Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Saturday, March 20

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.

Saturday, March 20

LeBron James gets injured against Atlanta after 10 minutes of play, the Lakers lose that game, and the Clippers cut the distance by beating Charlotte

At the time of this writing, we know a little bit more about LBJ's injury. The X-rays came back negative, which means LeBron basically dodged a bullet and his ankle shouldn't have him off the court for too long. In fact, he's already flying with the Lake Show to Phoenix for tonight's game. That is great because the Lakers--still third in the West--can't afford to surrender more games down the road.

This is a very unique year in that while we're not inside a bubble, home-court advantage is truly limited and that might impact how important seeds are come playoff time. The Lakers won't give a damn if they end the regular season third, fifth, or eighth in the standings, but the problem is that they might actually be as good as those seeds would speak of if either LeBron or Anthony Davis miss more time or a chunk of the postseason. Meanwhile, the Clippers keep pounding and are now just 1.5 games behind the Lakers.

• If LeBron misses time, the Lakers will become a mixture of role players bunched into a basketball court. Some fantasy GMs might strike gold while that lasts, if only because the likes of Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell, Markieff Morris, and Dennis Schroeder will need to step up and will see extended runs. Go grab whoever you can find in your league's WW that belongs to the Lakers.
• With Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons out, Tobias Harris was the man carrying the Sixers to another W on Saturday. He did it all, in fact, and was the best fantasy player of the day thanks to his 61 FP translated from a 29-11-8-2 dub-dub in a game that saw Tobi shot 67% from the floor and go 3-for-3 from the charity stripe. Bonus points for not committing a single TO.

• The Spurs--coach Pop acknowledged it--are already resting bodies. With some absences here and there, it was Lonnie Walker who excelled (other than obvious-hit DeMar DeRozan) against the Bucks playing 33 minutes for a 31-6-1-2 line that included 5 treys. Lonnie is still available in more than 90% of Yahoo leagues, so if you're part of any deep league he might be a good WW target for your squad.
• I highlighted the GSW randomness in yesterday's recap, and as it happens daily, it did once more on Saturday: Jordan Poole and Juan Toscano-Anderson were the men for the Warriors yesterday. Poole dropped a 26-4-5-1 line for 42 FP and Toscano got his 39 FP to the tune of an 11-6-6-3-2 stuffed line on an incredibly low 11.7% usage rate.

• With Embiid most probably out until April, Dwight Howard has turned into a must-have fantasy player. You should run to your WW to check if he's still there (still available in 55% Yahoo leagues). It's been four in a row and five-of-six games scoring 25+ FP for Dwight always coming off the bench and playing between 19 and 30 minutes. Howard has been above average on a per-minute in all March games, averaging 1.32 (!!!) FP/min.
• Great game by Shake Milton... if we just look at the scoring columns. Milton dropped 28 pops on Sacto starting in place of Ben Simmons, but his other contribs were as low as a rebound, two dimes, a steal, and two TOs on top of that. Not the worst of targets for mega-deep-league GMs, but nothing to call home about.

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