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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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Sunday, May 16
Stephen Curry wins the scoring title and will face the Lakers in the play-in; the Clippers and the Nuggets tank their ways to the no. 4 and no. 3 seeds respectively; Washington gets into the top-end play-in game against Boston
And that's a wrap! Don't be sad, my readers out there, because while the regular season is over we still have plenty of spicy basketball ahead with the play-in this week and the actual playoffs also starting as soon as this Saturday, May. 22! To close the regular period, Steph opted to put on a show dropping 46 points with 9 treys in the season finale to solidify himself above Bradley Beal in the PPG race and get the scoring title. The most important thing, though, was the fact that the Lakers couldn't get out of the play-in after finishing with the no. 7 seed, thus facing GSW in the mini-tourney.
Staying in the West, there were tons of doubts around what both the Clippers and Nuggets would do in order to toy with seeding--and let's be honest, screw the Lakers into the play-in--with the ultimate outcome being a couple of Ls against the lowly Thunder and the Blazers, which will once more face Denver in the postseason after doing so in the finale. Out East, Washington was able to finish with the no. 8 seed, making sure they have two chances to make it to the playoffs (if they lose to Boston they will still have another shot at it against the winner of the IND/CHA game).
- As I already said in the intro: God bless Steph. 46 points in 40 minutes against Memphis in a preview of what could come in the play-in if GSW loses to Los Angeles and Memphis defeat San Antonio. Curry hit 9 treys and added a 7-9-1-1 rest-of-line while shooting stupid 36 (!!!) FGA and still connecting on 44% of them. The usage rate was all the way up to 49.4% (LOL).
- The Tanking Thunder saw a greater effort than theirs in that of the Clippers, so all they could do was get a W. Moses Brown was the man to blame thanks to a monster 24-18-3 dub-dub with 7 (!!!) blocks against Los Angeles. Top-2 fantasy play of the day.
- As it was always going to be the case, Russell Westbrook closed the regular season on a tear with another triple-double of 23-15-10 helping Washington get a very important W to snatch that no. 8 seed. Russ ends the 2021 year with 38 trip-dubs, averaging a season-long triple-double for the fourth time in his career, and having just overtaken Oscar Robertson for the lead in that category. Insane.
- Shout-out to Milly Bucks' Jordan Nwora, who played 36 minutes off the pine for Milwaukee and was able to get the best reserve score of the slate with 59 FP translated from a great 34-14-0-1-2 dub-dubbing line. The Bucks enter the postseason against the wall after disappointing in the past two seasons, so it's good to know they have some warm bodies down the depth chart that could potentially help them throughout the playoffs.
- A ton of under-the-radar explosions yesterday with a lot of rarely-used players getting huge runs: Onyeka Okongwu, Jevon Carter, Jeff Teague, Nemanja Bjelica, Gabe Vincent, Precious Achiwua, Paul Reed, Josh Hall, and Tyrese Maxey all finished with 41+ DKFP on Sunday.
- And perhaps the most important thing, we dodged the potential injury-bullet with no big-time player getting knocked out of yesterday's game.
That's it for the regular-season recaps! Hope you found those interesting, useful, and most important that you snatched that fantasy championship you definitely fought for throughout this whole random and unique season. I'll be around penning some season-end articles reviewing the year during the next few days and weeks, and we'll be back at this before you realize--I mean, it's almost November already, isn't it?
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