NBA DFS: Chris Paul and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Friday, June 11th

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: Chris Paul (PG). The disrespect. CP3 salary of $7.1K is just ridiculous considering what this man is doing with and for the Suns this postseason. Paul projects to 40 DKFP today, the fifth-highest mark among all eligible players yet he’s carrying the eighth-highest salary with it barely reaching $7K. That’s insane. Why, you say? Well, it’s been two games in a row against the no-backcourt Nugs hitting 49 FP. That’s correct. The lines finished at 21-6-11-1 and 17-5-15 with a block. Paul has shot 58% from the floor on a combined 24 FGA in those two matches, has Phoenix leading 2-0, has gone 6-for-6 from the line, and his 26 dimes compare to a paltry 1 TO in the 67 minutes he’s played in the second round so far. Seriously, we should all be rooting for Chris to make it to the Finals once for all. He more than deserves it and he’s proving to be a monster of a player when no one counted on him no more than six months ago.
• Hate: Clint Capela (C). Have we found Captain Cap’s kryptonite in Philly? It is not that Capela was unstoppable against the Knicks in the first round, but he grabbed at least 12 boards in all of the five games he played back then, compared to just 10 and 8 in the two against the Sixers. The points are always in the 10-to-14 clip, which is nothing overwhelming and forces him to rack up numbers on the boards to become a somewhat playable guy. Back-to-back games getting into foul trouble had Cap playing only 32 and 28 minutes to kick the series off, and it doesn’t look like he will be a critical factor through the remainder of the second round unless Atlanta entirely flips its playbook.
• Love: Ben Simmons (PG/SF). While Simmons put up a sound dud against Atlanta in G2, he had thrived this postseason prior to that. Benny was averaging a stupid 46 FPPG in his first six games against Washington and Atlanta before finishing with only 23 on Tuesday. Night to forget, sure, but he just shot 3 FGA, two freebies (both missed), and logged a ridiculously low 7.7% usage rate. The only thing missing was the points, but it’s not that Simmons had many chances to put them on the scoreboard. Other than that, the line read 4-3-7-2-1, which is pretty nice, and had he scored his usual 15 pops he’d have reached a tastier 35 FP—nothing mind-blowing, but palatable. Simmons had not dropped from 35 DKFP prior to that stinker, and odds are he gets back to his average form tonight traveling to A-Town. Steep discount for 38 projected fantasy points.
• Hate: Tobias Harris (SF). Harris has been steadily good through the postseason. He has played seven games, and never has he fallen below the 34 FP in any of them. That’s great. But the salary is making me dubious about how valuable he is now and going forward. The Hawks “limited” him to 43 and then 38 fantasy points in the last match, and he might drop down his production levels a bit as the postseason grows older, which would be reasonable. I say that mostly because prior to the playoffs Tobi was more of a 30-FPPG player more than a 40+ one, which screams regression. For their respective salaries, and given my projections, I’d rather go ahead and put Simmons in my lineup for tonight’s slate instead of Harris.
• Love: Bogdan Bogdanovic (PG/SG). Don’t get this play wrong, because Bog Bog has limited upside. That being said, he but could very well win you the day. Sneakiest play of them all as things are, with Bogdanovic hitting at least 28 FP in all playoff games starting all of them. The usage is average, but he’s shooting 11+ FGA every time out and averaging almost 15 FGA per game. The points are almost always above 15, the treys come in bunches, and the only thing a bit shaky is the rebounds and dimes, though they are coming in steadily at around 6 and 4. The steals are superb, with at least one theft in five consecutive games. For someone tagged at just $6.4K the floor is high enough and the upside is there as to return some nice value.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from the Regular Season

• Nikola Jokic is about to become the reigning MVP... in the NBA, but not in the fantasy world! Russell Westbrook, who has been on a tear for the last month-and-change, is the one on that front, folks. Westbrook closed the season averaging 58.2 FP per game, good enough to edge Nikola Jokic by a measly 0.6 FPPG!
• On a pure counting basis, though, Jokic gets the edge as he played seven more games than Russ. The final tally is Jokic 3,914 FP, Russ 3,548 FP. No other player crossed the 3,400-FP mark on the year.
• The most efficient player of the season was Giannis Antetokounmpo, who posted 1.72 FP/min in 57 games averaging 33.5 MPG. Both biggies Jokic and Joel Embiid rounded up the top-3 with similar scores of 1.62 FP/min.
• It is reasonable to expect centers to top the Points Per Shot leaderboard as they operate in the paint most of the time. The top-3 players were Rudy Gobert (1.84 Pts/Shot), Jarrett Allen (1.78), and Dwight Howard (1.76). But there is a clear outlier among the top scorers: Kevin Durant with 1.70 Points Per Shot. That’s absolutely bonkers for a non-center player. If we don’t count Zion as a wing (he’s a biggie to me given his shooting profile), then Durant is the only qualified non-center in the top-20, with Jimmy Butler at no. 21 but already down at 1.51 Pts/Shot.
• As stupid as it sounds even if nobody wants to acknowledge the feat anymore: Russ has just wrapped up his fourth season averaging a triple-double. What the hell, dude? Russ closed it on a 22-11-11 average line. Bonkers.
• Silly cheap values (min. 30 games played): Kenyon Martin Jr., Ty Jerome, JaVale, Stewart, Brunson, Melton, Hart, Rudy Gay, Portis, Nunn, Robert Williams, Reiz, Cody Zeller, Whiteside, Diallo
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Olynyk, Garland, Thad Young, Plumlee, McConnell, Dray, Harrison Barnes, Derrick White, Lonzo, Holmes, Rose, Anunoby, Nurkic, Ant Edwards, Haliburton, Bobby Portis, Kemba
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Anthony Davis, Simmons, Booker, Ingram, Porzingis, Drummond, John Collins, Nance, Aaron Gordon, Kuzma, Harrell
• Cheap points: McDermott, Monk, Quickley, Lonnie, Bacon, Reid, Poole, Bullock, Mills, Jerome, Grayson Allen, NAW, Monte Morris, Lamb, Forbes, Gary Harris
• Cheap threes: Danny Green, Ellington, Bullock, Mills, Forbes, Monk, Jerome, Grayson, Shamet, Cam Johnson
• Cheap boards: Willy Hernangomez, Stewart, Noel, Mo Bamba, Whiteside, Tony Bradley, Birch, Vanderbilt, Favors, Taj Gibson, Biyombo, Kleber, Bruce Brown, Kenyon, Baynes, McGee
• Cheap dimes: Satoransky, Rondo, McLaughlin, Ish Smith, Tyus, Jerome, Saben Lee, Campazzo, Cam Payne, Cory Joseph, DJ Augustin, Monte Morris
• Cheap steals: Thybulle, Danny Green, Campazzo, Neto, Caruso, Melton, Okeke, Noel, McLaughlin, Bazemore, Vanderbilt, Nwaba, NAW, Okoro, Cory Joseph, Iggy
• Cheap blocks: Noel, Gafford, Mo Bamba, Bitadze, Stewart, Whiteside, Biyombo, McGee, Gasol, Thybulle, Taj Gibson, Reiz, Favors, Len, Pokusevski, Derrick Jones, Eubanks
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): McDermott, Reid, Monte Morris, Bullock, Jerome, NAW, Cam Johnson, Jaylen Nowell

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!