Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Friday, April 30

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.

Friday, April 30

Jayson Tatum makes history with a 60-point game for Boston; Phoenix defeats Utah and takes possession of the no. 1 seed in the Western Conference

Let's start with the individual performance first, because it was quite a historic one. Tatum joined a very short 29-man club yesterday by becoming the 30th to put up a 60-point night in the history of the game. That is impressive in and of itself, but the most impressive thing about it is that Tatum is the second-youngest player to score such a massive tally, doing so at slightly over 23 years of age, only behind Devin Booker's 70-point game at age 20. As if that wasn't enough, Boston won against San Antonio by overcoming a 32-point deficit! Great night for the Beantowners, indeed.

Speaking of overcoming--or rather, overtaking--foes... Phoenix and Utah went against each other on Friday and the Suns went away with the W in a not-so-close 121-100 victory. This game and result might have not meant a lot in years past, but it was a battle for the no. 1 seed yesterday, and that spot is now in Phoenix's possession with nine games to go for each franchise. They are currently tied at a .714 percentage, though Phoenix has the tiebreak going for them.

• Back to Tatum. The forward's 60-8-5 line with a block on top was good for a slate-leading 82 FP compared to no. 2 DeMar DeRozan's 62 FP. The overtime truly helps, but even then Tatum's monster numbers (37 FGA, 39% usage rate, 46 minutes) were absolutely insane.
• Russ helped Washington beat the Cavs with another 15-12-11 trip-dub and it's starting to look like the Wiz are going to make the play-in while Toronto and Chicago will miserably fail and miss on it. Tough for a perennial postseason team in Toronto, and a Bulls squad that went all-in during the trade season ultimately for nothing.

• LeBron came back to the court yesterday after missing 20 games, the longest stretch of games he's been out injured in his career. Even though LBJ put up 50 FP and Anthony Davis contributed 51 himself, the Lake Show wasn't such as they dropped one to the Kings. Are the Lakers going to drop below the fifth seed on purpose to face the Clippers? Are the Nuggets going to force the Clips into the fourth seed to face a no. 5 Lakers team in the first round? Can't get much better than this.
• Milwaukee gave ample run to some of its secondary players, including a fantastic Bryn Forbes starting at SG and putting up a 10-13-1-1 dub-dub in just 27 minutes of playing time. Brook Lopez (22-2-3-0-4) and Bobby Portis (16-14-1-2-1) were also pretty good yesterday, and for those of you managing in deep leagues, you might still snatch the latter for the home stretch (51% rostership in Yahoo) as Milwaukee is pretty much locked into the no. 3 seed and Portis might play tons of productive minutes.

• Dwight Howard is rostered in just 17% of Yahoo leagues. That's not bad, but for what he's doing these days backing up a super-limited Joel Embiid, that rostership is rather ridiculous. Howard logged another dub-dub on Friday to the tune of a 19-11-1 line with 2 swats on top of it, and only 1 TO. Howard is averaging 1.16 FP/min on the year, and an even better 1.40 mark in the past 7 games topping 27 FP in three of his last four.
• Another under-rostered player: San Antonio Spurs' Keldon Johnson. The sophomore is racking up minutes with gusto averaging 29 MPG on the year and 34 MPG in the last week (5 GP). If only because of that, he's getting some tasty FP: 28, 29, 30, 21, and 27 in the past five games, with a 14-8-1-1 line yesterday against the Celtics. Not the worst WW target for the home stretch.

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