Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Sunday, December 5

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.

Sunday, December 5

Brandon Ingram cooks himself a 40-burger in a losing effort; Utah holds off Cleveland's comeback and edges the Cavs by just one point

As much as the Pelicans have sucked this season without Zion, at least they can count on Brandon Ingram. To put on the odd show, I mean, as not even Bones Brandon's 40-point outing on Sunday was good for New Orleans to get themselves a W against the lowly Rockets... Ugh. Ingram finished the day with a fantastic 40-5-4-1-1 packed line and no turnovers in 38 minutes with a sky-high 35.5 USG% but no other Pel other than Valanciunas (17-10-3-1-3) did a thing, so obviously NOLA dropped another one.

The Jazz got a solid lead against the Cavs yesterday only to lose that gap and suffer through a game that they ultimately could get away winning. Kudos to Gobert for his monster 20-board outing with 5 blocks on top of that (to go with 6 pops, 3 dimes, and one theft) while Darius Garland was the main Cav out there dropping 31 points (5 treys) with a 4-5-4-1 rest-of-line.

• Trae Young and John Collins couldn' put the Hawks over the Hornets even though Charlotte has half its roster sitting on the COVID self... Top-3 finishes for both of them as Trae logged a 24-4-15-1 dub-dub and JoCo reached a 31-12-4 line... only for Miles Bridges to murder them with a 32-4-4-3-1 shooting 73.3% himself. Uh, oh, flex on the devil.
• The Red Mamba aka Kevin Huerter aka Shy Guy found his way toward a slate-leading 7 treys on the day reaching 28 points overall, 21 of them coming from shots beyond the arc. Huerter added a couple of rebounds and 3 dimes to put the cherry on top.
• Donovan Mitchell with the line of the day putting up a 35-3-6-1 shooting 57.1% on a bulky 21 FGA and hitting 7-of-8 freebies... while turning the ball over a freakish 7 times, yet only committing one personal foul in 39 minutes of playing time while using 34.6% of Utah's possession. Nonsense all around that outcome.

• Peep my deep-league WW column later today and you'll read about Ish Smith, who is the main man backing up COVID-sitting LaMelo Ball in Charlotte. Hyper valuable game from Ish on Sunday with an 18-5-7-1 do-it-all contribution playing 32 minutes starting at the PG position.
• Shouts out to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope for his 26-2-2-1 line shooting a masterful 89% from the floor and 100% from the charity stripe starting once more for the Wiz Kiz. And to Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot for putting up a 12-4-2-0-2 line with the Hawks in an ultra-rare start for the wing who went to log 39 minutes on the court.
• Cody Martin, another Hornet poised to have a strong week if only because the squad is thin as hell, got to play 32 minutes off the pine and hit 3 triples on his way to a 19-6-4-2 outing even though he didn't even reach an average 20% usage rate on the day.

• Can't murder a rookie, even less if he plays in such a bad team as these current Pelicans are... but Herb Jones finally came down crashing to Earth with a 5-1-0-1-3 only saved by those blocks. It had to happen.
• The true stinkers of the night were probably Fred VanVleet and his 10-4 outcome on points and dimes shooting a putrid 33% on 12 FGA and committing 4 TOs/5 PFs... and Bradley Beal who built himself a 14-1-7 turd while tagged with the fourth-highest salary of DK's main slate of games.
• Otto Porter Jr. is off the Warriors injury report and should be able to play today against Orlando... Dinwiddie is out against Indy resting the second leg of Washington's back-to-back... Josh Giddey is back for the Thunder... KAT/D'Lo/Beverley are all questionable for the Wolves tonight... Devin Booker is still out and expected to come back no earlier than two games from tonight's affair with SAS... C.J. McCollum is listed as probable against the Clips.

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