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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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Sunday, March 28
The Los Angeles Lakers add Andre Drummond to their squad while the Brooklyn Nets acquire LaMarcus Aldridge from the buyout market
I like to keep this column focused on the games, but yesterday was big on post-trade-deadline news, namely, news related to bought-out players picking new teams. During the weekend, the two major pieces released in the past few days chose their next steps to take in the NBA, and big markets--and yes, title contenders--won again: Drummond will be joining the Lakers while Aldridge is now a Net.
Getting into our fantasy interests, I have to say that Drummond might be an empty-calories guy in real life, but he's an absolute fantasy beast. Through 25 games played this season for the Cavs, Dru has averaged 43 FP per game good for a top-25 rank among all players this year. Drummond's averaging a ridiculous 17-13-2-1-1 line and his 1.43 FP/min is the eighth-highest mark league-wide. Aldridge has been a little bit worse than Drummond, but he's still a valuable player that should improve all across the board in a super-talented Nets squad. Aldridge is averaging a low 27 FP per game (on just 26 MPG, though) and a league-average 0.90 FP/min. He should get better opportunities in Brooklyn but he's clearly past his prime.
- Two Lakers, Kyle Kuzma and Dennis Schroeder, put up 20+ points on the board in yesterday's W against Orlando. Kuz reached 44 FP while Schroeder came close with 42. Harrell also broke the 40-FP barrier with an 18-11 line. It's going to be a daily struggle for LA without LBJ and AD, so the sooner Drummond gets to town and starts racking up minutes, the better for the Lake Show.
- C.J. McCollum seems to be back for good, and Portland as a whole can thank him for Sunday's effort as it enabled the Blazers to get a win against Toronto. CJ led the slate almost reaching 50 FP thanks to a stuffed 23-7-5-2-3 line in which he contributed all across the board. Dame was good-not-great (22-3-11 shooting 33% from the floor) and newly-acquired Norman Powell struggled for most of his 27 minutes (13-3 with a steal on a rather paltry 6 FGA).
- JaMychal Green might be the best low-maintenance player in the league. He played just 14 ticks on Sunday for Denver in a trouncing of Atlanta, yet he put up a ridiculous 2.41 FP/min mark, 34 FP, and closed the match with a bonkers 20-7-1-1 line shooting 58 FG% and hitting 3 treys. For the super-short run, those numbers were astonishing, as was the 43.6% (!!!) usage rate.
- Speaking of the Nuggets, Aaron Gordon debuted for Denver starting at PF next to Michael Porter Jr. (starter at SF). Gordon wasn't incredible in his first game, with a 13-2-1-1 line in 21 minutes.
- Most interesting was Orlando's reshuffle, with Khem Birch holding onto the C starting position over Wendell Carter Jr. We'll see how this situation evolves ROS. These two sit at opposite sides of the rostership spectrum, with Carter Jr. available in 25% of Yahoo leagues and Birch in 75 percent of them.
- Otto Porter might get bought out by the Magic, but performances like Sunday's won't help him attract a lot of contenders... Porter finished with a 5-4-1-1 line in 25 minutes, shot a putrid 29% on 7 FGA, and committed a couple of TOs. Bad outing by another deadline-casualty, Gary Trent Jr., who finished with a slim 6-7 line even though he played 29 minutes (also: 2-of-10 from the floor...).
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