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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Thursday, December 9
Utah destroys Philadelphia while both Nuggets and Lakers fall to subpar squads in San Antonio's and Memphis' respectively
The Jazz put on a Thursday show by defeating Philly with a sound margin of victory. Utah was led by Rudy Gobert on the day as the Frenchman went on to put up an unstoppable 17-21 dub-dub with a dime and two blocks to spare. No need for Donovan Mitchell to do a lot, though he still contributed his good 22 poops with 5 treys baked into that scoring tally, while Hassan Whiteside was sublime as he reached a strong 14-10-1-0-2 line in just 15 minutes of playing time.
The top-2 players of the slate, though, both ate an L along with their teammates. Jokic (who else...) finished as the best play of the day with a ridiculous 22-13-10 trip-dub to go with a couple of thefts and a block, and LBJ put up his 100th triple-double with a 20-10-11-4-2 that wasn't enough to lift LA past the Griz. AD and Russ played 34+ minutes yet did nothing, more tha latter than the former.
- Rare double-trip-dub from Jokic and Bron as they both topped 1.67+ FP/min on average given their playing time and final DKFP tallies. Jokic, though, turned the ball over just twice compared to Bron's 5 TOs on the day.
- Shouts out to Spurs youngins Dejounte Murray and Derrick White for filling that fantasy top-5 on Thursday. No bulky dub-dubs for them but packed lines finishing at 20-8-9-1 and 23-6-4-1-2 respectively. The shooting from White was incredible with the guard hitting 64.3% of his healthy 14 FGA while going 3-for-4 from the charity stripe.
- Someone other than Jokic has to put up numbers for such a barren-of-warm-bodies squad as that of the Nugs, and that's where Aaron Gordon enters the picture. 25 pops for AG without a single trey to go with 6 boards, 3 dimes, and one swat. 75% from the field on 12 FGA and just 1 TO. Nothing to hate.
- As mentioned in the intro, Hassan was the value of the day mostly because he just dropped the second 15-or-fewer-minutes dub-dub of the year to the tune of a 15-10 against the 76ers... after also having the first one back on Nov. 7 when he finished 12-10 against the Magic in just 14 minutes out there on the court.
- Three more Spurs to name-drop in today's column because of their fantastic outcomes: Lonnie Walker with the 21-4-3 (and 3 treys), Drew Eubanks at 14-6 (with a block and a triple), and Keita Bates-Diop (starting at PF and playing 31 minutes) with a nice 7-9-2-2 outing.
- Kyle Anders could only log 16 off-the-pine minutes with the Griz on Thursday, but he was still good to reach a sound 7-4-4-0-2 all-around contribution in helping Memphis defeat LA on a very sunny day for the Griz.
- No real stinkers on the day, but some disappointing lines indeed. Russ' 9-6-7 with a block and a putrid 33% shooting on just 9 FGA was ridiculously low-volume for him... though he kept up his turnover-prone game with 6 TOs in 34 minutes. Yikes.
- Tyrese Maxey was kinda bad at 11-3-2-2, Embiid at least put up a near-dub-dub with a 19-9-2-3-1, but Andre Drummond was a bad-smelling dude with a 0-3-1 line in just 10 minutes of playing time. Man...
- Pat Beverley is back and available for Minny tonight... Dillon Brooks hit the protocols and will miss some time... Jaylen Brown has been ruled out of Friday's Boston game... Keldon Johnson didn't play yesterday nor will do tomorrow either... Onyeka Okongwu is going through a G League stint and should be back fit for the Hawks come Xmax time.
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