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, November 29
The Ball Brothers go against each other with Lonzo getting the best of LaMelo, Houston wins third (!) straight against the lowly Thunder, and Philly almost screws it up against Orlando
Quite a night for LaVar Ball and the Big Baller Bros. LaMelo and Lonzo, and Charlotte and Chicago by extension faced each other on Monday in a very fantastic game in which the Bulls got away with the W. Both Balls had nice games though LaMelo was the better one with a top-10 DK finish thanks to his 18-7-13-1-1 stuffed line compared to Lonzo's lower 16-1-8-1-1. That being said, it was Chicago was actually put the better guys on the floor with Nikola Vucevic playing to the best extent and a top-3 DKFP tally with a sound 30-14-5 line that included 6 treys and a block to spare.
Houston, helped by Christian Wood's 24-21 (with 3 blocks) and Kevin Porter Jr.'s first career trip-dub (11-10-11-3 shooting a putrid 23.5% on 17 FGA) was able to defeat the bottom-dweller Thunder and has put together three straight victories. Orlando wasn't as lucky, as they came back to tie the game against Philly after trailing by 16 points but ultimately dropped the game to the 76ers. Cold world, no Magic.
- Jonas Valanciunas channeled his inner Dirk and hit 7-of-8 shots from behind the arc to finish with 39 pops, 15 boards, 3 dimes, and 2 steals on the day in New Orleans' win over the Clippers. JoVa hit all of his treys in the first half, which is borderline insane.
- Night for Euros, Monday's one. Sure thing, Domantas Sabonis was born in Oregon but he's a Lithuanian kid at heart. He finished second in the slate with a silly 16-25-10 triple-double against Minny. Vooch was the third-best player, Luka dropped his second trip-dub of the year with a 25-10-10, Jokic put up a 24-15-7-1, and Rudy Gobert closed the top-10 with a 21-16-3-1-1 all-across-the-board effort. Not bad.
- Mo Bamba is back and he's good as fudge. Spicy 11-17-1 dub-dub with 6 (!!!) blocks against the 76ers in a game in which he entirely avoided turning the ball over while committing 5 PF, though.
- Tre Mann doing wonders for the Thunder coming off the pine yesterday to play 30 minutes and finish with a 17-7-1-2-1 contribution that wasn't enough for OKC to take advantage of. Isaiah Roby also dropped 17 pops for the Thunder while adding 5 boards, 1 steal, and 1 block.
- Rooks gonna rook unless they go by the name of Franz. The younger of the Wagner Bros put up a magnificent 27-6-5-1 line shooting 45.8% on a rather bulky 24 FGA diet. The 1.14 FP/min average was efficient as hell with Wagner starting at SF for the Magic.
- I wrote about Anfernee Simons as one of the prime WW targets for this week, and he keeps balling proving me right. 24-1-2 with a block and 4 treys coming off the pine for Anfernee in 29 minutes. Dame sucks. CJ sucks. Anfernee, not so much. Add this young gun.
- Speaking of Dame and sucking, what about Lillard's latest stinker coming as recently as yesterday? 31 minutes on the court and all this guy could do was finish with a silly 11-6-5 contrib hitting just 33% of his 12 FGA and going 1-of-2 from the charity stripe. Yikes.
- Kristaps Porzingis was good, yet bad at the same time. The 9-5-1-0-4 line had a bit of everything but not a lot of anything. Hard to read this fool if he plays like that.
- Jalen Suggs got his thumb fractured and is expected to miss between four and eight weeks... Porzingis got banged and was ruled out mid-game yesterday with an ankle sprain, though the X-Rays came back negative... Kemba Walker will stay out of the Knicks rotation (DNP - Sucks) as HC Thibs deemed him not good enough to make the squad. LOL.