Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Thursday, April 22

Antonio Losada looks back at yesterday's slate of games and comments on fantasy basketball risers, fallers and takeaways from the games played then and there.

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.

Thursday, April 22

Nothing goes according to plan in one of the weirdest NBA nights of late and all of a sudden all postseason races get as tight as they can

What a day of basketball to witness, folks. Just as a quick recap, let's mention yesterday's most surprising results. The Celtics defeated no. 2 Phoenix, and the Bucks got the W against Philly. The Bulls, somehow, kept their chances up by winning against Charlotte, and the Mavs closed the day with a W against the Lakers. Those four games might look like little stuff, but they made things really exciting going forward.

We have a tie at the top of the East between PHI and BKN, the Mavs and Blazers share the same record in the West (fighting to avoid the play-in) and all of the teams involved in the run for a postseason place in the Eastern conference (namely the no. 10 seed) are now in a 0.5-game span. On top of that, not a single player scored more than 32 points, and only two reached 30. It was the first time since Apr. 4 that had not happened, almost three weeks ago. Just imagine.

• Giannis led the fantasy leaderboard and his Bucks to a W against Philly with a 27-16-6-2-1 stuffed line, but Giannis is a perennial MVP candidate and a great player known by everyone. What about Derrick White, though? The Spurs point was incredible, posted a 55-FP score, and reached a 26-7-8-1-3 line playing just 29 minutes for a slate-leading 1.91 FP/min.
• Drummond bested his season-high in FP (as a Laker) with a 14-19-3-1-3 against Dallas shooting 50% from the floor on 10 FGA. The usage was low, which is reasonable considering Anthony Davis returned for the Lakers and although he just played 17 minutes he already started at forward. AD finished with an (understandably) low 4-4-1-1-1 line and a paltry 20% accuracy from the floor while commanding 30% of LA's possessions.

• Bobby Portis was sublime for Milly yesterday with a 23-5-1-1-3 line on Thursday coming off the bench for the Bucks. He was the best reserve of the slate averaging 1.77 FP/min in his 23 minutes, and he's been great all year long as a great player to have around in the slightest of deep leagues. Portis is still available in 55% of Yahoo leagues.
• Willie Cauley-Stein came out of left field, played 31 minutes for the Mavs, and although his total 28 FP on the day weren't staggering, the truth is that nobody thought he was going to put up that score. He did it by dropping a low-but-stuffed 11-8-1-1-2 line on the Lake Show on a stupid 14% usage rate. Only rostered in 2% of leagues... if you're super needy he might solve some of your problems ROS (Kristaps Porzingis might miss a few games).

• The Pels ran Orlando out of town, and that meant Zion got to play a measly 23 minutes. Not too much of a problem for him, though, as he still reached 23 pops to go with 7 boards and a couple of dimes. The efficiency can't get any better, and Brandon Ingram (29-3-6) is also helping Zion as the former has elevated his performance levels of late too.
• To close today's column, I have to say that it sucked for me to wake up to the news about the late Terrance Clark, former Kentucky Wildcat and mighty HS player. Rest In Peace, TC. The kid was just 19, man. Sucks.

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