Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Monday, February 22

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.

Monday, February 22

The Wizards solidify their winning streak against a worryingly bad Los Angeles Lakers squad

Let's address the elephant in the room first: the Lakers are tied for the second-best record in the West with the Clippers, and only behind the Jazz. That being said, the Lakers are and will be without Anthony Davis at least through the All-Star break, and it is not that they should rush him back--more than anything to prevent further aggravation of his injury. The problem of this team, though, is that LeBron James alone, as good as he's been, just can't carry this squad anywhere. When Montrezl Harrell is the second-best player on the team on a nightly basis, coming off the bench and playing 23 minutes... you know something's wrong.

On a more positive tone, Washington is getting it right. It's been five Ws in a row for the Wiz now, and the Russ & Beal pairing is definitely jelling of late. The game went to OT, and that explains why all of Russ (33-7-6-3), Beal (31-9-13), and LBJ (32-9-14) finished as the top-3 players of the slate (all played 33+ minutes), but we can't take from any of them. Bradley Beal has been one of the most sought-after trade candidates this season, but if Washington can keep winning games (the Wiz are just 1.5 games off the play-in) odds are Beal stays in town at least until the offseason.

• Not a night for bucket-getters yesterday's, with only four players scoring 30+ points and Devin Booker leading them all with 34 pops in just 29 minutes. Beal, Russ, and LeBron needed the OT to get there, and although Tim Hardaway Jr. finished short of that mark with 29 points, he was the most impressive scorer as he did it off the pine in 29 minutes and hitting 7 treys for the Mavs.
• Along with Tim Hardaway, Harrell played excellent basketball for the second game in a row and his 1.82 FP/min led the day among players with at least 16 minutes played. 26-9 near-dub-dub performance for the big man, who also dished out 2 dimes and blocked a couple of shots.

• Thaddeus Young keeps balling for the Bulls. In a short run of just 20 minutes in a game that had no story at all, Young put up a 17-8-5 line, shot 89% from the floor, and only committed two turnovers on a high 27% usage rate. Hard to see Chicago selling the house as they're currently 8th in the East, but if they opt to Young might be traded to a contender. Keep an eye on this.
• Lose no time and go check your WW. There is a coin-flip probability you still find Kendrick Nunn available for free in your league, as he's rostered in just 54% of Yahoo leagues. If that's the case, add him to your squad immediately. Nunn has thrived with Dragic out, and if you remember what happened last year he played over Dragic all season long until the Bubble/playoffs portion of it. Nunn logged 41 minutes and a 20-5-9-3-2 massively stuffed line yesterday while hitting 3 triples and reaching 51+ FP.

• Players such as P.J. Tucker, Royce O'Neale, and even Draymond Green often play tons of minutes but just can't rack up fantasy points. That's shouldn't be the case with the likes of Terry Rozier, we went back crashing to earth yesterday with a measly 12-1-2-2 performance in which he couldn't score a single three-pointer, finishing with a poor 19-point fantasy tally.
• Kyle Kuzma will need to step up for the Lakers, and he kinda did so yesterday finishing with a 14-11 double-double with 2 dimes and 2 blocks, 4 triples, but a putrid shooting performance overall (31 percent FG%). As long as AD is out, Kuzma will be starting, although I am not convinced he's a must-have in any non-deeper fantasy format.

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