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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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Wednesday, February 17
Damian Lillard's season-night propels the Blazers past the Pelicans while Trae Young has himself a scoring day
For what he's doing on the year, it doesn't make much sense to not find Dame's name written in most early-season MVP ballots. Lillard is averaging a near 30-4-8-1 line this season through 27 games, the Blazers are the fourth-best team in the West at 18-10, and that is considering all of the injuries Portland is having to endure (CJ McCollum's and Jusuf Nurkic's among them). Another game, another day in the office for Lillard yesterday: 43 points (including 7 triples) to go with 16 (!) dimes, 4 boards, a steal, a block, and a perfect 8-for-8 from the charity stripe. Not bad for a dubious MVP candidate, right?
Not on Lillard's level but also thriving after a little bit bump a few weeks ago, Trae Young was in for the kill yesterday. Tell Boston, who suffered another loss and is now back at .500. Trae cooked the Celtics to a tasty 40 pops and he did so on just 20 FGA shooting 70% from the floor and hitting 4 triples and all 8 attempted freebies. Young's TS% of 85 percent is the fourth-best this season in performances of 20+ FGA and 8+ FTA.
- The Warriors are battling through a lost season... that might not be entirely lost at the end of the day. Yesterday's savior (other than Steph Curry, as always) was Kent Bazemore. Baze put up a 26-8-3-3 stuffed line off the bench while logging 38 minutes on the court. It's a little bit random when it comes to which Warrior will hit nightly, but odds are at least one of the role players does.
- Two more under-the-radar players went off yesterday: Davis Bertans (35-3-1-1-1) and Naz Reid (18-9-3-1-3) both excelled coming off the pine.
- The Jazz keep piling up wins, which at this point is not that surprising. Gobert amassed an impressive 23-20 dub-dub and also contributed a 1-1-1 rest-of-line while getting a paltry 19.6% usage rate. Can't ask for much more on that usage and just 32 minutes of playing time.
- Up to eight players reached double-digit assist on yesterday's slate. One of them is not like the others, and you can find him for cheap or free in most leagues: Ricky Rubio logged a 20-3-13-1 dub-dub and is playing for a Wolves squad that will miss D'Angelo Russell for at least four or five weeks. Good addition through your WW or via trade for the next month.
- Another affordable, magnificent player has been Thaddeus Young. The fact that he fell a little bit sort of a dub-dub (and even trip-dub) will go against him in the eyes of many, but Young's 9-10-7-2-1 had everything you want in a player and Young has experienced a reborn this season in Chicago. Great low-cost player to have on your roster.
- After having a great performance two matches ago, Josh Hart came back to earth yesterday with just a 4-6-1 line in 30 minutes of playing time. New Orleans is expected to move on from Lonzo/Redick, so I'd still advise buying Hart low before he becomes a larger-usage-rate player and gets too expensive to acquire.
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