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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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Thursday, April 29
The night belongs to a couple of Kevins as Durant put up 42 in Brooklyn's win over Indiana... and Porter Jr. drops a career-high 50-wings for the Rockets in defeating the Bucks (!)
To no one's surprise, Kevin Durant is looking better by the day and hasn't stopped racking up fantasy points in his last four games since missing a few of late. He's already playing 36+ minutes a night, starting games, keeping up his absolutely ridiculous 65+ true shooting percentage... and yesterday he did it all with a 42-3-10-1 line, 2 triples, a 67% shooting from the floor, and a perfect 8-for-8 from the free-throw line. Another day in the office for KD.
Not as expected, though, was the out-of-left-field explosion by Kevin Porter Jr. with the lowly Rockets facing a tough Bucks squad. KPJ, if you remember, was traded to Houston for peanuts after he caused a little bit of trouble in Cleveland, forcing the Cavs to basically getting rid of him. Now, this looks like a very real potential steal by Houston: KPJ dropped a 50-burger on Milwaukee to go with 5 boards, 11 dimes, and a block. Impossible great shooting with 9 treys to his name hitting 61% of his 26 FGA. Not even the 5 TOs could stop Porter Jr. from becoming the no. 1 fantasy player of the slate thanks to a monster 78 DKFP tally.
- Kristaps Porzingis came back after missing a few games, and he went down injured after playing just above 20 minutes against Detroit. We don't know a lot yet, but it looks like he's avoided a major injury, though. Giannis, on the other hand, could only log 46 seconds of playing time before getting out. Not that it concerns a lot with Milwaukee pretty much holding onto their no. 3 seed and more focused on making it healthy to the playoffs than anything else--precautionary measures.
- Steph Curry took advantage of Washington being out of yesterday's slate to drop 37 pops and matching Bradley Beal's 31.3 PPG on the season. Beal is still at the top, though, but the difference is so ridiculously minuscule that this is going to be a fun thing to track ROS with both the Warriors and the Wiz fighting for their play-in lives.
- Season to forget that of the Raptors, which fell a bit more than expected after suffering a ton to start the year and are on the verge of missing on the play-in, let alone the postseason. With Pascal Siakam putting up daily duds such as yesterday's 22-FP outing (11-5-2-1) it's not that the miracle seems to be around the corner for Toronto to make a run in the remaining weeks of play.
- What about Alize Johnson!? The Net logged 32 minutes off the pine and put up just the 19th 20-20 game of the season with a 20-21-3 line and 2 blocks on top of that. Brooklyn is obviously built around its three superstars, but they'll need this type of contribution from their role players in order to get that chip.
- Tim Hardaway Jr. started for the Mavs, played 36 minutes, and all he did was dropping a massive 42 points on Detroit's foreheads. Absolutely fantastic game ty Timmy, who added a low 1-3-1 rest-of-line to that scoring outburst going 10-for-10 from the line. Third start in the last four games for Hardaway, who is still available in 43% of Yahoo leagues.
- Another guard available in 45% of leagues: Ricky Rubio. Rubio has been far from his best self this season in Minny but he's getting it right of late. With D'Angelo Russell coming off the bench, Ricky is starting and he had a great 26-6-6-2 night yesterday hitting all of his 7 FTA and scoring 5 treys on top of that. That line doesn't show the real Rubio, which is a much lower-scoring player, but he can still give you some 7-3-5-1 baseline nightly for around 20 FP if you're PG-needy and managing in a deep league.
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