NBA DFS: Jaylen Brown and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Tuesday, Apr. 13th

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: Jaylen Brown (SG/SF). I was going to pick Jayson Tatum until I saw his salary and the massive difference with Jaylen’s. Didn’t make much sense to me going Tatum’s way given how good both have been and the distance in prices, to be honest. Tatum has been better, sure, but Brown himself has three games at 40+ FP with 58, 44, and 40 in the past three all taking place in the past week. The points are up to 26 PPG in those three, he’s getting those boards down nicely, dishing out dimes, and even racking up stocks. Can’t get much better, but he’s doubling down on all of that with a great 53 percent accuracy from the floor on a more than healthy 18+ FGA a day. The treys are falling with gusto, the usage is above average, the minutes are high, and Portland ranks in the bottom-third against fantasy SGs while having the sixth-worst fantasy-D overall.
• Hate: Chris Paul (PG). The minute Phoenix locked their first winning season since 1963 or something like that a few days ago, CP3 stopped caring. LOL. Paul has gone from averaging 48 FP in the first week of April (4 GP including one on Mar. 31) to a measly 33 FPG in the last three while playing some putrid 32, 25, and 27 minutes. Man... I am Paul’s no. 1 stan, but doing this thing ain’t gonna help him into my lineup. He’s been able to dish out 10 dimes in the last two games while keeping turnovers at total bay, but other than that he’s just been a freaking afterthought. Phoneix faced a couple of very bad teams in those two games (Washington and Houston) but even then I’m not liking this one and that’s with the Suns playing on the second leg of a back-to-back that won’t feature the Rockets once more, but the stout Heat instead.
• Love: Clint Capela (C). Captain Cap and the Hawks have flown a little bit under the radar lately mostly because of everybody’s focus being on the battle for the top seeds. But Atlanta is currently fourth in the East, and although the Hawks are far from a lock to end with home-court advantage, they can say they’ve truly made a jump from years past. That’s thanks to a masterful Trae Young, but also to Capela’s debut season in Atlanta. Cap has put up 43 FP nightly for the past four months, is averaging an even better 47 FP in April (6 GP) to the tune of a 20-13 dub-dubbing line and he’s also adding 3 BPG to that. Capela doesn’t know how to stretch the floor at all, but his pure-inside shooting is enabling him to keep up a massive 68 FG% while going to the line a good amount of times per game. One of those never-fail C plays.
• Hate: Caris LeVert (SG). I find it funny to look at LeVert’s game logs since the break. He goes by waves, having a peak-game once in a while sandwhiched between a bunch of not-so-great performances. Too bad for him, he just had one of those great games in his last one with a 53-FP outing against Memphis last Sunday. For example, he reached 47 FP against Detroit on Mar. 24 but that came after three games below 39 and he followed it with four games below 32 FP. Then he exploded for 51 FP against San Antonio on Apr. 3 but he proceeded to follow that with three below-40 games. LeVert means risky business for his truthers, and although he has the ability to put on a show any given night, he also comes with very high chances of putting up a dud. The usage and the minutes are pretty much the same daily, so it’s not that his fantasy scores are bouncy because of variations there; it’s just his nature as a player. Not the most expensive of guys out there, but projected to fewer points than cheaper assets like Conley, BogBog, Drummond, Brogdon, and Kemba.
• Love: Andre Drummond (C). Dru is coming off the worst game he’s played this season by far. It was a true aberration to watch him log 25 minutes... and finish with a shitty 3-10-0-1-1 line shooting 33% from the floor... on 3 FGA! That’s not a typo. Drummond has played a grand total of 628 career games; of those, he’s played 25+ minutes in 517 of them; of those, he’s attempted 3 or fewer FGA in 5 of them. Five games. Five of 628, man. This ain’t happening again in the next two or three years, that’s for sure. Drummond might not be a murder out there, but for the price he comes attached to he’s definitely a great ROI returner for those trusting him. Just in the past two games prior to Monday’s stinker he was one of the best values of the slate and all he did was hit 38 FP twice. Hard not to have him reaching those marks once more against the no-bigs Hornets tonight.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 15 (Apr. 5 to Apr. 11)

• Back-to-back Fantasy Crowns for Russell Westbrook, who just doesn’t know how to stop putting up numbers. If you’re a fan of the Wiz, you might not like Russ that much because he’s all about himself and the team still sucks, but you gotta acknowledge greatness when you watch it. Not only did Westbrook lead the week with 62 FP/G on 4 games played, but he also edged no. 2 Jokic by 4 FP while at it. Bonkers.
• Russ, Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Steph Curry were the only four players to break for more than 55 FP this past week, though Curry only played three games compared to the others’ four.
• Jokic was able to beat Russ when it came to efficiency as The Joker put up 1.81 FP/min compared to Russ’ 1.67 mark. Makes sense, considering Jokic logged just 32 MPG to Westbrook’s monster 37.
• The two of Russ and Jokic closed the week with trip-dub lines: it was a 20-13-13 week for Russ, and a 24-10-11 one for Jokic. Not bad, indeed. The only other player that came close to doing it was Julius Randle, putting up an average 20-10-8 line for the Knicks in four games.
• Silly cheap values: Jalen McDaniels, Korkmaz, Cory Joseph, Bembry, Bitadze, Wanamaker, Bazemore, KCP, Tony Bradley, Theis, Rondo, Hayes, Nwora, Dozier
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Malachi Flynn, Bamba, Hartenstein, Zeller, Reggie Jackson, LaVine, Valanciunas, Miles Bridges, Kyle Anderson, Boucher, Garland, Bobby Portis, Paul George, Kanter, Olynyk, Ayton, Porzingis
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Kyrie, Lillard, Embiid, Wood, Simmons, Rozier, Jrue, McCollum
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played): KCP, Mo Bamba, Jalen McDaniels, Bertans, Taurean, Korkmaz, McDermott, Reid, Cory Joseph, Coby White, Aaron Holiday, Frank Jackson, Okoro, Nwora, Markkanen, Ty Jerome
• Cheap threes: Bertans, KCP, Mo Bamba, Korkmaz, Aaron Holiday, Cam Johnson, Sterling Brown, Georges Niang, Jalen McDaniels, Markkanen, Bane, Forbes
• Cheap boards: Zeller, Bradley, O’Neale, Noel, Stewart, Favors, Theis, Bamba, Tristan Thompson, Solomon Hill, Willy Hernangomez
• Cheap dimes: Cory Joseph, Wanamaker, Dellavedova, Saben Lee, Rondo, Augustin, Ty Jerome, Brandon Goodwin, Campazzo, Jeff Teague
• Cheap steals: Patrick Williams, Bembry, Korkmaz, Okogie, Jeremy Lamb, Solomon Hill, Taj Gibson, Caruso, Killian Hayes, Bazemore, Watanabe
• Cheap blocks: Noel, Bitazde, Bamba, Bradley, Hayes, Tristan Thompson, Jeremy Lamb, Favors, Len, Stewart
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): KCP, Jalen McDaniels, Bamba, Batum, McDermott, Cory Joseph, Bertans, Okoro, Elfrid Payton, RJ Hampton

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!