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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Tuesday, December 7
Brooklyn comes back from a 17-point deficit to defeat Dallas; the Lakers blast Boston for a 15-point win in the latest episode of the franchises' rivalry
The Mavs can't play much worse basketball than they have this season. On Tuesday, and even running Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis for 37 and 31 minutes of playing time, they dropped their third game in a row and eighth in the past 10 games they've played. Both James Harden and Kevin Durant topped those minutes for BKN logging 42 and 41 respectively, yes, but that helped the Nets edging Dallas with the Beard leading DK's small slate of games thanks to nearly a trip-dub 23-9-12 outing with a block baked into it.
The Lakers finally had an all-Big-3 game in which AD led the way with a 17-16-3-2-2 packed line while Russ and LBJ followed him with top-10 finishes among all eligible players, the former with a dub-dub and the latter with a 30-4-5 outcome shooting 68.4% from the floor. Boston is an absolute rollercoaster of a team, and other than Jayson Tatum and his 34-8-3-1-1 line (hitting 59.1% of his attempts) no other Beantowner finished in the top-20 fantasy leaderboard.
- Even though there were no outstanding players from the Celtics other than Tatum, it's funny to find all three of Al Horford, Marcus Smart, and Robert Williams III all finish on back-to-back-to-back ranked positions with 7--8-2-2, 6-4-6-3, and 13-4-1-1-1 lines respectively against the Lakers.
- Shouts out to R.J. Barrett for finally righting his wrongs and having a 32-burger that included scoring 7 treys against the Spurs. RJB added 5 boards, 2 dimes, 2 steals, and hit 55% of all of his 20 FGA to go with a 3-for-4 freebie success on the day.
- Ridiculously efficient game by Mitchell Robinson for the Knicks thanks to his bulky 11-14-0-2-3 line off the pine playing just 22 minutes against San Antonio. Robinson shot a low volume of 6 shots hitting 4 of them and going 3-of-4 from the charity stripe. Just one turnover to his name on a below-average 17.3% usage rate.
- In such a small three-game slate there weren't a lot of opportunities for out-of-left-field valuable players to pop up. In fact, Barrett and Robinson led that leaderboard. Other than them, James Johnson was key for Brooklyn's win over Dallas thanks to a solid 12-4-4-1-1 low-but-stuff contribution playing 25 minutes off the Nets pine for a 1.12 FP/min average.
- Keita Bates-Diop put on a 16-minute show for the Spurs in which he was able to reach 19 DKFP for a nice 1.17 FP/min. I know, that's nothing mind-blowing, but again, the slate sucked a bit so it's not that we had tons of fireworks...
- Jakob Poeltl was good for a top-14 finish on the day thanks to his 13-8-5 line with a slate leading (tied with Mitch Rob) 3 blocks on the Knicks. Battle of biggie boys, that one.
- Al Horford with the disappointing outing for the Celtics, same as Dennis Schroeder (10-1-5-1). Keldon Johnson (5-5-1-1) put up a dud hampering San Antonio's chances at an upset while Tim Hardaway and Jalen Brunson didn't help the Mavs at all either.
- Maxi Kleber with the ultimate stinker playing 16 minutes off the bench and finishing with a 0-1-0-0-0 getting this close to buying a ticket to Club Trillion.
- Tyrese Haliburton left the injury report and will be available for Sacramento this Wednesday... Jabari Parker remained out Tuesday in Los Angeles... CJ McCollum with the collapsed lung and an indefinitely-out tag going forward... Dame is expected to remain out for at least three games, which amounts to another week of play for his comeback at the soonest.
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