RADIO
Welcome to the RotoBaller NBA Recap. In this feature, we will highlight a few key fantasy basketball takeaways from the games played during the past week. These viewpoints can be both positive and negative and will hopefully help to provide insight into different roster moves you should consider making.
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.
Without further ado, let's get right into the last week of 2021 games and try to figure out how to take advantage of what we saw transpire.
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including NBA Writer of the Year, Best NFL Series, MLB Series, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!
Monday, February 1st
Up-and-coming guys shine bright as they're handed larger opportunities
More than anything else on Monday, we watched a lot of second-level players excel while carrying heavier loads for their squads. Jarrett Allen started for Cleveland on a Drummond resting day, and he put up a 23-18 line dub-dub with 5 blocks to go with. Malik Monk reached 40 minutes of playing time in Charlotte's OT win over Miami and scored a career-high 36 points including hitting 9 treys while keeping up a 61+ percent shooting on a healthy 18 FGA.
Nassir Little started at SF for the Blazers and was arguably the best value of the day thanks to a 30-6-1-1-2 stuffed line in just 29 minutes. Similarly, Keldon Johnson was tremendous for the Spurs and in 30 minutes of run he was able to put up a double-double to the tune of 25 points and 10 boards to go with 3 dimes, a steal, and a swat.
- Speaking of Malik Monk, he became the sixth player all-season to hit 9+ triples in a single game, along with Danny Green, Steph Curry, CJ McCollum, Zach LaVine, and Terry Rozier. He is the only one to do it coming off the bench.
- Richaun Holmes has been starting games all year long, but his 17-10 line with 6 blocks made for one of his best performances of the season. He also shot 85+ percent on 7 FGA while hitting 5 of the 7 freebies he attempted in just 33 minutes of playing time.
- Eric Gordon, riding the pine for Houston, had a monster shooting night on Monday. He scored a slate-leading (min. 10 FGA) 2.08 points per shot on 12 FGA, reaching 25 pops on the day hitting 5 triples while at it, and a 66.7 FG% on the day.
- On the other hand, Hornets starter PJ Washington couldn't hit a shot to save his life. He closed the day 3-for-12 and his 6 points on such a dose of shots amounted to a paltry 0.5 points per shot.
- The Rockets demolished OKC and John Wall, in a short run of 21 minutes, was über efficient putting up a 1.88 average FP/min thanks to his packed 18-6-5-2-1 line in that time. It's the fourth-most FP/min a player has averaged this season while logging 20-to-22 minutes of playing time.
- At the other end of the spectrum, Dorian Finney-Smith started for Dallas and in a massive 37-minute run all he could do was reaching 15 FP to the tune of a 5-5-1-1 performance that sucked for everyone with shares of the forward... Dorian was the only player with 35+ minutes on Monday to not score 10+ points.
Tuesday, February 2nd
Fred Vanvleet puts together a franchise-night to remember for the Raptors
FVV is not a bad basketball player, but he's definitely not someone you'd expect to drop 50+ points any given day. That's what happened on Tuesday, though, when Freddy exploded for 54 points and thus turned into the highest-scoring Raptor in franchise history, beating DeMar DeRozan's prior-highest mark of 52 set in 2018. As I said, quite a surprising outing from FVV whose best scoring performance to date was his 36-point game against Miami last August in Orlando's bubble.
Adding to VanVleets exploits was Kyle Lowry, who got one of the three Tuesday's triple-doubles thanks to a sweet 14-10-10-4 line. Curry, once more, proved the lone bright light in Golden State as not even a massive 38-point, 11-board, 8-dime, 3-steal night was able to help the Warriors get a W against Boston. Long season this one for those in San Fran.
- Staying with FVV, his 11 triples marked a season-high league-wide this season, with no other player hitting more than 10 since the tipoff and only two (Rozier and LaVine) hitting 10 once.
- While that three-point scoring was scorching, FVV's seemingly impressive 54-3-2-3-3 line wasn't as much. There has been a 10-3-2-3-3 line 12 times this season, and a 10-3-3-3-3 one as many as 9 times. Anthony Davis has put up such a line three times already... with FVV having one of them too!
- As hard as it is for it to happen, all players to post more than 1.47 FP/min on Tuesday night slate played 31+ minutes for their teams. Mason Plumlee had the highest mark at 1.46 among those with 28 or fewer minutes played, closing the day at 17-14-2-1.
- Bazemore and Josh Jackson finished both at 1.29 FP/min coming off the bench, though Baze did it on 17 minutes while Jackson was able to sustain that production for 30 minutes. Jackson was, in fact, the highest fantasy scorer of the night among reserves.
- Bradley Beal logged a 36.6 usage rate for the Wizards against Portland. He shot 24 FG and turned the ball over 4 times. His 30+ finished possessions, if he's traded away, have to go somewhere (and Russ won't handle all of them). Keep an eye on this development as all of Deni Avdija, Rui Hachimura, Davis Bertans, etc... will get a massive boost in opportunities in the event of that move.
- Speaking of Bertans, it's starting to get very worrying with the freshly re-signed forward struggling mightily. Another game, another 30+ minutes played, another stinker (6 points on 20% shooting on 10 FGA). It's been three games in a row with fewer than 12 points scored, and four of the last five. Bertans shooting splits are at 33/31/77 after 14 games. Ugh.
Wednesday, February 3rd
Milwaukee demolishes Indiana with Bobby Portis having the most-efficient game of the season
You read all of that headline right. Milwaukee ran Indiana off the building last Wednesday adding a 130-110 win to their record. Such a beating made possible for the Bucks to rest or at least not "overuse" their main men, including Giannis (31 min), Middleton (26), and Holiday (27). It was Portis, even though he just played 17 minutes on the night, who logged the highest usage rate of all Milwaukee's players at 30.8% off the bench.
Those 17 minutes couldn't have been more productive, with Portis getting an 18-9-3-3-1 line and hitting 4 triples on 13 FGA with a shooting percentage of 53.8 from the floor. It's the first time in history a player has reached that line in as many minutes, with the closest such performance coming from Walter Davis (18-5-4-3-1 in 17 minutes) all the way back in 1979 (!!!).
- Staying with Bobby Portis, he is available in 51 percent of Yahoo leagues at the time of this writing. Portis is coming off the bench for the Bucks this season, but he's as productive a player as they get with an average of 1.16 FP/min on the season, way above the average mark from all NBA players playing regular minutes.
- Zubac was relegated to second-unit duties himself with Ibaka starting at center for the Clips, but the former was a great value on the day putting up a 10-16-1-2-3 stuffed line in 28 minutes. Zubac keeps flying under the fantasy-radar a bit, but he's a nice big to have rostered no matter the league format.
- A fantastic scoring night for Zion Williamson. He scored 28points on just 14 shots, averaging 2 pts/shot and hitting 3 of his freebies plus a triple. He also pulled down 7 rebounds and dished out 6 dimes to round a nice night.
- Seth Curry had one to forget. The Brother played 29 minutes starting for the Sixers at SG, but all he could do was sharing 3 assists and block a shot. He went 0-for-3 from the floor, logged a putrid 6% usage rate, and although Philly didn't need him (he finished with a +18 plus/minus) that performance truly didn't please his fantasy GMs.
- LaMelo started his second game in a row taking advantage of Terry Rozier's absence. Tons of voices have been claiming for the rook to start above one of Terry or Graham, but that doesn't seem to be on HC Borrego's plans ROS. Ball has, well, kept balling while starting dropping 14-5-7 and 22-7-3-2 lines in his two starts--though it must be said that he sucked at shooting on Monday with a putrid 27.3 percent from the floor.
- Anthony Edwards is also starting nightly, and he logged his fourth-straight such-game on Wednesday. Since he was put in the starting five on Jan. 29 he's averaging 16.3 PPG, 4.5 RPG, and 2.6 APG while shooting 46.1 percent from the floor, a much better success rate than when he was coming off the bench (34%).
Thursday, February 4th
The Lakers destroy Denver in a disappointing potential-WCF matchup
The hopes and expectations were overly high for what looked like a must-watch, high-stakes game on Thursday. Turned out, the Lakers were too much for the Nuggets to handle, getting a massive 114-93 win against their last season rivals in the Western Conference Finals. Both teams put out their best players, but the Nuggets never found their place in the game.
LeBron was the only player worth highlighting thanks to a 27-10-10 triple-double he got basically coasting through the match. The usage was at just 28% for LBJ, but he was very efficient logging 1.69 FP/min. On a brighter note for everyone following the L, though, Kelly Oubre helped a barren Warriors squad to score itself a W against Dallas thanks to a career-high 40-point performance.
- Not only did that 40-point game marked a career-high for Oubre, but it was also the first game Kelly has had this season in which he's scored more than 23 points and shot better than 65 percent from the floor on 10+ FGA. Oubre scored 24+ points 14 times last season alone.
- Talking about shooting... Jordan Clarkson kept building his resume with another 20+ points game (23 of them) in which he also had a slate-leading 88.5 TS% among players with 10+ shots on the day. He was also able to pull down 7 boards.
- Embiid was an unstoppable force for the Sixers getting a 37-5-1-1-1 stuffed line while going to the line 9 times and hitting all of those freebies. Oh, and he did all of that in just 34 minutes against a Portland team that couldn't feature an injured Lillard.
- JoJo's fantasy performance was the Yin to Thybulle/Danny's Yang. The latter two played 25+ minutes each and all they could do was finish with lines of 3-2 and a block, and 3-5-1 respectively. Ugh.
- John Wall came back to starting duties after missing Wednesday's game resting, and all he did was... getting a monster 41.8% usage rate! As impressive as that is, though, Wall already bested that mark last Jan. 26 when he logged a 46.3% mark, and the actual season-high came from Steph Curry a little over a month ago (49.5%) in a 62-point game against Portland.
- On a very low usage rate (10.9%), Juan Toscano-Anderson started for GSW and in his 40 minutes of playing time he put up a nice 14-8-5 line with 2 blocks and shot 75% from the floor on 8 FGA. Juan has solidified himself as a role player in this team and the NBA as a whole after ascending from the depths of the G League a couple of seasons ago.
Friday, February 5th
Nikola Vucevic joins a six-man club; LaMelo Ball explodes for real
Before Friday's slate, only six players had been able to complete a 43-19 game this century: Shaq (x2), Chris Webber, Dwight Howard (x2), Kevin Love (x2), Anthony Davis (x2), and DeMarcus Cousins. From Friday's on, though, that club will feature Nikola Vucevic, who posted a 43-19-4 line with a block to spare for a barren Magic squad that needs help left and right. Of the aforementioned players, only Vucevic, Cousins, Davis, and Love reached that baseline while hitting at least one three-pointer (Vucevic scored four treys).
LaMelo Ball started his third game in a row for the Hornets, and the rookie exploded for good this time out. With Terry Rozier back, Ball was put in the starting SF slot and went on to play 39 minutes in which he put up a career-best 34-4-8-2-1 stuffed line shooting 51.9 percent from the floor on 27 (!!!) FGA. While this performance wasn't unheard of in NBA history, Ball is the sixth rookie to put up such a stat line and the first one since Victor Oladipo did so all the way back in 2014.
- The Thunder had to endure a game with just eight available players--the league's minimum. That helped Horford racking up minutes and goodies, playing 29 rounds of the clock while posting a 26-7-8-2-3 line. There are whispers out there saying Horford might be bought out, which could put him on his way back to Baston. We'll see how that develops.
- Alex Len, recently cut by the Raptors and then signed by the Wizards, has been a rather nice performer in the Capital. Just this Friday, he was able to become one of the best per-minute players in fantasy contests posting up a 1.51 FP/min mark to the tune of an 18-3-2-2-5 stuffed line in just 24 minutes of playing time.
- Malcolm Brogdon seemingly took Friday's game out. Even though he logged 27 minutes on the court, he was nothing remotely close to efficient for the Pacers as he could only score 13 points and pull down a board while dishing out 3 dimes in the contest. Disappointing nice from the point guard.
- Just a few days after making NBA and Toronto history, Fred VanVleet put up a shooting dud: FVV scored 11 points on 16 FGA (25% from the floor) and even though one of his field goals came from behind the three-point line his horrid 32.6 TS% trailed all players with 15+ FGA on Friday.
- Kendrick Nunn, starting at the point for the Heat, was the only reserve to score more than 20 points finishing with 25 on the day. Not only was he great at shooting the rock, but he also pulled down 8 boards for a near-dub-dub. Avery Bradley will be out for around a month and Goran Dragic left the game injured, so Nunn is a great value in the short/mid-term for fantasy GMs out there.
- Nothing changed for Utah yesterday. The Jazz keep winning, Royce O'Neale keeps starting games, playing 35+ minutes a night, and racking up duds. Another bad performance by the forward, who couldn't either reach 10 points or more than 2 rebounds/assists. The playing time is there, but the production is just nonexistent.
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