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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Monday, April 12
All eyes are on Golden State as Stephen Curry puts on a show carrying GSW to a W against a Denver Nuggets franchise that finds itself holding its breath after Jamal Murray was forced out with a seemingly serious knee injury late in the game
Let's get rid of the bad news before we move on to the good stuff. The Nuggets have dropped a couple of games in a row (Boston on Sunday, GSW yesterday) and as if that wasn't bad enough, they might have lost something even more important: starting PG Jamal Murray. Murray had to be carried off the court late on Monday's game with a left knee injury, and by the look of things, Murray might be seriously hurt. I'm writing this at 4 am ET in the morning, so we still don't have any news regarding Murray's MRI, but this could indeed be a low blow for Denver's title aspirations if Murray misses the remainder of the season. Let's hope that's not the case.
Now, on the brighter side of things: God bless Steph. This man knows no limits, folks. Steph carried the whole squad once more and in a freaking 53-point effort Curry also became the all-time leading scorer of the Warriors franchise. Bonkers night for Steph, that is. Curry logged a 53-6-4 line, shot 58% from the floor and 94% from the line (40 combined attempts)... and hit 10 treys against the Nugs! A night to remember for him and the Warriors.
- Something was in the air, for sure, because Draymond Green had a great performance that surely pleased his fantasy GMs: top-15 player in Monday's slate thanks to a neat 18-7-7-4 line on an incredibly low 13% usage rate. No other Warrior topped 25 FP yesterday, so yes, you get an idea of how crucial Curry (and Dray to a lesser extent) is for this team.
- Both Donovan Mitchell (42) and De'Aaron Fox (43) dropped more than 40 pops on Washington and New Orleans respectively. None of the two topped 6 in any other cat, but both finished inside the top-6 players eligible yesterday and even on 39-minute runs they reached an efficiency of 1.47 and 1.59 FP/min. Not bad.
- Joel Embiid is probably out of the MVP run with the ample time he's missed recently, but now that he's back he's truly at it again. Just 26 minutes on the court against Dallas, but a slate-leading 1.93 FP/min mark and 50 FP on the day with a sweet 36-7-2-1 line going 14-of-15 from the charity stripe and committing only one TO on a stupid 44% usage rate. Jeez.
- Mo Harkless--yes, the one and only Mo Harkless you know--started for the Kings and in a super-large 35-minute run he was able to drop a 15-3-5-2 line on the Pels. The Kings stink a bit, and Harless isn't going to become a league-winner player overnight, but at least he's providing some surprising value out there.
- Another bad team, the Rockets, dropped one to the no. 2 Western Conference team in Phoenix. Not a truly bad performance overall, though, with Kevin Porter Jr. playing a monster 40 minutes and filling his bag with 54 FP to the tune of a great 22-5-14 dub-dub to which he added a couple of thefts. The 4 TOs were kinda high but didn't impact his outcome at all because he was sublime at everything. Great building block this KPJ if he can stay out of off-the-court trouble.
- Now for the bad: Ben Simmons is definitely cooked. I just don't get it. He's gone from the top echelon to a putrid level of performance--the line read 8-6-7-1 yesterday and all he did was attempting 6 FGA. Some other duds came from Andre Drummond (3-10-0-1-1), R.J. Barrett (7-3-3-2-1 shooting 18%), and Tobias Harris (10-4-4-1-2).
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