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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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Saturday, April 10
Enes Kanter takes advantage of a spot-start to join an elite group of historic players; Gary Trent Jr. crafts a career-best performance for the Raptors
The Portland Trailblazers have endured their fair share of injuries this season. With Jusuf Nurkic out since mid-January, it was Enes Kanter's time to put on minutes on start at C for Portland. He was great, but it was obvious he would get back to riding the pine once Nurk came back. Nurkic was "load-managed" on Saturday, so Kanter started once more and had a night for the history books. Kanter's 24-30 double-double (with 2 dimes, 2 blocks, and a steal on top of that) is just the fourth 30-rebound performance since 1996 (Kevin Love, Andrew Bynum, and Dwight Howard). It is also just the 19th such game since the 1980 season, and the 13th all-time while playing 37 or fewer minutes. Crazy Kanter.
Gray Trent, who moved from Portland to Toronto prior to the deadline, had himself a day yesterday. Trent Jr. scored a career-high 44 points on Cleveland including 7 treys while keeping up a great 89% accuracy from the floor on a large 19 FGA dose. Simply put, Trent just couldn't miss. This was the first 19+ FGA game with an 86%+ FG%, and Trent also went three-for-three from the charity stripe. Not happy with that, Gary also added 7 boards, 4 dimes, and a theft. An incredible game for one of the Raptors' pillars going forward.
- Another triple-double by Russell Westbrook, and another loss for the Wizards. Beal missed Saturday's game against Phoenix, but he would probably had fixed none of the Wiz issues. Washington keeps playing old folks nightly while already out of the play-in run, so odds are they start putting more youngsters on the court on a daily basis. Keep an eye on Dani Avdija (9% rostership) and Cassius Winston (0%).
- Something similar can be said of Houston and John Wall. Nice game for Wall (30-2-7-1-1 shooting 58% from the floor), but the Rockets should be focusing more on their young guys than on washed-up vets such as Wall. With that in mind, you should be tracking the likes of Jae'sean Tate (54%), Kevin Porter Jr. (70%), and Kenyon Martin Jr (4%).
- It looks like Anthony Davis might be back in 10-to-14 days with LeBron James joining him around three weeks. The Lakers somehow defeated Brooklyn yesterday thanks to a 20-11 dub-dub in just 22 minutes of playing time. At least until the two stars are back, Drummond is the one poised to eat the most in their absence. He isn't playing a lot so far (he's had his health issues, though) but even on short runs, he is a fantasy basketball darling.
- Aleksej Pokusevski could only play eight minutes yesterday before getting injured. The Thunder are already in full tank mode and missing their best players, so with Poku out they will be forced to go even deeper down their depth chart. That means the likes of Jaylen Hoard (0%), Svi Mykhailiuk (5%), and Kenrich Williams (10%) might see an uptick in minutes and touches.
- Donovan Mitchell was fantastic for the Jazz logging 35 minutes even against the lowly Kings. Mitchell dropped 42 pops even though his shooting was rather bad (39% from the floor on 31 FGA!), though he made up for it hitting 15-of-17 freebies. The 17 FTA almost doubled those of the second-most free-throw attempters from Saturday's slate (Embiid and Sexton with 9 FTA each). Mitchell also led the slate in usage rate (46%) among players with 25+ minutes played (Durant played 24 with a 49% usage rate).
- With Kyle Lowry out since Mar. 29 and Fred VanVleet since Apr. 2, it's been all about Malachi Flynn at Toronto's point. Flynn has started the last two matches for the Raps and played 13 since the AS break. In the past five, he's logged 30+ minutes, averaged a 14-5-6-2-1 line, and just yesterday he had his best career game with a 20-2-11-2 performance shooting 57% on 14 FGA and scoring two triples. The Raptors might still make it to the play-in, but if the season goes off the rails Malachi (34%) might be the one eating the most ROS.
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