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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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Monday, April 5
Brooklyn wins the New York Derby at the expense of losing Harden to a hamstring injury; Dallas prevents Utah from winning its 10th-straight game
We have not seen the mighty Nets--the trio of Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden, that is--together in the court for a while now, but that has not taken a lot from Brooklyn, which keeps racking up Ws as yesterday's against their neighbor Knicks. That win was great for Brooklyn to get, as they're now 0.5 games clear off Philly for the lead in the East, but it also brought bad news in the shape of a hamstring injury sustained by James Harden just 4 minutes into the game...
In other news, Dallas was able to keep up its progression as the Mavs beat the no. 1 NBA team in Utah yesterday. No big deal for the Jazz, that still are 2.5 games ahead of Phoenix, but it'd be understandable for Utah to be a little bit mad as they would have gone 10-straight with a W yesterday. They won't be complaining too much being 9-1 in the last 10, though.
- D'Angelo Russell played basketball for the first time in almost two months yesterday coming off the pine for the Wolves. And he was great at it. DLo put up a great 25-5-3-1-1 performance in his 25 minutes for a quite-high 1.63 FP/min mark on the night and the second-best fantasy performance by a reserve player on Monday's slate.
- The actual best off-the-pine player was Toronto's Malachi Flynn, who got himself a pretty stuffed 16-6-4-4-3 line in an across-the-board contribution for the Raps in 34 minutes. Flynn was drafted 29th overall in this year's draft and not played a lot until Mar. 19. Since then, he's played nine consecutive games, is averaging 16 MPG, and he's available in almost 80% of Yahoo leagues. Not the worst flier to take by GMs in deeper leagues.
- The Rockets are lost and don't seem to know where to find answers. Christian Wood sucked one more time, bitched about how the team just doesn't have plays to run around him, and Kelly Olynyk keeps putting up the best numbers among Houston's players. I'm Olynyk's no. 1 stan and have been writing about him as a WW target for a long time now. His rostership is already up at almost 60%, so go after him asap before it's too late!
- Shout-out to Darius Garland, who needed just 30 minutes to reach 57 FP and the best FP/min efficiency mark of Monday thanks to a 37-1-7-2-1 line (64% FGA on 22 FGA, 4-for-4 from the free-throw line, just 1 TO on 37% usage rate). The Cavs have looked rather bad this season, so it was nice to see a little beam of light from someone stuck in Cleveland...
- Dorian Finney-Smith missed a few games in mid-to-late January, but the truth is that he has started all of the 37 games he's played. That's insane, but performances like yesterday's speak volumes of DFS' talent. He put up a nice 23-6-4-1-1 line in 34 minutes while hitting 5 treys on the day against Utah. DFS is available in 90% (!!!) of Yahoo leagues, and although he's not incredible as a fantasy asset, he keeps racking up starts, minutes, and chances for a Mavs team where there is no clear pecking order outside of the Doncic/Porzingis pair.
- Detroit Pistons' rookie Isaiah Stewart is low-key one of the best freshmen of the year. He put up a 12-6 line yesterday with a steal and 4 blocks to go while rebounding from a rough shooting stretch hitting 67% of his 6 FGA and 4-of-4 freebies against OKC. Stweart is rostered in just 12% of Yahoo leagues, though he's efficient on the time he's on the court, and the third-best rookie in WS/48 only behind ROY contenders Immanuel Quickley and LaMelo Ball.
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