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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!
Friday, October 22
Night of Vindication for a bunch of second-tier players fighting their way toward the cream of the crop led by Myles Turner, Lonzo Ball, and Spencer Dinwiddie.
There was nothing surprising in finding Kevin Durant and Nikola Jokic leading the fantasy slate. We're talking about two former MVPs, so there's that. But when you check the stat lines from yesterday's set of games and find Myles Turner's 40-10 double-double (with 5 triples and 3 blocks), Lonzo Ball's 17-10-10-3-1 triple-double (no turnovers), and Spencer Dinwiddie's 34-6-9 (shooting 54.2% on a massive 24 FGA diet), you have to give all of those guys kudos while getting off your state of shock.
That's because Myles had never scored more than 31 points prior to Friday, Zo just put up his second 16-12-12 trip-dub ever (he got the first as a rookie in Nov. 2017), and Dinwiddie had to work with Bradley Beal inactive while putting together his first 35-5-5 (plus) game of his career shooting 50%+ on 20+ FGA. Not bad for a single slate.
- Getting back to KD and Jokic, it's hard to pick one as the true monster from yesterday's scheduled games. Durant put up a beastly 29-15-12-1-1 triple-double to lead the Nets past Philly. Jokic shot 73.7% from the floor on 19 shots while finishing with a 32-16-7-3-1 line that was borderline bonkers.
- Among top-drafted players in fantasy leagues, Anthony Davis almost put his fists into Dwight Howard on the bench, but it was all good for The Brow as he dropped a 22-14-3-1-2 line. Sabonis fell short of the dub-dub but was nearly at trip-dub levels with a 28-9-7 (and a block), Julius Randle stayed strong at 21-10-7-2... and Rudy Gobert needed just 32 minutes to put up one of those only-Gob lines thanks to his 16-20-2-2 outing against Sacto with a measly 7 FGA.
- Now, for the fun stuff (that is, undervalued players exploding): Shouts out to freshest Raptors Precious Achiwua (15-15 dub-dub) and Scottie Barnes (25-13-2). One arrived from Miami and the other just got drafted to the L, but neither has lost any freaking time in showing their talents north of the border. Buy hard on Barnes, folks. Pascal Siakam is still out so the ROI Scottie will provide until Pasky comes back is sky-high.
- Rookie Jalen Suggs wasn't bad, in fact, he was good, but he did it all on pure brute force shooting the rock 17 times hitting shots at a putrid 23.5% clip, yet somehow finished with a 14-7-8-2 rounded line.
- Immanuel Quickley, Kyle Kuzma, Raul Neto, Keldon Johnson, Mikal Bridges, and Gary Trent Jr. were other very valuable plays turning peanut-salaries/high-availability-rates into golden outings yesterday.
- After his career night on Thursday, Jaylen Brown hit a wall face-first yesterday putting up a silly 9-4 line even though he played 29 minutes and used 29.9% of Boston's offensive possessions while on the court. The shooting sucked (23.1% on 13 FGA) and he turned the ball over 5 times. Terry Rozier was also a high-salaried, very disappointing player from yesterday's slate shooting just 5 shots and hitting one of them for a ridiculously bad 6-2-2-1 outing, though he could only log 23 minutes on the game.
- No injuries happened yesterday, so we are happy about that. That doesn't mean things aren't murky on some fronts, with Joel Embiid and Terry Rozier doubtful for Sunday, and all of Darius Garland, Kyle Lowry, and Danilo Gallinari questionable for Saturday's games.
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