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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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Friday, February 19
Joel Embiid and Jamal Murray show two completely different ways to log 50-burger games
As stupid as it sounds, yesterday wasn't the first time this season in which two different players finished with 50+ points in the same night. That's insane, but it happened a couple of weeks ago when both Nikola Jokic and Steph Curry reached that mark. Anyway, today is a day to celebrate Murray and Embiid, not the other two. And it was fascinating to watch both players at it and getting there in two completely different ways.
Embiid finished with a monster 50-17-5-2-4 line, shot 65% from the floor and 88% from the charity stripe, but only hit one triple compared to 15 freebies for the best fantasy performance (91 FP!!!) of the day. Murray, on the other hand, was über-efficient with a 50-6-2-2 point-hogger line that included 8 (!) treys on a shooting masterclass finishing with an 84 FG%, no free-throw attempts at all, and a nicely rounded 100 true shooting percentage. No joke, as Murray became the highest 50-point scorer in NBA history to get there without hitting a single freebie.
- Even with those two stealing most headlines thanks to the scoring outbursts, there were many more great performers yesterday that could arguably say they had a better game than Murray: Giannis (29-19-8-1-3), Vucevic (30-16-10-1-1), Jokic (16-12-10-4-1), Trae (31--4-11-3), Curry (29-7-11), and Chris Paul (15-4-19-2-1) were some of them.
- Jae Crowder was Jamal Murray Lite for the Suns. He finished with 20 points on just 9 FGA hitting 78% of them including 6 triples. He actually beat Murray's true shooting with a 1.111 mark himself and no freebies on the day either. He also contributed a nice 3-3-2 rest-of-line in 29 minutes of playing time. Crowder is available in 60% of Yahoo leagues.
- Terrance Ross was the best reserve of the night in fantasy terms, only above Crowder, thanks to an all-across-the-board contrib of 33 minutes in which he closed the day at 24-4-1-3 going 2-for-2 on FTs, turning the ball over just once, and logging a healthy 25.5% usage rate. Ross is a heater, but he's much more rostered than Crowder with only a 40% availability in Yahoo.
- Robert Williams' low playing time (16 MPG on the year) is always going to cut his upside short, but Boston needs every warm body they can get to produce numbers and help the team, and Williams was the one doing so yesterday off the pine. Nice 12-7 with 2 steals and 4 blocks in just 17 minutes for a clear WW-target if you play in any sort of super-deep league.
- Dennis Smith Jr. had a nightmarish day not scoring a single point on 7 FGA, although he somehow made up for it and finished with 23 FP thanks to his 4-5-3-3 rest of line in 23 minutes off the bench. The Pistons will keep playing him after getting Smith in return for Derrick Rose and given his youth and potential future with the team.
- Anthony Edwards had the dunk of the year, but also a very disappointing performance overall with just 22 FP on 34 minutes of playing time. The line read 7-3-4-2-1 and the shooting was bad to a horrific ground-level 21% from the floor on 14 FGA. Even then, don't give up on the rook. Edwards has leveled up of late and you'd do good in getting some shares of him if possible, even more now that some GMs might be low on him.
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