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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.
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including NBA Writer of the Year, Best NFL Series, MLB Series, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!
Sunday, December 12
Kevin Durant posts season-high 51 points against Detroit after Milwaukee destroyed the Knicks in their early-morning matinée
Plenty of news coming from the New York neighborhoods on Sunday. First things first, KD showed his best version after getting fined by the NBA and cooked himself a 51-pop burger against the lowly (12 losses in a row...) Pistons. Durant holds the highest scoring tally of the year after beating Steph and his 50 points from November, finishing with the no. 1 DK score to the tune of a 51-7-9-1-2 shooting 51.6% on 31 FGA and hitting 14 of his 15 attempted freebies. Insane usage north of 42% for KD on top of that.
Not so good news for the Knicks, though, that dropped one against Milwaukee and are now on an ongoing three-game losing skid and sitting 12th in the Eastern Conference standings. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Knicks will also miss RJ Barrett and Obi Toppin for a few games after they hit the protocols leading up to Sunday's game, starting Tuesday against the Mighty Dubs. Ugh.
- LeBron looking like his 25-year-old self against Orlando to close the week. Bron finished with the second-highest DKFP score thanks to a sound 30-11-10 trip-dub with 3 blocks on top--one of them a classic chase-down swat--scoring buckets at a 60% clip in 37 minutes of playing time.
- Shouts out to Derrick White and Cade Cunningham for leading the Spurs and the Pistons and finishing as top-5 plays on the day. DW did it with a 24-8-9-4-1 stuffed near-trip-dub while Cade shot marvelously finishing 26-8-6-3-1 on 50% from the field (18 FGA) hitting 5 treys against the BKN.
- Dame Lillard finally came back and he did to play better hoops than what he'd shown earlier this year. Top-10 finish for him on a fantastic 24-11-6 performance that, it must be said, including a putrid shooting outing of just 29.4% from the floor on 17 FGA. Now imagine if that percentage goes up a bit...
- Saben Lee with the MVPR (Most Valuable Pine-Rider) Award on Sunday thanks to his 17-6-6-3-1 contribution in just 28 minutes of playing time from Detroit's bench. Three turnovers, yes, but other than that the FP/min average went all the way up to a spicy 1.46 only topped by four other players with 28+ minutes attached to their names.
- Frank Jackson was another fantastic Piston play with a 25-1-1-0-1 all-about-scoring line hitting 6 treys while keeping up a 42.1% shooting on a healthy 19 shots. Quentin Grimes was great for the Knicks starting at the SG position after RJ Barret COVID news and hitting a slate-leading/history-high 7 treys as a rookie to go with 27 pops and a 3-3-3 on dimes/rebounds/steals.
- Robert Covington with the most RoCo line ever finishing as a top-3 value play on Sunday's slate: 3 points, 5 boards, 3 dimes, 5 (!) steals, and 4 (!) blocks adorned it. He shot the rock a measly 6 times... and hit exactly one of those shots--of course, a triple.
- No true stinking top-tier players, though Mo Bamba sucked hard with a low 2-4 (with 2 blocks) in 13 minutes before leaving early; while something similar happened to Kristaps Porzingis' line as he could only reach a low 13-7-3 in 30 minutes of Dallas W basketball.
- Gary Harris logged 33 minutes starting at SG for the Magic and all he could do was finish with a 6-4-2 line, Jrue Holiday put up a disappointing 13-4-5-1 in 34 minutes, and Julius Randle was hyper-inefficient with an 8-10-7 shooting 22% on a bulky 36 minutes.
- Mo Bamba out with an ankle injury just 13 minutes into his night... Lu Dort leaving early also rolling his ankle against the Mavs... Anthony Davis missing yesterday's game entirely with left knee issues (don't seem very worrying, but we'll see)... Steph Curry available for tonight's affair with Indy but most probably resting the day... The Bulls have seven players going through protocols (Dosunmu, Stanley Johnson, Derrick Jones, Zach LaVine, Troy Brown Jr., Matt Thomas, and DeMar DeRozan. Yikes.
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