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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Saturday, November 20
Houston keeps piling losses up (it's now 14 straight) as Damian Lillard puts on his first show of the year against Philly while Minny disintegrates Memphis by 43 (!) points in a 138-95 trouncing
The Rockets stink. That's pretty much all we know about this Texan squad of ballers if they can even be considered that. The Knicks could only win by seven and needed everything from off-the-pine reserve Alec Burks, but they that and they went away with the W. Anyway, no NYK player topped Burks' 44 DKFP nor bested a top-10 in the fantasy leaderboard, so that tells you all you need to know about this game. Another mother loss, the one coming from Memphis as the Grizz could do absolutely nothing to stop the now (seemingly) unstoppable (?) Wolves led yesterday by a surprisingly good D'Angelo Russell (28-4-5 shooting 60% on 15 FGA).
Moving on to individual performances... Finally, after more than 15 games played, Dame got things right once for all and put up a fireworks-worthy show to the tune of a 39-point night in which he hit 6 treys, added 7 boards, and swatted a slate-leading 3 shots. LOL. No that he did enough (56 DKFP) to surpass Giannis in what probably was the most unexplainable outcome of the year to date: 74 FP from a 32-20-5-2-3 line... in 31 (!!!) minutes of playing time.
- Another good game from Jayson Tatum!? What is this!? Tatum dumped 33 points on OKC as Boston defeated the Thunder aided by those pops and 8 boards, 5 dimes, and a block from the 'Tum. Not much more to the Celtics, though, as the next-best player was Schroeder with 43 FP followed by Horford with 38.
- LaMelo (15-10-11-2-1 shooting a putrid 27.8% from the field, though) putting up trip-dubs with gusto for Charlotte while fellow Hornet Miles Bridges finished with another booming performance reading 35-10-3 and enlarged his soon-to-be-filled bag a little bit more.
- Low minutes for Domantas Sabonis (22) and Clint Capela (24) but very tasty outings for the two big men as the former finished at 20-10-6-2 and the latter with a 20-15-1 line and a couple of blocks. Of course, nobody could best Giannis' 20 rebounds (WTF).
- Always-bummed Enes Kanter played just 17 minutes off the Celtics bench but was very valuable for fantasy GMs out there with shares of the Turk. 10-10-0-1-2 line for a slate-leading 1.76 FP/min average that topped all players with fewer than 20 MP on the night.
- The most valuable play of the day was R.J. Hampton, he of the Orlando Magic and their now-crowded backcourt. 28 minutes on the second unit for RJ who dumped 19 on Milly (15 of them on 5 treys) adding a 5-9-1 rest-of-line on a very efficient day shooting the rock (6-of-12 from the field, 2-for-2 from the charity stripe) with only 2 TOs.
- Danilo Gallinari is still alive and healthy (!!!) so he did his part in yesterday's game for the Hawks, stayed sitting on the bench, came to the court here and there logging 32 minutes, and put up a nice 16-6-2-3-1 line. Of course, he'll end hitting the nursery and sitting on the shelves at some point, but you can take advantage of his availability and upside while they last.
- Andre Drummond's game is starting to get very seriously worrying. Another start with Joel Embiid out, another stinker of a game with a silly 6-4-3-1-1 line in 23 minutes. The Sixers have sunk without JoJo (they ate an L yesterday) and they better have him back soon enough because, as much as it pains me to say it, Dru ain't helping them just one bit these days.
- Ja Morant is so good to be true until he's not. That happened yesterday as the Grizzlies got demolished by KAT and the Wolves Bunch and all the PG could do was finish with a silly 11-point, 5-dime, 1-steal line. Ugh. Only 9 FGA for Mo of which just 3 of them went through the rim without a single triple to his name. Better nights ahead, we have to assume.
- Mitchell Robinson had to leave early (bruised nose) and didn't come back for the Knicks... Steph and Dray rested their asses a couple of nights ago and are off the injury report for tonight's affair with Toronto... Iggy, on the contrary, is out with a banged-up right knee... Vooch will remain out of Chicago's game Sunday as he's still going through the COVID protocols... Duncan Robinson got his knee caught in the middle and couldn't return to the court after leaving it early.