NBA DFS: Trae Young and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Wednesday, May 12th

Welcome to your daily NBA DFS digest at Fake Teams, 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: Trae Young (PG). All of a sudden, the Hawks are in the middle of a three-team tie for the 4th seed in the East. Miami and New York are far from bad teams, that’s for sure, and it’ll be tough to edge them in the remaining three games, but it’s up to Atlanta to get there. Enter Trae. Young projects to a freakish 50 FP tonight while having a high but not incredibly expensive tag attached to his forehead. Oh, and the Wiz are at the other end, so expect fireworks. Just in case you don’t know about it, Trae and the Hawks faced the Wiz a couple of days ago and even though Youn missed on dub-dubbing by one dime, he still reached 55 DKFP on the night with a 36-6-9 line hitting 11-of-22 FGA and only one trey. I’m all into thinking he will raise the bar tonight because that was some low-level outing for Trae knowing what he can do.
• Hate: Anthony Davis (PF). Has the brow grown and is it blinding AD these days so he can’t properly see the court? No, that’s a joke, and AD’s last couple of games prior to yesterday stinker were great with Davis hitting 61 and 77 DKFP. But yesterday, man, that was a dud left and right. Only 34 FP in a freaking 43 minutes, including OT, against the Knicks and not committing more than 2 PF... Sucked to watch. The Lakers are just going to be part of the inaugural play-in tournament, and they better accept it sooner rather than later. Guaranteed win tonight against a putrid Rockets squad, which tells me AD and the rest of the Lakers’ honchos might hit the pine for long stretches. Not trusting Anthony for this one, much less at his stupidly high price of $10.4K against a team that will just pose no problems limiting AD’s upside and minutes saving efforts for that match against GSW next week.
• Love: Clint Capela (C). I have to just stay with the Hawks, man. Cap buried 22 boards and dropped 10 pops against the Wiz for 48 DKFP on Monday, and this matchup is just too good to fade anyone involved in it. Capela had been a little bit down of late, sure, but this surely is a get-right game for him and the whole Atlanta Crew. And even if he gets back to his bad habits of scoring just 35 FP, it has to be said that you can count on a dub-dub baseline to go with some good ROI given his middle-of-the-pack price. Anyway, the projection reads 43 FP on the day, and that’s nothing bonkers to see him reach.
• Hate: Lonzo Ball (PG). Zo has been an absolute disaster since Ingram and Zion waved goodbye to him a few days ago. Three games in a row falling below the 35-FP mark stink, but Zo has actually been even worst than that, with five such games in the last seven he’s played going back to Apr. 29. Zo’s scoring is sitting in the 14 PPG and only some tasty three-point performances are saving him. The rest of the stats are way down be it boards, dimes, and steals, not to mention the putrid shooting percentages of late. The price is not sky-high, but at $7.7K for tonight’s game against Dallas there are higher projections available for fewer bucks in Jordan Clarkson, BogBog, Nurkic, Dejounte, and...
• Love: Bojan Bogdanovic (SF/PF). Sneaky play of the day just hours after Utah shut down Donovan Mitchell for the remainder of the regular season and opened the door for secondary players to keep doing it on a nightly basis. Feel free to go with Joe Ingles and/or Jordan Clarkson if you’re comfy on those sits. BojBog carries the highest projection on my books tonight, though. Boj is starting every single game, playing 33+ minutes more often than not, and averaging 40+ DKFP this month. He’s hit 42+ in two of his past three while posting his season-high against Denver just last Friday with a tasty 66-FP performance going for a stupid 48-8-2-2 line that included 8 (!!!) treys. Gotta play the Boj.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 20 (May. 3 to May. 9)

• Is there any point in updating this section every Monday anymore? A month a half, brothers and sisters. A month and a half of weeks—six, that is—with Russ leading all fantasy players in DK daily slates. It’s just insane. Russell Westbrook closed last week averaging a ridiculously high 78 FPG, which is 15 more fantasy points than the second-best player of the week. Say what!? 22-17-18-1 line on the week through 4 GP and 42 MPG. Bananas.
• Domantas Sabonis put up 63 DKFP while Steph Curry wrapped it up at 60 FP, the only two other players reaching that mark. Too bad for them, none hit the trip-dub average on the week as Dom fell 0.2 APG short of it. Cold world.
• Obviously, nobody was going to beat Russ on a per-minute basis even though he logged the highest MPG mark of the week. That’s what happens when you average a freaking 78 FPG... Russ led all players with a 1.88 FP/min with Curry second at 1.78 and Embiid third down with 1.71.
• Only Russ put up a week-long trip-dub. What a surprise. Sabonis Jr. finished close with a 27-13-9 line, followed by Draymond’s 9-9-11. No other player came even remotely close to pulling the feat off.
• Silly cheap values: Kenyon Martin Jr., Diallo, Dwight Powell, Gallinari, Hayes, Brooks, Vanderbilt, Bane, DaQuan Jeffries, Rivers, Mykhailiuk, Campazzo, Kenrich Williams, Hampton, Seth Curry, DiVincenzo, Moe Harkless
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Delon Wright, Kelly Olynyk, Fournier, Mo Bamba, Bledsoe, Hardaway Jr., Hachimura, VanVleet, Tate
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Luka, KAT, AD, Tatum, Randle, LaVine, Paul George, Adebayo, Gobert, Booker, Kawhi, Middleton, Capela, DeRozan, Ingram, KPJr., Dejounte Murray
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played): Brooks, Okoro, Seth, Niang, Rivers, Ariza, Bane, Caruso, Hayes, Payne, Lamb, Forbes, Bertans, Svi, Poole, KCP, Moe, Mulder
• Cheap threes: Brooks, Niang, Mulder, Seth, Rivers, Forbes, Danny Green, Bertans, Lamb, Bane, McLemore
• Cheap boards: Howard, Kanter, Dwight Powell, Clarke, Vanderbilt, Biyombo, Looney, Hayes, Reid, Zeller, Gillespie, Connaughton, Gibson, Cauley-Stein
• Cheap dimes: Rondo, Satoransky, Caruso, Saben Lee, Seth, Dwight Powell, Wanamaker, Aaron Holiday, Maxey, Brooks, Rivers, Monk
• Cheap steals: Vanderbilt, Thybulle, Danny Green, Rivers, Brooks, DaQuan Jeffries, Svi, Bembry, Thornwell, Ariza, CarusoDeck, Moe, Patrick Williams
• Cheap blocks: Hayes, Taj, Dwight Powell, Bitadze, Thybulle, Damian Jones, Gafford, Biyombo, Justin Holiday, Rudy Gay, Robin Lopez, Vanderbilt, Cauley-Stein
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): Hayes, Forbes, Seth, Reid, McDermott, Nian, DaQuan, Moe, Rivers, Brooks, Aaron Holiday

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!