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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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Friday, December 10
Milwaukee's Giannis cooks a 41-burger in breaking Houston's league-longest W streak, the Lakers finally catch a break against OKC
Nothing surprising in finding Giannis leading a fantasy leaderboard, much less when he got to dump 41 pops on the overexcited Rockets in the day they finally surrendered and lost for the first time in a couple of weeks. Antetokounmpo dropped a full 41-17-5-3-2 packed stat line hitting 79% of the 19 FGA he attempted while hitting 71% of his rather bulky 14 freebies. Only the 5 TOs and 5 PFs put a negative on his performance, but even then he reached a ridiculously high 79 DKFP on Friday.
After losing multiple times to the Tanking Thunder earlier this season, the Lakers finally got to defeat Presti's Mob thanks to an absolute unit of a game by LeBron James. 33-5-6-3-2 on 35 minutes while hitting 4 treys, all of that with Anthony Davis missing this one as he's banged up and not near hundred percent in playing shape. Russ also played but he was rather "mediocre" given what we know he can do finishing with an 8-9-7 line and a block.
- Shout out Trae Young for trying yet ultimately failing to beat Brooklyn all by himself. Trae put up a top-3 fantasy finish in DK's full slate thanks to a 31-7-10-2 spicy line, but too bad for the Hawks there was a little someone that goes by the name of Kevin Durant who finished right behind Trae with a 31-5-6-1-3 himself edging Atlanta.
- Freddy VanVleeto with the fantastic 17-6-11-3-1 packed line shooting a putrid 30.8% on 13 FGA yet finishing as the 6th-best player on DK's leaderboard.
- Domantas Sabonis is on the trade block and he seems to be helping Indy with top-tier performances that are ultimately rising his value, I guess. Dom got a fantastic 24-10-7-1 line shooting 69%+ from the floor... though JaVale McGee put up a similar DKFP score with a 21-15-2-0-2 himself against Boston in a night in which, well, it got proven once more that non-elite big men are all equally capable. In other words: sorry Pacers, you're getting that much in return.
- Of course, nobody topped McGee's value on the day as put up a ridiculous 1.81 FP/min average in his "low" 27 minutes starting at center. Avery Bradley also started for the Lakers and finishes as the second most-valuable play of the day thanks to a sky-high, out-of-left-field, 22-2 night in which his shooting was sublime, he hit 6 treys, and also stole 4 rocks while at it.
- Good set of games by Obi Toppin, Kevin Love, and Marvin Bagley. Both came off the pine for the Knicks, the Cavs, and the Kangz finishing with 19-10-1, 18-13-4-1-1, and 15-10-2-0-1 respective dub-dubs.
- Rookie James Bouknight excelled for the barren Hornets with a sweet 24-6-1-1 outing that included 6 treys and no turnovers against the Kings. The usual starters and possession-users will be back from the protocols soon, so it's cool to see Bouk taking advantage of the chance he's been handed by COVID these days...
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander struggled against LA in his 31 minutes out there. The overall line finished at a low 11-2-4 with a block, even though he still shot a respectable 41.7% on 12 FGA. Shame on OKC failing to defeat their no. 1 victim this season in the LA Lakers.
- Pascal Siakam couldn't get his game right at all finishing with a dub-dub of 13-12 but shooting an absolutely horrific 16.7% on a super-high 18 FGA. The only thing that saved Pasky's day was the fact that he went 7-for-8 on freebies. Other than that, night to forget for Siakam.
- D'Angelo Russell missed another one for Minny with ankle soreness... Deandre Ayton missed yesterday's game against Boston with a non-COVID illness... Paul George was out due to a right elbow issue... Luka Doncic is questionable for Sunday's game at OKC after re-aggravating his left ankle injury on Friday.
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