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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Tuesday, November 30
Phoenix ties franchise record with 17th straight victory defeating GSW; the Battle of Gotham ends with Brooklyn barely surviving a ref-blaming New York
Best night of the season so far that of Tuesday. The Nets and Knicks opened the showcase with a fantastic matchup in which Brooklyn looked nothing but a surefire winner... until it didn't. New York cut a large point difference, took the lead, but ultimately the Knicks Knicked their way to an L. James Harden fell short of the trip-dub (34-10-8-3) and KD wasn't incredible with a 27-5-9 and a block, but both of them entered the top-5 realm in DK's slate. No. 3? Julius Randle himself with a 24-9-8-2 stuffed line that helped for nothing.
The other two better plays of yesterday's slate of games belonged to the Phoenix Suns. CP3 put up a nice 15-6-11-5 (yes, 5 steals that is) while Deandre Ayton dub-dubbed to a 24-11-2-1-2 all-across-the-board contribution. The Suns defeated the Warriors, tied them in the standings at 18-3 each, and limited Steph to a midget 12-3-2-1-1 contribution shooting 19% on 21 FGA on the night. Phoenix, even if you keep hating and doubting the Suns, is legit as hell.
- The first player to break the Nets/Suns/Knicks top-DKFP trifecta was C.J. McCollum, whose 28-4-6-2 outing against Detroit was enough for the Blazers to beat the Pistons by 18 points on Tuesday. Portland has seemed to find a fix for Dame's slow start to the year: not playing him at all. LOL
- Shout out Jordan Poole for his phenomenal production starting at guard and putting up an efficient 28-5-3-2-1 line in his 35 minutes out there. Something similar happened with Alec Bruks--New York's new starting point guard with Kemba getting DNP'd as Thibs doesn't like his D--as the guard reached a sound 25-5-5-2-1 line.
- The Lakers won a game. Big news. Not so big as the development around Hollywood that has LeBron James getting into the health and safety protocols due to COVID-19 related stuff, potentially missing a couple of weeks of games. AD and Russ were good for a combined 48 pops, but with LBJ around I don't think these Lakers are going to go too far.
- As stupid as it sounds, Dwight Howard was probably the key to the Lakers' win against Sacto. He played 35 minutes off the pine and he put up a 12-13 dub-dub to go with 2 steals and 2 blocks on top of that. Not that you see this type of performance daily from Dwight anymore, so congrats to those banking on DaWhite.
- On the other end, King Chimezie Metu put on a show himself starting at PF and reaching a sweet 14-11 double-double in 36 minutes while stealing three rocks. The shooting was fantastic as he went 7-for-10 and committed no turnovers at all.
- Best game of the season for Cade Cunningham as he went for a murderous 26-7-1-1-3, shot 76.9% from the floor, hit 5 treys, and only dirtied his statline with his sky-high 6 TOs against Portland. Speaking of freshmen, Scottie Barnes also had a delightful outing with a 19-7-3-2-4 line doing it all facing Memphis but ultimately eating that L.
- Gotta cut some slack to Devin Book, whose outcome stank but was limited by a second-quarter injury and just 16 minutes of playing time (10-2-1 on the night for him; not that Phoenix needed much more than that). Same situation for RJ Barrett who could only play 9 minutes against cross-town rivals BKN and had to leave with a silly 4-4-1 line.
- Not so good for Buddy Hield. Our mate played 32 minutes against his almost-team Lakers and all he did was finish with a putrid 5-2-5 line shooting a shameful 14.3% on 7 FGA and turning the ball over once. Stinker. Same as that of Saddiq Bey and his 2-2-5 line in 26 minutes for Detroit with a dumb 11.1% shooting on the day.
- Rookie Jalen Suggs has avoided surgery but will still be out for a couple of weeks... Gotta keep an eye on that Devin Booker hammy and RJ Barrett non-COVID illness... Tons of players returning from injury/off-spells this Wednesday in Franz Wagner, Cole Anthony, Tyler Herro, Robert Williams, Dennis Schroder, Marcus Morris... and DeMarcus Cousins facing a potential debut with the Bucks.