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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, November 5
A delightful night for New York as the Knicks get Milwaukee ass-whooped winning by 15 points while Brooklyn wins its fourth straight by dropping 96 on lowly Detroit
Perhaps defeating a team in such a rebuilding state as the Pistons find themselves into isn't so fantastic. I know. But Brooklyn's W marked their fourth consecutive victory and both Kevin Durant and James Harden played to the levels we expected before the year started. KD finished the day in DK's top-3 thanks to a sound 29-10-5 line with a block and shooting 44.4% on 27 (!!!) FGA, while The Beard put up a low trip-dub of 13-10-10-2-1 hitting three treys to finish in the top-7 even though he went on to shoot a horrid 20% on a bulky 20 FGA.
The man of the day, though, plays for the Manhattan Club: Julius Randle played only 33 minutes in the trouncing of the Bucks yet he was able to become the no. 1 player of Friday's slate thanks to an extraordinary 32-12-4 dub-dub to which he added a couple of blocks. The Randlewus went to the line 10 times hitting 7 of those freebies and hit exactly half of his 22 FGA, three triples included. Both Brooklyn and New York sit at 6-3 after yesterday's games and occupy the no. 4 and no. 5 seeds in the East respectively.
- Two more players other than Randle and Durant hit 50+ DKFP yesterday: Dejounte Murray for the Spurs with a 20-11-7-3-1 packed line on a silly-low 23.4% usage rate, and Richaun Holmes for the Kings with a ridiculous 23-20-2 double-double that helped him join the select two-player 20-20 club this season (Deandre Ayton, Jonas Valanciunas).
- Paul George doesn't know how not to excel this season: another double-double for him, and a performance close to the trip-dub as he closed the game against Minny with a 21-11-6-3 in which the only blemish were the zero treys and 20% shooting.
- Youngins LaMelo Ball and Cole Anthony are just ridiculous these days. Both had to eat an L, yes, but they put on spectacular games that lifted them to top-5 and top-8 DK finishes on Friday. LaMelo did it all with a 24-3-13 shooting 64.3% (!!!) while Cole felt just short of the dub-dub with his 21-9-6-2 line. Both guys hit 4 treys and while going perfect from the free-throw line.
- Derrick Rose, still widely available in re-draft leagues, put on a masterful off-the-pine outing against Milwaukee: 23 points in 31 minutes to go with 8 rebounds, 4 dimes, and 2 steals was the line. No turnovers even on a healthy 24% usage rate.
- A couple of underrated Warriors made the top-3 in my ROI leaderboards: Gary Payton II feels inevitable and he put up a bulky 17-6-3-1 line in just 18 minutes for a 1.75 FP/min mark while teammate Nemanja Bjelica dropped a stuffed 13-7-3-2-1 line himself in the same playing time for an even better 1.79 FP/min register.
- Not the greatest of performances by Ivica Zubac on the turnover-front (5 of them with 2 PF on top of that) but otherwise a pretty nice 31-minute outing with a 14-14 dub-dub, a couple of steals, and a block to spare. Zuba, of course, is still the most underrated and overlooked player to ever step on a pro basketball court.
- Ja Morant finally put up a semi-dud (24 DKFP) yesterday to the tune of a super-low 11-6-4 line against Washington. It just wasn't the day for him nor the Grizzlies as a whole, with Ja's 0.80 FP/min (he played 30 minutes) being one of the lowest efficiency marks of the slate...
- ...other than Damian Lillard and his ridiculous 0.75 FP/min average. Ugh. Dame played a massive 38 minutes but all he could do was shoot 15.4% on 13 FGA to reach a paltry 4--4-11-1-1 line on the day. The USG% sat at an unreasonable 18.5 percent, and almost 10 games into the season Dame should better be righting his wrongs... or it might be too late for him to force Portland into working out a trade to boost the franchise chances. Is Dame forcing his way out of the PDX?
- Nothing set in stone, but Pascal Siakam could return next week, per HC Nick Nurse. Jrue Holiday was the one returning on Friday as he played a low 21 minutes off the pine in a game without much history to it, thus the eased-in approach with his comeback.
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