NBA DFS: Mike Conley and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Saturday, Apr. 24th

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: Mike Conley (PG). The Jazz have been off the schedule for the past two nights and three days, so it’s not that they will enter tonight's game against Minny any kind of tired. Oh, and both the Suns and Clips are already less than three games behind Utah in the standings, so the Jazz can’t sleep on their laurels if they don’t want to screw their season-long work and throw it down the sink with just around 10 games left in the regular season. Conley has been excellent in the past two weeks, with four games of the five he’s played seeing him reach 35+ FP and with three performances at a very sweet 42+ DKFP. That’s plenty of goodies, folks, and even more considering his often low prices, making Mikey a sure thing when it comes to ROI. Four games in a row dub-dubbing for Conley, who’s put up an average 15-3-10-1 line in the past five. As tasty a play as the come.
• Hate: Michael Porter Jr. (SF/PF). Let me tell you something: find yourself a partner that loves you like the algorithm likes MPJ tonight. WTF. Porter’s salary has never topped $8.2K this season. Never, at any point. Until today. Coming off a 43 DKFP performance against the Warriors (the freaking washed Warriors, that is) in which he was tagged at $7.7K, now Porter is priced at a bananas $9.8K tag which is the fifth-highest of Saturday’s slate. This is not a joke, folks. MPJ projects to 38 FP tonight at best, which is a lower mark than that of six other players (!) priced at lower salaries than Porter. Even if he explodes for a mighty performance, odds are his ROI is not going to be that high or there at all. Those six names, just because I love you and I appreciate you reading my thoughts daily: Brogdon, LeVert, Butler, Ingram, Gobert, and Adebayo. Go build your lineup now and thank me later.
• Love: Brandon Ingram (SF). With Zion grabbing all of the headlines coming out of New Orleans, it makes sense to forget about Brandon Ingram. His mid-January to mid-March kind-of-slump in which he averaged just 38 FP didn’t help matters either. But since he came back from a few days off the court at the start of April, and in the eight games he’s played since Apr. 9, Ingram has been terrific. The Pels are more cooked than not when it comes to getting into the play-in, but they seem to be stubborn in surrendering once for all and ate the L. That’s why Ingram will keep racking up numbers, pretty much what he’s been doing for a while now. He’s playing a silly 35 MPG these days, putting up 27-5-5-1 lines, and in his last two, he even shot a ridiculous 62% from the floor on a combined 34 FGA. BI is back to his good near-30-pops-a-day ways, and we love to see that.
• Hate: Kelly Olynyk (C). The Rockets are in a very shaky position entering tonight’s game against Denver. I’m a full-time Olynyk Truther, but man, how the hell are we supposed to expect a great night from the biggie when he will be playing in a squad that is expected to miss all of Christian Wood, John Wall, Eric Gordon, David Nwaba, Sterling Brown, Jae’Sean Tate, etc, etc... Will Olynyk grab some boards? Yes. Will he score maybe 15 points? Could happen. But even then, I don’t like this situation just one bit, and I mean, Rudy Gobert carries the exact same price as Olynyk today while projecting to almost 10 more FP on the day. The salary has gone way up for Kelly tonight because someone has to play for the Rockets if they don’t want to forfeit, but not even then would I bet on Olynyk today.
• Love: Andre Drummond (C). There is no way you’ll see me jump off Dru’s wagon any time soon. Seriously. Empty stats or not, Drummond is a fantasy beast. There is nothing false to that, and that won’t change no matter if he plays in Cleveland, in Los Angeles, or in Timbuktu. Dru has had a couple of duds as a Laker, I know, and you might think having Anthony Davis out will impact his game negatively, but go check his last game, in which he already shared the floor with AD: Lakers-high 50 FP to the tune of a massive 14-19-3-1-3 stuffed dub-dub (his fourth in LA) while commanding a nice 20% of possessions and going 4-for-4 from the free-throw line. I’m not saying that all will stay the same, but Drummond is a monster when it comes to racking up fantasy goodies and if you don’t like him then I don’t even know.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 15 (Apr. 2 to Apr. 18)

• Three weeks in a row, folks. That’s the time Russ has been leading fantasy basketball in DFS contests, and it is not that he’s doing while playing little time or fewer games than the competition—in fact, he’s playing more than anyone out there. Russell Westbrook averaged 66 FP/G this past week, besting his 62-FP mark from two weeks ago while both Steph Curry and Julius Randle finished precisely there with 62 FP/G each. All of them played 4 games, and no other player with 4 GP topped 56 FP.
• As is often the case, Russ couldn’t top the efficiency leaderboard with 1.76 FP/min. That was Nikola Jokic, who averaged 1.85 FP/min this past week on 33 MPG. Steph and Embiid followed Jokic with 1.81 FP/min each, though Curry has the edge over JoJo as the former played one more game and almost three more minutes per game.
• After Jokic and Russ made the cut last week, this week only Russell Westbrook was able to put up a trip-dub average with a massive 25-14-11 line to go with a couple of steals on top of that. Jokic fell a little bit short with a 24-13-9. Rozier (yes, that Rozier) finished with a ridiculous 28-7-9 himself, while Draymond Green was also great with a 10-8-10-3 in 4 GP.
• Just so you know what Curry is doing: Steph averaged a freaking 44 PPG this past week in his four games. That’s absolutely insane and nobody came even close to that mark—Embiid finished second with just 37 PPG in one fewer game played. Bonkers.
• Silly cheap values: Korkmaz, Gafford, Paul Watson, Ariza, Birch, Naji Marshall, Jevon Carter, CamPayne, Watanabe, Taj Gibson, Toscano-Anderson, Gary Harris, Caleb Martin
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Stewart, Grayson Allen, Melo, Noel, Huerter, Dragic, Brook Lopez, Dray, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Steven Adams, Brooks, Garland
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Donovan Mitchell, Durant, Porzingis, Booker, Jrue, Adebayo, Chris Paul, Wall, Ben Simmons, Gobert, DeRozan
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played): Shamet, Melo, Grayson, Korkmaz, Ariza, Forbes, Bullock, Watson, Gary Harris, Frank Jackson, Theis, Nunn
• Cheap threes: Grayson, Shamet, Korkmaz, Melo, Watson, Ariza, Bullock, Jevon Carter, Connaughton, Niang, Bane, Nunn, Danny Green
• Cheap boards: O’Neale, Noel, Looney, DeAndre Jordan, Taj Gibson, Eubanks, Naz Reid, Tristan Thompson, Naji Marshall, Caleb Martin, Birch
• Cheap dimes: Cam Payne, Gary Harris, Naji, Elfrid, Milton, Bane, Tristan Thompson, Toscano-Anderson, O’Neale, Shamet
• Cheap steals: Korkmaz, Delon Wright, Patrick Williams, Danny Green, Eubanks, Noel, Birch, Milton, Nunn, Grayson, Ariza, Lamb, Jevon Carter
• Cheap blocks: Noel, Taj Gibson, Eubanks, Birch, Reid, Rudy Gay, Danny Green, Lamb, Tristan Thompson, DeAndre Jordan
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): Shamet, Ariza, Theis, Bullock, Grayson, Korkmaz, Watson, Melo, Nunn, Cam Payne, Rudy Gay, Elfrid, Niang

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!