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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!
Saturday, May 15
Miami chooses (?) to play Bucks in the first round after surrendering their game by resting Jimmy Butler; the Knicks win and get the no. 4 seed entering Sunday; Lakers apply pressure on a Blazers team that could fall to the play-in today
It's here, folks. The season final is about to happen, and every single team will be part of the festivities tonight! Focusing on what happened yesterday, the main results came from the victories of the Los Angeles Lakers over Indiana (LAL could escape the play-in, Indy is in a three-way tie for the no. 8 seed with Charlotte and Washington), the Knicks (now in possession of home-court advantage over Atlanta, though tied on the standings), and Phoenix (still able to get the no. 1 seed with a W and a Utah L on Sunday).
As far as individual performances go, and as expected, there was a mixture of great players putting on great numbers, and out-of-left-field guys doing so while backing up resting limited/resting players. That's why Julius Randle led the slate, but also why Miles Bridges, Bruce Brown, or Jalen McDaniels finished as top-15 fantasy plays. Some things never change.
- Monster game by Randle for the Knicks in a much-needed victory for New York if they want to host the majority of games in the first round of the playoffs. Randle logged a triple-double to the tune of a 33-10-13-1 line, hit 4 treys, racked up a sky-high 35.7% usage rate, and closed Saturday as the best player on the slate with his 72 FP.
- With Domantas Sabonis out, Indiana had to rely on a pretty good Caris LeVert, whose outing was good for 57 FP thanks to a 28-5-12-2-1 stuffed line that could have yielded even more points had it not been for the silly 7 (!) TOs committed by the guard in the L against the Lakers.
- Shout-out to Miles Bridges, who came off the pine for the Hornets yet finished as a top-5 player on Saturday with a great 30-5-4-1 performance that included 5 triples, a sound 57% shooting from the floor, no turnovers at all, and a total of 47 DKFP.
- As many as 12 players scored 4+ triples on Saturday, with 8 of them reaching 5. Nobody crossed that mark, but it was rather nice to have five reserves leading the slate at it. All of Devonte' Graham, Miles Bridges, Goran Dragic, Jeff Green, and Bryn Forbes reached those heights yesterday.
- In an already-lost season for the Celtics, the Beantowners found gold in center Luke Kornet yesterday as he turned out to be one of the most valuable plays of the day considering how under-the-radar he's been all year long. Kornet dropped 12 pops on Minny while adding 6 boards, 3 dimes, a steal, and 4 (!) swats to his line.
- Other lowly-coveted players with sound games: Gorgui Dieng, Drew Eubanks, and Devin Vassell from the Spurs, and Nerlens Noel who started at C for the Knicks and put up a great 8-11-0-2-5 line.
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