Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Thursday, April 1

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.

Thursday, April 1

LaMarcus Aldridge kicks his Nets tenure off starting at C in a win against Charlotte while Victor Oladipo disappoints in his first night as a Heat

Night for debutants that of Thursday. LaMarcus Aldridge, acquired by Brooklyn after getting bought out by the San Antonio Spurs, couldn't have had a better first night as a Net as coach Steve Nash handed him the start at the C spot. Aldridge went on to put up a nice 11-9-6-2-1 stuffed line in his 30 minutes of playing time, and his 38 FP on the day were actually a top-5 performance for him this season in which has been a rather low-performing year for LMA.

Victor Oladipo debuted for another Eastern Conference contender, the Miami Heat, and he was limited to just 23 minutes in which he was rather mediocre. The line looks relatively good for the short run (6-3-5-2) but he actually finished with only 20 FP and an average 0.82 FP/min mark. The shooting was horrid at just 25% from the floor on a paltry 8 FGA diet. Dipo better level up his game if Miami wants to make a serious run this upcoming postseason.

• Russell Westbrook put up a trip-dub on Thursday to the tune of a 16-11-12 line. That was great, but as is often the case with Russ, it sucked for the Wizards on the large picture: Washington fell to the Pistons by almost 30 points... Russ is a must-have fantasy player, obviously, but not so surely a real-life asset these days.
• Two players with MVP candidacies faced off yesterday, and while Kawhi Leonard got the better of Nikola Jokic on an individual basis, it was Denver who got away with a W. Kawhi had a top-4 performance with 52 FP in 39 minutes (24-12-4-2-1) while Jokic could only reach 34 FP with a 14-7-7 line (and a block) in his 36 minutes of playing time.

• Thursday turned into an all-Philly day for fantasy GMs out there. And I'm not talking of those having the likes of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Tobias Harris. JoJo is out injured, and Ben/Tobi played only 25 and 15 minutes respectively. The mojo was to be found in Dwight Howard (18-15-1-1-2 in 26 minutes), Shake Milton (27-5-4-1 in 28 min.), Seth Curry (19-4-4-2 in 24 min.), and Danny Green (11-6-2-3-1 in 26 min.).
• Another fantastic debut we got to watch yesterday: James Johnson's Pelicans one. With all of Zion, Lonzo, and Ingram sitting out, Johnson started at the PF position and dropped a 17-3-2 line with 2 blocks to go in just 28 minutes on the court for a precise 1.00 FP per minute on the court. He'll be bench-fodder once Williamson returns, but he's a good vet to have around.

• First truly great game from Wendel Carter Jr. donning Orlando's threads: 21-12 dub-dub with a couple of dimes and a block to spare. He played 31 minutes off the pine, but odds are he ends in the starting lineup sooner rather than later. Carter Jr. is still available in 25%+ of Yahoo leagues.
• Lou Williams, in his hometown-debut for the Hawks, stunk. He logged 22 minutes being part of the second unit and all he could do with those ticks was score 7 pops, hand out 5 dimes, and pull down 2 boards shooting a mediocre 30% on 10 FGA. Not gonna cut it with those numbers, though he might be a relatively good player to roster for those GMs in deeper leagues (available in 60% of Yahoo leagues).

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