RADIO
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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Saturday, November 6
Six games full of fireworks as Denver edges Houston by one point, the Lakers lose once more, Boston drops another one, and Philly wins its sixth straight and feels totally unstoppable
Let's start at the beginning: is anyone going to beat the Sixers this season? Everybody is talking about Ben Simmons but nobody is realizing the Sixers as a whole are absolutely destroying the league to the tune of an 8-2 record 10 games into the season, becoming the first team to reach eight wins to this day. They defeated Chicago yesterday thanks to another great game by Joel Embiid (30-15-3 dub-dub with 2 blocks) in just 34 minutes of playing time enough to have him ranked second in the DKFP leaderboard.
Not mentioned above was the affair between Atlanta and Phoenix in which the Suns got another W thanks (once more) to a delightful pair of performances by Devin Booker and Chris Paul, both of them inside the top-8 players of the slate. The Lakers missed both LeBron James (didn't suit) and Anthony Davis (only 7 minutes played), and Russell Westbrook just wasn't enough putting up an 8-9-6-2 dud in his 30 minutes on the court while turning the ball over three times. Yikes.
- Kyle Lowry had his first true gem-of-a-game with the Heat finishing with a fantastic 20-12-10-1 line, shooting 72.7% from the floor on 11 FGA, and logging his first triple-double since he did so for the last time last February. It's Lowry's third trip-dub with a 20-12-10 baseline in the vet's NBA career.
- Kudos to Jayson Tatum for getting things right after the past few days of drama. Tatum put up a silly 32-11-2-2-1 stuffed line, hit 63.2% of his bulky 19 FGA, went 2-for-2 from the charity stripe, and did all that on a 28.7% usage rate. Too bad for the Beantowners, they dropped yesterday's outing to Luka's Mavs thanks mostly to the Euro's contributions (33-9-5 and a block).
- Shouts out to Jokic who put up a 28-14-2-2-1 dub-dub to lift Denver above Houston thanks to that single little "1" at the end of his line as his lone block on the day proved vital to keeping Denver on the winning side of the scoreboard.
- Outlier performance by Utah's Royce O'Neale, who more often than not plays the average Draymond Green role and impacts the game without much fantasy impact. Not yesterday, though, as he went on to play 33 minutes starting for the Jazz while finishing with a healthy 15-5-2-6 line, shooting 71.4% on 7 FGA, and doing it all when only taking 16.4% of Utah's offensive possessions to himself.
- Furkan Korkmaz dropped a career-high 7 treys on Chicago helping Philly get that W. 25 points on the day for the off-the-pine guard, who also contributed 6 boards and a dime to spare--not that he was chasing assists, though, as he was pretty much on the court for snipping duties.
- With the Lakers missing half the squad, it makes sense to find both Malik Monk (22 minutes) and Austin Reaves (25) performing to unknown-to-date levels of play. Monk put up a 13-4-3-1-1 low-but-stuffed line while Reaves finished the day at 10-6-3 (though the shooting was kinda horrid at 33.3% on 9 FGA). Don't expect this to happen daily, but count on this type of thing happening here and there if/when LBJ/AD/Russ sit by necessity or choice throughout the season.
- Rudy Gobert had a rough one against Miami. The 8-8 (with one block) line is more of a fluke than anything else and that won't repeat itself very often going forward--Gob has all of 11 career games in which he played 29+ minutes and finished at or below 8 points and 8 rebounds... having played a total 554 matches for Utah.
- Nikola Vucevic was a bit better and got an 11-11 dub-dub with 2 dimes on top, but other than that he struggled mightily and shot 31.3% on a more than healthy 16 FGA. The 0.83 FP/min stank as Vooch stayed on the court 36 rounds of the clock. Similar per-minute efficiency by C.J. McCollum, whose 7-5-5 was definitely good-not-great as he shot even worse than Vooch at 20% on 15 shots. Jeez.
- Kristaps Porzingis returned from injury and was limited to 28 minutes, sending Jalen Brunson back to the second unit... Michael Porter started for the Nuggets but had to leave through the fourth quarter... Anthony Davis didn't return after leaving the court but it had to do with a stomach ache and not his banged-up thumb.
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