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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.
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including NBA Writer of the Year, Best NFL Series, MLB Series, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!
NBA Recap - Friday, November 19
Boston beats Los Angeles in a no-contest game that has LeBron returning to the court; Phoenix wins 11th straight game by ousting Dallas
I don't know the reason, but folks out there were talking about the return of James to the court as a "very anticipated one". Again, I don't know the reason because you know, don't take LeBron for granted, but the King is washed for good and missing time (and time again) often. The Celtics just needed a bunch of Tatum's spice (37-11-2-3-1) to destroy LA, which had all three of AD, LBJ, and Russ playing 32+ minutes each, but absolutely capable of stopping the Beantowners.
Thanks to a magnificent game by Chris Paul in which he put up a top-5 finish in DK--the line ended at 18-5-14-3 hitting 2 treys at a 50% clip on 14 FGA--Phoenix is now riding an 11-game winning streak that, obviously, is the longest of the year and has helped the Suns reach the no. 2 seed sitting only 1.5 games behind the Warriors. It's Houston's turn tonight to keep losing and keeping up an actual longer streak, only on the wrong side of things having lost 13 straight. Jeez.
- The Nets barely got away with the W against Orlando in a surprisingly tight game in which Kevin Durant wasn't available. Good for the BKN, James Harden showed up for the occasion and had the best performance of the day in DK's slate: 36-10-8-3-2 near-trip-dub on brute force. Saying that because The Beard logged a ridiculous 41.2% usage rate, shot the rock 25 times from the field and 20 times from the charity stripe, turned the ball over 6 (!) times, and finished with a shooting percentage of 28% (oh boy) but hit 95% of his freebies.
- Delightful lines from two of the post-LeBron NBA torch carriers: Giannis finished at a 21-19-7-2-4 that included no treys at all while LaMelo put up a tasty 32-11-8-1 himself shooting magnificent 54.5% on 22 bulky attempts (scoring 4 triples on the day).
- Cade Cunningham--I already warned you the other day--is getting more and more for real every passing game. Top-12 finish for the rookie thanks to a phenomenal 19-6-6-3-2 effort against the Warriors in a losing effort. Only 2 TOs and, finally, a shooting percentage of 50%+ for Cunn on Friday.
- Out-of-left-field night for Jeremy Lamb and Frank Jackson coming off the pine. Lamb played only 16 minutes yet he was somehow able to dump 23 pops on Charlotte (12 via 4 treys) while adding a nonsensical-for-those-minutes 3-5-3-1 rest-of-line not committing even a single turnover. Jackson was great scoring 27 points for the Pistons in 33 minutes, though that's all he did as he could only add a couple of boards and three steals to that.
- Shout out to my Latin guy Juan Toscano-Anderson for keeping it real and logging 37 monster minutes in a game in which tons of Warriors rested. Not the greatest performance as he shot just 16.7% from the field but the 2-6-9-1-1 line got packed and Juan-T is hanging around the pros for another year.
- Rookie Jalen Suggs was the other Fantastic Freshman of the day along with Cade: 32 minutes for the Magic and a 21-4-3-2-1 escalated contribution in a game Orlando missed on winning just by a nail. Promising performance considering Suggs slow start to his pro career.
- Russ stunk for the Lakers with a silly 12-5-6-1 line. Domantas Sabonis was atrocious for Indy with a junior varsity 8-6-1-1-1 line in 22 minutes. Harrison Barnes keeps cooling down after pouring an ice bucket over his 14-1-3-1 line shooting 33% on 9 FGA.
- After some doubts regarding Jokic's health he missed yesterday's game entirely but HC Malone once more said that this shouldn't be a long-term issue... Isaiah Stewart got banged up on his right ankle and forced out of Friday's night affair with GSW early... Now, for the killer news: Collin Sexton is undergoing season-ending surgery on his left knee and the next time we see him ball it's more than probable he's doing so donning non-Cavs threads as he's entering free agency next summer.
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