NBA DFS: Dejounte Murray and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Friday, Mar. 19th

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: Dejounte Murray (PG/SG). Murray is the guy that leaves no questions open on when you have to put him in your lineup. He is great against middling teams, bad against top-tier squads. In the second half of February and leading up to the AS break, Dejounte burned the league with an average of 43 PF per game and never dropping below 34 fantasy points. Those games came against ATL, CHA, OKC, NO, BKN, NYK, and OKC. With the exception of Brooklyn, all of the other teams aren’t what you’d call championship contenders. On the other hand, Murray had a few duds after the break against Dallas and Philly, which is understandable. The Cavs are on the schedule today, and the Cavs have the second-worst fantasy defense in the L. I’m truly betting on Dejo getting back to dropping 20 pops on them, something he’s not done since Feb. 24 but that could very well happen today.
• Hate: Christian Wood (C). You can’t expect a booming game from a guy that has been out for more than a month, yet most people do a couple of days ago when Wood finally made his comeback for Houston. The outcome: 21-9-2 line with a block. Good, not great. The problem is Wood is keeping his price intact for today’s match against Detroit, and while the Pistons are not a nightmare of a team, they still have a middle-of-the-pack fantasy D. Wood had a couple of middling games before getting injured, and in his first one after the break, he only reached 36 points. The per-minute production was fantastic, but I am not paying $8.5K for someone who will be on the bench for 22+ minutes and see his upside cut in half if only because of the short run. Let the kid marinate for a minute.
• Love: Jerami Grant (SF/PF). Jerami went on a bonkers run to start the year and well into February. He was dropping buckets with gusto for a putrid Pistons squad, but that stopped happening to an extent from the middle of February on. Even then, Grant has stayed relevant, is the only playable guy from Detroit’s squad, and he returns good ROI given his low price these days. Grant goes against a depleted Rockets team today, and it’s not that he’s been that bad of late. Five of his last six games went for 21+ points, and with the exception of a 27-minute stinker against San Antonio, he’s been returning positive value to his truthers nightly. Jerami is way above average in efficiency and per-minute production, yielding almost 1.10 FP/min in the last eight games going back to Feb. 21.
• Hate: Kyle Lowry (PG). Okay, let me explain this whole situation. Lowry is coming in at $8.4 tonight. Fred VanVleet is available for a laughable $7.8K. None of these two are in the injury report. Kyle is in trade rumors, FVV is not—you know how brains might or might not properly function when put in such situations. Kyle has had a nice post-AS streak of hitting 40+ FP in four consecutive games, though he need an outlier 15-dime performance to get there against Detroit two days ago. FVV came back in that game, and although he wasn’t bombastic he still put up a 12-1-4-3 line shooting 15% from the floor, which is just not going to repeat itself on back-to-back games. Prior to getting off the squad in March, FVV was averaging 45 FP to close February. These two sound good, but for the discount and upside, I’d fade Kyle and go with Vleet.
• Love: Draymond Green (PF/C). Be careful with this one. Sure, I love it as the sneaky, potential snake-winning-for-peanuts play of the day, but you gotta know what you’re getting into. Dray’s last four games after the break have gone for 24, 56, 22, and 51 FP. That’s wild as hell. The cool thing is that Green will cost you nothing to fill that last open spot in your lineup after you pay top-dollar for the true honchos of the slate. Green has that trip-dub, even quad-dub upside that we all crave. He might not be doing it nightly, but the potential is definitely there. Forget about monster scoring nights, or watching him pull down 20 boards, but that 10-10-10 borderline-trifecta is definitely at reach. Memphis isn’t the strongest of Ds, Wiseman and Paschall are out, and Curry/Oubre might make it to the court. If that is the case, then Green’s upside sky-rockets.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 11-12 (Mar. 1 to Mar. 14)

• Man, was that a long-ass break or what? I’m cooking the weekly recap through the past couple of weeks, but that doesn’t mean the span contained a ton of games due to the AS weekend taking place in the middle of it.
• The last time we checked, if you remember, it was Giannis with 65 FP who led all NBA players on that leaderboard. Well, turns out we have a new leader in James Harden, who put up a ridiculous 67 DKFP on average among players with 4+ games played in the past two weeks. Hard to see Harden getting MVP-love, but this fool has been absolutely insane since moving northeast to Brooklyn.
• As impossible as it sounds, Nikola Jokic also managed to cross the 60-DKFP barrier even though he played 5 games. Jokic closed the last couple of weeks averaging 62 FP himself, an absolutely crazy mark.
• Harden’s dominance also popped in his line through the four games he played: 26-11-12-2-1 was his average performance in those while logging some 41 MPG. Say what!? A ton of players finished that two-week span dub-dubbing, but none other than James trip-dubbed. Jokic was close at 30-12-9, same as Giannis with a 27-10-8 and Sabonis with his 17-10-8.
• The ridiculous MPG number of Harden (40.8) killed his per-minute fantasy production. Giannis kept that no. 1 spot with 1.71 FP/min in 34.3 MPG throughout the span, followed by Jokic, Harden, Westbrook, and Butler.
• Jimmy Butler was the most stable among top-tier performers with a deviation of just 6 DKFP in his 4 games played while averaging 57 FP. His scores read 51, 62, 52, and 62. Not bad.
• Silly cheap values: Kira Lewis, Rodney McGruder, Cameron Payne, Jaxson Hayes, Abdel Nader, Robert Williams, Nicolas Claxton, Jaylen Nowell, Cory Joseph, Reggie Jackson, Isaiah Stewart, Furkan Korkmaz, Dario Saric, Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Kelly Olynyk, Rudy Gobert, Carmelo Anthony, Josh Richardson, Buddy Hield, Robert Covington, Danilo Gallinari, Maxi Kleber, Will Barton, Ja Morant
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Bradley Beal, Karl-Anthony Towns, Julius Randle, Zach LaVine, Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram, Khris Middleton, Jamal Murray, Jarrett Allen, Jaylen Brown, Dejounte Murray
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played): Jordan Poole, Kevin Porter, Nowell, Saric, Korkmaz, Reggie Jackson, Ellington, Pokusevski, Mykhailiuk, Shamet, Brook Lopez, McGruder
• Cheap threes: Ellington, Mykhailiuk, Nowell, Shamet, Poole, Korkmaz, Reggie Jackson, Forbes, Kleber, Pritchard, Poku
• Cheap boards: Poku, Moses Brown, Tristan Thompson, Zubac, Baynes, Stewart, Kleber, Markieff Morris, Connaughton, Winslow, Vanderbilt
• Cheap dimes: Kevin Porter, Mykhailiuk Satoransky, Payne, Saen Lee, Reggie Jackson, Raul Neto, Mannion, Chasson Randle, Rondo
• Cheap steals: Thybulle, Wagner, Patton, Mykhailiuk, Kira, McGruder, Cory Joseph, Kevin Porter, Mannion, Nader
• Cheap blocks: Brook Lopez, Patrick Beverley, Vanderbilt, Nicolas Claxton, McGee, Patton, Jaxson Hayes, Biyombo, Stewart, Naz Reid
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): Tristan Thompson, Saric, Poole, McGruder, Cory Joseph, Korkmaz, Shamet, Nowell, Reggie Jackson, Brook Lopez, Ellington

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!