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Welcome to the RotoBaller NBA Recap. In this feature, we will highlight a few key fantasy basketball takeaways from the games played during last night's slate. These viewpoints can be both positive and negative and will hopefully help to provide insight into different roster moves you should consider making based on trends and statistical nuggets from around the Association.
Fantasy basketball has a lot of moving pieces with all the different scoring settings that are possible to play under, so I will always do my best to spotlight where players gain or lose value in certain game types. For the sake of simplicity and consistency, every time I mention Fantasy Points in these articles I will be using DraftKings' scoring system, which goes as follows: 1*PTS, 0.5*3PM, 1.25*RBD, 1.5*AST, 2*STL, 2*BLK, -0.5*TO. On top of that, bonus points are awarded for Double-Doubles (+1.5) and Triple-Doubles (+3), only one per player at a time.
Without further ado, let's get right into the latest slate of games from the 2021 season and try to figure out how to take advantage of what we saw transpire.
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Sunday, May 2
LeBron goes down in his second game after returning from injury as the Lakers and the Mavericks drop their respective games as Portland wins to create a three-team clog in the no. 5-7 Western seeds
Elephant in the room: the Lakers lost LeBron James yesterday with a sore right ankle against Toronto. James still played 28 minutes on the day and lasted till deep into the third quarter, but this doesn't bode well for the Lakers if LBJ can't stay healthy ROS. And by ROS I mean the remainder of the regular season, let alone the playoffs. The Lakers' loss to Toronto meant that they are no in the 7th seed, which is to say play-in fodder behind both the Mavs and the Blazers.
Speaking of the Blazers, Portland defeated Boston on Sunday and plenty of news came out of that one: Portland's result, combined with Dallas' and LA's, have created a three-way tie for the no.5-to-7 seeds in the West. It's basically doesn't to four groups in the conference (Utah/Phoenix, Denver/LAC, Dallas/Portland/LAL, and Memphis/GSW/San Antonio) with 8-to-10 games to go. Also from that Portland game: Boston's wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown ran into each other and got banged up. Tatum seemed to be alright, but Brown could miss time. Oh, boy.
- The Bucks and the Nets faced each other early on Sunday's slate of games. No problem for Giannis, who topped the fantasy leaderboard with an impressive 49-point outing that included an 8-4-1-3 rest-of-line in a game in which the Greek shot 58% from the floor... on 36 (!!!) FGA. Kevin Durant replied with 42 points himself, but those were not enough to help BKN snatch the win.
- Toronto has been rather bad this season, at least record-wise, missing on this year's postseason. Sunday night marked one of the few bright spots in Toronto's season as both Pascal Siakam and Kyle Lowry got their games right and put up 71 and 63 FP respectively in the win over the Lakers. Fantastic game by Kyle, who is squeezing his more-than-probable last games for the Raps franchise before becoming a free agent later this summer.
- Another upcoming free agent with a high fantasy upside: Kelly Olynyk. Playing 36 minutes for the lowly Rocks, Olynyk put up a masterful 17-10-7-3-1 stuffed dub-dub against New York and returned one of the highest values for those playing DFS basketball to close their week.
- Dwight Powell went down injured last year, missed a lot of time recovering, but he's recently come back and he's featuring for the Mavs on starting lineups. Yesterday, in a short run of 20 minutes, Powell was rather productive with a 13-7-0-2-3 line turning 1.44 FP/min. If you need big bodies for the last couple of fantasy weeks, go ahead and rush to your WW to get yourself some Powell shares.
- Sacramento Kings' rookie Tyrese Haliburton might have waved goodbye to his freshman season, as he could only play 23 minutes before being forced out of yesterday's game. Tough break for him, but with just two weeks of games left it would not make much sense for a done Kings franchise to risk anything with Haliburton. Buddy Hield, Delon Wright, Terence Davis, and Justin James all raise a bit in upside for the next two weeks in fantasy terms.
- Told you already in past columns: there is not a better big-man out there to acquire through waivers than Dwight Howard. Seriously. Philadelphia won and Brooklyn lost on Sunday, which means the Sixers are back on the no. 1 seed with a game of separation, so they regained some margin to manage JoJo's minutes. Howard logged 18 minutes off the pine yesterday, put up another 14-11 dub-dub, dished out a dime, and swatted 3 rocks. Howard is still available in almost 80% of Yahoo leagues.
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