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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.
Tuesday, December 14
No biggest story on the night than Steph getting to the top of the career 3pt-made leaderboard. Shout-out to the Chef for cooking it out there
We here stan. Stan for greatness, is what I'm saying. Salute to Steph Curry, who even though just putting up enough goodies for a "bad" top-15 finish on DK's slate of games hit 5 treys in his 22-point outing, more than enough to overtake Ray Ray in the sniper leaderboards and sitting atop now--and for like the next 40 or 50 years. Yessir!
Curry's friend-or-foe, who knows, Kevin Durant was the actual leader of Tuesday's slate but he needed three (!) OTs against the Raptors to reach that point and his 72+ DKFP in 48 minutes of play ultimately putting up a trip-dub reading 34-13-11 (with a block) while navigating the late announcement of James Harden hitting the protocols.
- Small slate of games with a ton of overtimes and players hitting the COVID-shelves, something that is turning into a little bit of a worrying issue and a potential headache for the NBA. Makes sense to find KD, Chris Paul, FVV, Dame, etc, etc... at the top of the leaderboard as all of them played in OT games.
- Kudos to Julius Randle for finishing in the top-10 without going to OT, the only such player in that group not helped by those tasty extra periods. Randle did his 31-7-3-2 cooking in 37 minutes though the Knicks, of course, dropped one more game this time to the record-setting Curry's Warriors.
- Draymond Green with the out-of-left-field top-11 finish and a packed line reading 8--11-7-1-3 shooting 50% on 6 FGA and playing only 32 minutes on the night. Much more impressive, even on bonus minutes? Rook Scottie Barnes with his 23-12-5 dub-dub for the loser Raps even having the chance to hit a final heave that missed the net by half an inch with the buzzer blaring.
- Do you know David Duke? He of the Nets finished with the stupid 10-13-3-2-2 dub-dub playing 38 minutes for a depleted Brooklyn squad. Do you know Kessler Edwards? He put up another double-double for the BKN with a 17-10-2-2 and 3 treys on 44 (!) minutes of playing time. Of course, you know who the top-two value plays of the slate were...
- Blake Griffin with the phoenix renaissance finishing with a huge (for what he's done this silly season) 13-5-6-2 effort in helping Brooklyn snatch that W. That said, Patty Mills was even better thanks to his 30-4-2-1 with 7 triples on Toronto on a ridiculous 43-minute dose of play.
- Shouts out to Nemanja Bjelica (14-4-4) and Kevin Knox (9-7-1-1) for both hitting tasty fantasy bounties while playing 20 or fewer minutes on the night. Not bad, that efficiency.
- The hell was Evan Fournier doing yesterday out there? Starting on the wing, all FouFouFou did was play 29 minutes in which he could just dump a 2-1-0-0-1 line on Golden State. Was he just mesmerized watching Curry achieving a historical feat? Hmmm...
- JaVale McGee (4-7), Cam Thomas (4-1-3), and Mitchell Robinson (2-2) were absolute disasters on Tuesday even though the first two got ample chances on OT games while the latter could even break for more than 0.50 FP/min...
- The Bulls are off the schedule until Sunday, Brooklyn just lost James Harden, Milly will miss Giannis, the Lakers waved goodbye to Monk and Dwight, the Wiz lost Drip Kiz Kuzma, etc... All due to COVID. The league is about to hit the very real moment of deciding whether or not to pause the season for a week or two leading up to/after Xmas.
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