NBA DFS: Bam Adebayo and best/worst DraftKings daily fantasy basketball plays for Wednesday, Apr. 28th

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: Bam Adebayo (C). The Heat are treading water to avoid the play-in mini-series, but they’ll need to edge Boston for the no. 6 seed in order to do that. They are still there, as both teams have the same record, but the Heat have been a little bit disappointing after their Finals run in the bubble a year ago. Anyway, Bam has been his great self for Miami and after a bit of a rough stretch of games from Apr. 8 to Apr. 16 (didn’t top 38 FP once), he’s back to his very tasty levels of performance: Adebayo’s put together four out of five games of 41+ FP, and three of those ended with him hitting 47+ fantasy points. Bayo is back at scoring 20+ a night to go with 5-and-5 boards and dimes as a baseline, sky-high shooting percentages, and upside on the steals and blocks cats too. The ROI is superb for his price, and Bam has been a top-20 play in four of the last five slates with one top-10 finish.
• Hate: Michael Porter Jr. (SF/PF). I’m just writing this to call for your attention. LOL. No, really. What were the odds MPJ was going to put on a three-game streak of reaching 43+ FP this season. I mean, that’s not close to any Russ-like bonkers run, but for what we know about MPJ that’s quite the insane run. The Nuggets are getting better by the day after losing bodies almost nightly, including no. 2 best player of the team Jamal Murray. Or is it MPJ that no. 2? Mike has been on a tear of late, but going for 39 and 31 points in the last two, while hitting 18 combined treys in his last three games is something unheard of. The salaries are getting higher and higher, and while MPJ will more probably than not keep up his good numbers, he’s just getting into uncharted territory and should regress at least a bit any day now. The minute he falls back to his season-average 34 FPG the ROI just won’t be there with the prices he’s carrying nowadays.
• Love: Andre Drummond (C). While Drummond has not been great the truth is that he’s doing more than what his salaries tell about his projections. Dre is returning great value for those trusting him to fill their last open gaps in their lineups, and even though the fantasy points aren’t incredibly high these days (37 FPG in the last five games he’s played) the thing is that he keeps getting closer to dub-dubbing every day even on a low 16% usage rate now that AD is back. Speaking of Davis, and while he’s the clear player to roster if you’re looking for a top-tier ceiling, he’s just not there yet and it’s taking him time. Not worth the risk. Build another big, and fill your gaps with the likes of Drumm for the time being.
• Hate: Brandon Ingram (SF). What should we do of Ingram and the Pelicans as a whole? Second year of the Zion Dynasty, second flop in as many seasons. The Pels aren’t mathematically out of the play-in, but they’re just not making it, let’s not fool ourselves. Williamson is fantastic, and Ingram is good too but he’s a little bit bouncy and currently playing below his early-season levels. The difference is not mindblowing, as he’s gone from around 42 FPG in his best month (February) of the season to around 37 in the past five-game stretch, yet the salaries are higher these days than they were back then. The ROI is still borderline tolerable and worth gambling on Ingram, but the minutes have gone down by the day and he only logged 26 ticks against the Clips two days ago. Not trusting New Orleans just one bit against the quite surprising Nugs tonight.
• Love: Jordan Clarkson (PG/SG). Clarkson looked like a lock to score himself the 6MOY award... until he didn’t. J-Clark had quite a rough stretch after the AS-break putting up a measly 25 FPG in 16 games from Mar. 12 to Apr. 7, but good for us he’s looking like his early-season self since coming back on Apr. 17. From that day on, Clarkson has played five games, is averaging a more than healthy 33 MPG off the pine, and more important for us some good 34 FPG. The Jazz keep playing without go-to guy Donovan Mitchell, and now Mike Conley is banged up too. That means Clarkson will eat all he can and then some more, and that’s pretty bueno. He should rebound from a couple of bad shooting performances hitting fewer than 32% of his floor-shots, which also sounds like a good thing considering he already put up 33 and 34 FP in his last two even on those putrid shooting percentages.

What’s cooking? Statistical trends from Week 15 (Apr. 19 to Apr. 25)

• A month. A full month. That’s the span of Russell Westbrook’s fantasy domination playing for a new team in Washington this season. And if it wasn’t for Russ’ exploits, odds are those Wizards would be not fighting for a spot in the play-in mini-tournament as they currently are. Russ played 4 games this past week and even with the likes of Giannis (57 FP) and Irving (56) pressing him, Russ was still able to top all fantasy players with an average of 58 DKFP and a monster 19-12-12-2 line.
• As you already know, Russ plays a ton of minutes (almost 39 MPG this week). That’s why Westbrook missed on being the most efficient player in the league with a 1.49 FP/min mark. That award went to Giannis, who put up 1.80 FP/min on average in his four games played.
• Russ was also the only player to average a triple-double this week. Luka Doncic (26-9-10) was the closest to it, with all of Kyrie (27-7-10), Ja Morant (30-7-8-2), Jokic (30-11-5) falling a bit shorter.
• Mentioning it because he made history on Sunday: Steph Curry closed the week averaging 5.8 3PG, and has scored 85 triples this month alone. That’s the highest amount of treys scored in a single calendar month in the history of the Association, so there’s that.
• Silly cheap values: Oshae Brissett, DJ Wilson, Sumner, Dozier, Neto, Gafford, Iggy, Craig, Metu, Dwight Powell, Maxey, DeAndre Jordan, Cauley-Stein, Millsap
• A little more expensive but still with massive ROI: Nurkic, Ja, Tillman, Nunn, Bullock, Derrick White, Bazley, Rose, D’Lo, Sexton, Schroder, Garland, Brogdon
• Some very expensive players not doing enough: Vucevic, Lillard, Middleton, Jarrett Allen, Dejounte Murray, Lonzo, Butler, Tatum, Booker
• Cheap points (min. 3 games played): Bertans, Lou Williams, Brissett, Sumner, Quickley, Melo, Dwight Powell, Kennard, Neto, Seth Curry, Bacon, Reid, McDermott, Maxey, Mykhailiuk, Dozier, Melton, Pritchard
• Cheap threes: Bertans, Quickley, Melo, Melton, Markkanen, Kennard, Seth Curry, Pritchard, Armoni Brooks, Justin Holiday
• Cheap boards: DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, Looney, Noel, Brissett, Tillman, Cousins, Craig, Biyombo, Gafford, Eubanks, Armoni Brooks
• Cheap dimes: Killian Hayes, Dellavedova, Ty Jerome, Dozier, Ish Smith, Neto, Lou Williams, Temple, Saben Lee, Iggy, Teague, Melton
• Cheap steals: Thybulle, Neto, Wanamaker, Harkless, Dozier, Shaq Harrison, Iggy, Caruso, Metu, Melton, Tillman, Gafford, Kenyon Martin Jr., Dedmon
• Cheap blocks: Noel, Gafford, Iggy, Metu, Millsap, Thybulle, Kenyon, DeAndre Jordan
• Cheap FG% (min. 8 FGA): Neto, Harkless, McDermott, Sumner, Quickley, Reid, Markkanen, Seth Curry

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!