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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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Saturday, April 17
Jayson Tatum and Stephen Curry go mano-a-mano in a 40-point exchange by the two of them while Curry ties the late Kobe Bryant's 10-game streak of scoring 30+ points at 33+ years old
Was that one a game!? Boston and Golden State put on a show on Saturday to kick the weekend off in a Celtics win by 119-114 on the night. Absolutely fantastic game overall, though Tatum and Curry were both on a completely different level when compared to their teammates. Tatum led the fantasy slate with 68 FP to the tune of a 44-10-3-2 double-double hitting 5 triples, while Curry finished second with 63 FP himself thanks to an impressive 47-7-3 that included a ridiculous 11 (!!!) treys. Those 11 triples, of course, are a season-high for Curry and the league as a whole with Fred VanVleet being the only non-Curry player with such a game (Curry has two other 11-triple performances in 2021).
Speaking of Curry and his scoring prowess, it's been now 10 games in a row for him scoring at least 30 points. Just two weeks after turning 33 years old, Curry started his streak with a 32-point outing against Chicago. He followed that with 36, 37, 41, 32, 38, 53, 42, 33, and yesterday 47 points to close a 10-game streak that keeps ongoing. The late Kobe was the last player to have at least 10 games at those scoring heights while aged 33 or older. Curry is the lone player with more than 6 consecutive games scoring 30+ this season, followed by Bradley Beal (6) and Paul George (5). Both Curry's and George's streaks are still active and could grow larger in the following days.
- As it seemingly happens every other day, Russell Westbrook cooked himself another triple-double with a 15-14-11 line that helped Washington mollywhoop Detroit on Saturday. Perhaps more importantly for the Wiz, Bradley Beal was fantastic playing along with Russ (37-3-3-2) and Washington is already tied with Chicago for the last play-in spot (the Bulls are 10th-and-in with a tiebreak-advantage).
- Giannis keeps gearing up after making his comeback a few days ago, and in 29 minutes on the court he put up a monster 53 FP yesterday though that wasn't enough for Milly to beat Memphis. The Griz found a gem in Grayson Allen, who put on a great performance of 26-4-1-2 with 7 treys on the day. I have been telling you about Allen as a WW target for a while now, so go add him if you can still find him for free in your league!
- With the Spurs resting some players yesterday, Drew Eubanks started at C and Devin Vassell played 25 minutes off the bench. Both were great values on yesterday's slate, finishing with 13-13-2-2-1 and 18-3-2 (with 2 blocks) respective lines against Phoenix. These two are rostered in just 2% and 1% of Yahoo leagues and wouldn't be the worst addition in super-deep, 14+ team leagues these days if you are a super-needy GM.
- I wrote yesterday about Isaiah Stewart's exploits and how it is just ridiculous to find him available in more than 70% of leagues as of this writing. Stewart's rookie season is getting better by the day, he had his best game as a pro a few days ago, and just yesterday he put up another dub-dub with a 19-12 line including a dime and a couple of blocks. Oh, and he even hit a triple against Washington on Saturday night!
- It took him more games than we expected, but Andre Drummond finally broke for a great performance as a Laker after putting up a 27-8-3-2-1 all-across-the-board contribution in 31 minutes on the floor. The Lakers truly needed all of that production to beat Utah in the greatest upset of the day, taking the Jazz to OT and ultimately getting the W against the no. 1 team in the NBA.
- Ersan Ilyasova started at the C spot for those Jazz, and he couldn't have played better. With Rudy Gobert out (and Donovan Mitchell also injured and expected to miss several games) Ersan played 32 minutes and although he logged a low 17% usage rate he was still able to finish with a top-20 fantasy score (40 FP) thanks to his great 20-5 line with 4 steals, 2 blocks, and 6 treys on top of that. Not bad for a start--literally.
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