Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Monday, March 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, March 22

Houston defeats Toronto to break a 20-game losing streak, and the Raptors are now the team in the most trouble with nine straight losses

If there was a squad poised to help Houston get out of their seemingly-endless losing streak that was definitely Toronto. The Rockets entered yesterday's game having lost their past 20 games, but the Raps weren't too far away with eight Ls straight themselves. Turns out, Toronto isn't better than Houston, not at least on Monday. Houston snatched its first win since Feb. 4, more than a month a half ago, with a 117-99 trouncing of the Raps, who have now not won a game since Feb. 26 themselves. Yikes.

In other news, Rudy Gobert put up an impressive a rather unique performance yesterday, dropping a 21-10-2 line with 9 blocks on top of that. It's just the seventh time we've seen a 20-10-9 line on points, boards, and blocks since 2013 with the other six games belonging to Anthony Davis (x2), Hassan Whiteside (x2), and Joakim Noah. Nobody had done it since Nov. 2018 (Whiteside), and Gobert needed just 33 minutes of playing time to reach those heights. Not bad, indeed.

• With Giannis out of Monday's slate, it was all about Jrue Holiday for the Bucks. Jrue dropped a masterful 28-5-14-2-1 dub-dub on the Pacers, helped Milwaukee get the W, and led the fantasy slate with a very strong 64 FP on the night in just under 30 minutes of playing time. The per-minute performance was bonkers at 2.14 FP/min, the 10th-best of the year among player-games of 28+ minutes.
• John Wall was great on a "raw" and counting-stats perspective, putting up a 19-11-10-1-2 stuffed line in Houston's first win in 21 games. That being said, though, he shot the rock 30 (!!!) times while hitting the bucket on just 27% of those attempts for a paltry 31% true shooting percentage. Wall won't get to shoot 30 times every night, so he better improve that accuracy soon.

• We witnessed a ton of surprisingly productive fantasy plays on Monday, with Terance Mann dropping an off-the-pine dub-dub (21-10-2), Luke Kennard contributing all across the board (20-7-4 with a block), Jeremy Lamb stuffing the line (21-6-5-1-1), JaVale McGee playing 19 minutes and getting the third most-efficient game of the day (18-9-3 with 2 blocks). All of these four players are rostered in fewer than 10% of Yahoo leagues, just in case.
• The Celtics seem to be on the verge of making a move before the deadline hits. If you're reading this and are negotiating with Boston IRL, go after Robert Williams. If you're just a fantasy GM, go after him too. This kid just doesn't know how to not rack up numbers. He played 28 minutes yesterday (is it happening!?) and put up a 17-6-4-1-4 line while shooting 78% from the floor and getting an impressive production of 1.45 FP/min. If only would Boston make him the starter or trade him to a team that would do so...

• As expected--now that LaMelo Ball is injured and most probably done for the season--Devonte' Graham started at the point for Charlotte along with backcourt-partner Terry Rozier. Not the best of outings for Graham (9-3-4 with a block in 29 minutes) and another good one for Rozier (24-3-6-2-1 in 39 minutes), but the good news was that both logged ample minutes and only Malik Monk could eat from their opportunities.
• Under-the-radar players: Rockets Danuel House and Jae'sean Tate. Both of them are rostered in fewer than 25% of Yahoo leagues, yet both keep starting for the Rockets and playing a ton of minutes per game. House's averaging a 13-4-3 since the break and Tate a neat 13-5-2-2 in the same span, making both valuable WW targets for those in deeper leagues.

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