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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, May 6
The Raptors' loss to Washington kills his postseason chances as Pascal Siakam goes out with a bang and Russ keeps trying to make history before the end of the regular season
Toronto was always going to have a tough task while trying to get into the play-in picture, but yesterday's loss to Washington pretty much closed their 2021 window shut. There is virtually no way the Raps make up the four-game difference now, but that doesn't mean Siakam could put on an absolute show on Thursday, dropping a career-high 44 points to go with an 11-7-1 rest-of-line shooting 61% on 28 FGA. Russ, in other (non) news, put up another trip-dub to the tune of a 13-17-17-1 although he shot a putrid 26% on the day and turned the over 7 times (!!!) while fouling out in the OT game against Toronto.
The Battle of Los Angeles yielded a win for the Clippers and one more loss for a struggling Lakers squad that is this close to falling to the play-in. In fact, tonight's game against Portland is crucial as if the Blazers get the W they'd jump above LA for the no. 6 seed. No need for the Clips to have monster games by any of their players (both Paul George and Kawhi Leonard fell below 40 FP), as Kyle Kuzma was the player of the game (44 DKFP) but not even that could help LAL snatch the W.
- While we wait for James Harden to come back (he's said he expects to close the regular season playing at least a couple of games) we can still enjoy Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant on the same lineups. Kyrie topped the fantasy leaderboard with 72 FP on a 45-5-4-4-2 stuffed performance while KD dropped a low-but-efficient 20-9-3-1-1 on a bad shooting night (33% from the floor).
- Shout-out to über-reserve Robin Lopez, who coming off the pine for the Wiz and playing only 23 minutes still logged a great 24-7 with 3 blocks. Robin put up a fantastic 1.59 FP/min mark, the highest among all bench players on Thursday.
- Ja Morant keeps disappointing his fantasy truthers in what has been a season on a lower-than-expected level from the sophomore. Just 33 FP against Detroit just won't cut it... On the other hand, Jonas Valanciunas kept up his great year with another dub-dub to the tune of a 19-16-2 with 2 swats and 46 FP in just 31 minutes.
- Anthony Davis was forced out after just 9 minutes of playing time. The Lakers are in a perilous situation for the last week of games and facing a real possibility of going against Golden State to make it to the postseason--via play-in, that is. Very, very delicate situation.
- Dwight Powell keeps flying under the radar somehow. He played 27 second-unit minutes for the Mavs yesterday and his production was key to get the W against Brooklyn. The line read 12-10-5-1-1 in his playing time, he hit all of his 4 FGA and 4 FTA, committed no TOs, and he reached 37 FP even with a ground-level 9% (!) usage rate.
- It's going to take a miracle for the Pacers to get into the postseason because I see no way they defeat Washington in the play-in, but Caris Levert showed some promising game on Thursday with his 31-3-12-2-3 performance against Atlanta. Top-3 finish for LeVert with 63 DKF, but these Pacers will need that and then some to oust the mighty Russ-Beal pairing.
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