...

Duds and Studs: Yesterday’s slate roundup

• From Niko to Niko, back-to-back domination from Eastern Euros in the NBA. Vuc was sublime last Friday, and it was Jokic turn yesterday with a freaking 88+ DKFP performance against the Kings in which Jok played 42 minutes and all he did was score himself a 50-burger. Say whaaaaa!? Jokic paired those points (3 treys) with 8 boards, 12 dimes, a steal, and 3 swats on a night that saw him shot 33 (!!!) FGA and hit 60.6 percent of them all, and go 7-for-7 from the free-throw line. Insane in the brain. This game is the highest-DKFP one of the year so far surpassing Luka’s 87+ effort on Jan. 17.
• As impossible as it should be, Curry and Doncic joined Jokic in the 70+ tier. Curry dropped 57 points on Dallas, and Doncic responded with 42 himself. Curry hit 11 treys, Doncic 7. Curry added a 2-5-2 rest-of-line, Doncic a 7-11-1. Quite a game for everybody to enjoy. Curry finished with 75 DKFP to Luka’s 70.
• LeBron James was the only player to finish in the 60-to-70 clip with his 63 FP in a 2OT game against... Detroit (?). LBJ put up a 33-11 dub-dub on dimes with 5 boards and 4 steals, although he also committed 7 turnovers.
• As many as 12 players in the 50-to-60 clip, including Ingram (17-12 with 4 blocks), FVV (25-10), Trae (28-13), Harden (26-10), Capela (23-16 with 4 swats), and Tobias (21-12).
• The ROI King award went to... Chris Boucher! Great game off the bench for one of this season’s 6MOY candidates. Bouch put up a 29-10 dub-dub with a dime and two blocks to spare while shooting 76.9 percent on 13 FGA and committing just one turnover on a reasonably high 24.4% usage rate for 49 DKFP at the price of just $4.4K. Whiteside, Payton, Draymond, and Josh Jackson made for more neat and valuable plays.
• And the DOTS (Dud of the Slate) Award went to... Nikola Vucevic! Only one Niko can thrive at once, folks. While Jokic was cooking, Vucevic was stinking hard. Just 24 minutes on a night in which Vuc could only reach 33 DKFP and finish 17-8-1-1-2 for the Magic. Fox was really close to such levels of mediocre play, same as Oladipo, Lowry, and Porzingis.
• There were 15 dub-dubs via points and rebounds (four guys didn’t reach 10 points, three more missed by a single board) and seven between points and assists (stupid Draymond finished with 2 points, and four more guys missed by one dime).
• No triple-doubles yesterday, with Draymond Green dropping the ultimate-shame line with a 2-6-15-6-4 performance that I don’t even know where to start discussing. So let’s leave it there. In actual closeness, Ben Simmon’s 16-12-8-3 effort was the real closest to the feat, but no luck.
• More silly numbers: Draymond’s 6 steals led the slate, while he was tied for the most blocks at 4 (Ingram, Whiteside, Capela, Kanter).

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: LaMelo Ball (PG). In case you needed more proof, LaMelo has finally finally arrived, folks. Three games in February, three games this week, three starts. Two at the point, the other one at the SF position along with both Graham and Rozier. This kid’s insane. Oh, and it’s not that flying around the court has impacted him too much, in fact, it’s done wonders for him. Ball has gone from 30 to 37 to 59 DKFP as a starter, his lines moved from 14-5-7 to 22-7-3-2 to a stuffed 34-3-8-2-1. Seriously, cancel the ROY voting and just hand the award to the youngest of the Big Baller Bros. Can’t wait to watch LaMelo’s career mixtape when all is said and done.
• Hate: Buddy Hield (SG/SF). My Buddy hit a very serious wall yesterday, hit no triples, and bombed his 87-game streak of scoring at least one long-ranger. Ugh. The truth is, though, Hield has been sucked for a while now. Going back to Jan. 27, that was the last time we saw Hield hit more than 35 DKFP. The points have kept coming because that’s all Hield knows how to do on a basketball court, but the rest of the cats are hella down. Even his shooting has been ground-level this month with a 21.8 FG% on 43 total shots... This guy is playing 36+ MPG these days, getting usage rates above 20%, yet he’s playing way below average on a per-minute and per-game basis, killing all of his potential ROI.

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!