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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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Embiid, Donovan, and Harden make for a three-way tie at the top of the fantasy leaderboard.
While I'm not entirely sure if this is the first time it has happened this season, I am almost convinced it must be the case. Three players logged the exact same (barring decimals) fantasy points (DK scoring) in the same slate on Tuesday, those being JoJo, DoMi, and Harden all at 62 FP. And most interestingly, all of them did it in a particular way.
Embiid dub-dubbed on points and rebounds with a 25-17-6-2-2 line. Mitchell based his performance on scoring, putting up a 36-4-9-1-2 line. Harden contributed all across the board with a 24-6-12-2-5 stuffed line. The similarities, though, are clear: all three players racked up numbers in all categories, finish with at least a token in all of the PTS/RBD/AST/STL/BLK columns.
- Not mentioned above: Nikola Vucevic. Vuc finished 0.25 DKFP short of reaching 62 FP, but we're serious here so I couldn't include him in that select group. To be fair, though, Niko also put up numbers in all categories finishing the day 27-15-4-2-2.
- More surprising was the appearance of Josh Hart in the top-10 players of the night thanks to an impossibly long run of 40 minutes of playing time for the Pels off the bench. Hart was thus able to reach a 20-17-3-1-2 line even though his usage fell below 20% (19.4 usage rate), turning him into the best reserve of Tuesday's slate by far.
- Six point-guards led the slate in usage rate, with marks between 39.5% (Lillard) and 32.5% (Elfrid Payton). All of them played above-average in terms of fantasy points per minute, but the raw scores fluctuated between a high-mark of 62 FP (Mitchell) and a low-mark of 29 (Payton).
- The Pelicans destroyed Houston, Zion only played 20 minutes getting into foul trouble (same as Ingram), and Hart/Willy took advantage of it. The most interesting stat to come from this game? Zion led the slate with a +29 plus/minus, and Eric Gordon trailed all players involved in it with a -40 (!!!) mark. Even then, Gordon finished with 30 FP and a 23-1-3 line with a block to spare. Not entirely bad for his fantasy GMs.
- Only 13 minutes of playing time for Dwight Howard, now a limited-backup for Embiid, but a rather productive playing time with the best FP/min mark among bench players with 10+ MP. An 8-9-4 line with two swats did it for him.
- If you read my content, you know I was a David Nwaba truther as a WW-target not long ago. Welp... Nwaba played 25 minutes yesterday, and yes, nothing was working for Houston, but Nwaba didn't exactly help matters get better. All he did was scoring two points and swatting two shots for a measly 0.23 FP/min, but far the worst per-minute performance of Tuesday.
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