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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.
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Saturday, April 24
The New York Knicks win their ninth consecutive game and stay 0.5 games ahead of Atlanta; Milwaukee edges a load-managed Sixers to get just 1.5 games behind Philly with 12.5 games left
While there were some storylines going on in the Western Conference, the truth is that yesterday's biggest news came out of the Eastern Conference. The Knicks, who are definitely the clearest Finals contenders these days (?) won a game for the ninth consecutive time. That doesn't mean much on the standings, as Atlanta is still less than a game shy of them, but New York doesn't know how to lose and they're starting to get a little scary for the top-3 seeds in the East.
Speaking of that elite group of teams: Milly defeated Philly yesterday taking advantage of the latter resting both Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and pummeling them while at it. Just so you get an idea of how things went, Tobias Harris just logged a 9-9-2-1-2 line, Dwight Howard was the best Sixer at 35 FP, and Giannis finished no. 2 in the fantasy leaderboard with 58 FP in just a freaking low 24 minutes of playing time. Milwaukee looked like a lock to stay in the third seed, but with 12 games left on Philadelphia's schedule and 13 in Milwaukee's with both teams separated by just 1.5 matches, there will be a tight race for that no. 2 seed ROS.
- Moving West, Utah dropped one to Minnesota with Donovan Mitchell still out. I want to believe Utah will do enough to stay atop the conference, but the distance with Phoenix is down to just 1.5 games with 12 to play. Only Bojan Bogdanovic reached 40+ FP for the Jazz while Rudy Gobert put up a dud failing to dub-dub with a 9-17 line in 36 minutes of playing time.
- Speaking of Wolves... Anthony Edwards might actually end the year snatching the ROY award from LaMelo Ball if the latter can't come back soon. Edwards put up a nice 23-9-4-5 line against Utah, hit 4 triples, shot 47% on 19 FGA, and limited his TOs to a couple on the day. 51 FP for the rook, who keeps getting better by the day.
- The Nuggets have lost a ton of bodies already, and somehow they keep getting players injured. Will Barton went down two days ago, and it was confirmed that he will miss "significant" time going forward. Not a problem for the Nugs, though, as they keep winning games and so did they yesterday with a W against Houston in which Michael Porter Jr. played as the no. 1 fantasy player to the tune of a great 39-6-2 line with 3 blocks and 8 (!) treys on the night.
- Monster night for Detroit Pistons' Mason Plumlee, who is one of the highest-ROI plays thanks to his low salaries in DFS and low rostership in Yahoo leagues (54%). The line finished at an overly-high 17-21-5 with a couple of swats, and the shooting was on point at 78% on a low 9 FGA.
- Anthony Davis got rid of his minute limit (25 MPG) yesterday and played 28 rounds of the clock. Not the best of outings, though, as he shot a putrid 26% on 19 FGA for a 17-3-3 line that lacked everything. Drummond didn't make up for it with a similar thud line at 6-12-1-3 hitting 3-of-5 FGA.
- For someone rostered in just 17% of Yahoo leagues, Dwight Howard might not be the worst addition for those needy of big men. Howard will keep playing heavy minutes in Philly's second unit with JoJo resting leading up to the playoffs. He logged 25 minutes on Saturday and put up a 12-12-1-2-1 double-double while committing only 1 TO on an efficient night in which he averaged a nice 1.42 FP/min mark.
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