Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Wednesday, April 21

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.

Wednesday, April 21

The Knicks and the Nuggets don't know how to lose and we're starting to get some clear-ish picture of the postseason first-round matchups

This is not about whether the Knicks are real or not. No, sir. This is now about will the Knicks lose ever again? Jeez. Eight W in a row for New York after defeating the now-no.5-seed Hawks, which put the Knicks in possession of the fourth-best record in the East and handed them home-court advantage in a potential first-round series against Atlanta. Julius Randle blessed us with another masterful performance (only topped by Joel Embiid in the fantasy leaderboard) after cooking himself a 40-burger to go with 11 boards and 6 dimes. Quite the day for Randle, who also hit 12 of the 13 FT he attempted.

Speaking of winning teams... The Nuggets lost Jamal Murray for the remainder of the season--and potentially 2022 too--but they have just not stopped winning since then. Denver has won four straight (best Western Conference running streak) and is 8-2 in its last 10 games. If we know something about the West, it is that it's pretty much all wrapped up to watch a Nuggets vs. Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. It'd take something wild for that not to happen, so get ready for that matchup.

• Speaking of the playoffs... the Wizards might be part of them--at least the play-in mini-deathmatches--thanks to a historic Russell Westbrook. Sure, the triple-double is a little bit diminished these days, but Russ keeps racking them up and he put up another one on Wednesday to the tune of a 14-20-10 line. It's the first 20-10 boards-dimes games of the season and one of only 22 such trip-dubs since 1980. And that came with Westbrook shooting a putrid 29% on 17 FGA, by the way.
• On a night that saw Trae Young leave the Hawks game early injured (it doesn't seem to be anything serious), Clint Capela amassed a bonkers 25-22 dub-dub to go with a dime, a couple of steals, and a block to put the cherry on top. This is the second time in four days Capela has finished with a 25-20 or more line.

• With the Nets missing both Kevin Durant and James Harden, it was all about Kyrie Irving on Wednesday. Top-3 fantasy performance thanks to a 28-11-8-3-1 stuffed line with a relatively "low" 30% usage rate on the day. The problem, though, is that the likes of Bruce Brown (21-14), DeAndre Jordan (7-12), and Joe Harris (14-4 with 4 treys) didn't contribute enough for the team to snatch another W, as they fell short to the Raps and are facing the reality of finishing the season with the no. 2 seed behind the Sixers if health issues keep popping ROS.
• Hard to get too high on Kent Bazemore this deep into the season, but he had his best game of the year to the tune of 52 FP translated from a 19-9-3-6-2 line he couldn't even believe himself. Steph Curry played but seemingly took the night off (18-7-8-1 shooting a paltry 28 percent on 25 FGA) so Bazemore was the one carrying the team on offense, though it wasn't enough to defeat Washington. Baze is a risky proposition, sure, but he's rostered in just 5% of Yahoo leagues and he surely isn't the worst addition you could make to your roster.

• We all know what happens when we get closer to the last game of the regular season: lineups get weird, rotations go wild, and the most unexpected of players seem to come out of nowhere to put on great outings. That was the case with Luke Kennard, Raul Neto, Svi Mykhailiuk, Daniel Gafford, and most of all Oshae Brissett yesterday. Brissett started for Indiana, logged a monster 42 minutes of playing time, and even on that silly-large run he still averaged 1.20 FP/min with a 23-12-1-2-3 line for 51 FP.
• Jaren Jackson Jr. came back for Memphis yesterday and played 18 minutes, putting up the second most-efficient game of the day with 33 DKFP in that time. He finished with a 15-8 line to go with 4 swats against the Clips, and while he's widely rostered (78%) he can still be found in some WW. Check yours just in case. JJJ will gear up in no time and become the second banana to Ja Morant sooner than you realize

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