Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Thursday, March 18

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.

Thursday, March 18

Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards bully their ways into proving Minnesota has a bright future ahead

I don't think anybody thought of Minny as a playoff-caliber team entering the 2021 season. I don't think, either, that anybody thought this squad was going to be this bad. The Wolves have been without D'Lo, drafted a kid that started his career in shaky ways, and KAT also missed time here and there due to different reasons. It all stunk...

...until Wolves' fans were able to catch a glimpse of what could lie ahead if everything works for the franchise. Both KAT and Edwards put on incredible, top-3 fantasy performances against Phoenix on Thursday combining for a massive 83 points and dropping 41-10-8-1 and 42-7-3-2 lines respectively. Edwards became the third-youngest player to score 40+ pops in a game, and he shot 31 (!!!) FGA on the day. KAT hit five treys shooting 63 percent from the floor. If these are the Wolves of the future, then things might not be that bad in the long run around cold Minny.

• What about Julius Randle!? Wilt Randlerlain came back to our screens and let us witness an impressive 18-10-17 performance that included a steal and a triple. Monster game by Julius, who is putting on the strongest season of his career by far.
• None of Randle, KAT, nor Edwards could rival Russell Westbrook's amazing night in the Wiz upset of the Jazz. While Bradley Beal dropped 43 buckets, Russ logged a trip-dub to the tune of 82 FP translated from a ridiculous 35-15-13-2-1 line.

• Bogdan Bogdanovic, who has been out for the largest part of this season, had his best game as a Hawk coming off the bench yesterday against OKC. 30 minutes for the forward, who put up a 23-6-3 line with 3 treys, a sweet 64% shooting from the floor, and no turnovers at all on a 22% usage rate. Not bad for someone available in 55% of all Yahoo leagues. Check your WW.
• Thursday marked the day Reggie Bullock played to the level the Knicks were expecting him to for the past three months. Bullock had started every single game he's played yet his average FP are down to 18 on the season while playing 28 MPG. That sucks. Bullock, though, has righted his game a bit after the break and had his best outing in that span with 37 FP thanks to a 20-3-3-3 line with 6 triples to his name... precisely the day he came off the bench. Not the soundest of WW targets, but one to consider in the deepest leagues out there (96% availability in Yahoo).

• C.J. McCollum, who is finally back for the Blazers, might take a little bit of time to get back to his league-winning ways. Another game, another dud with just 20 minutes of playing time in which all he could do was hit 11 pops to go with a 2-2-1 rest-of-line shooting a putrid 19% on 16 FGA. Kanter is Portland's no. 2 fantasy guy these days, and he proved so once more with another dub-dub to the tune of a 16-13-1-2 line.
• We were all super high on Aleksej Pokusevski after he put on a masterful game a few days ago. That, sadly, were mostly jokes and laughs about a performance that looked more like a fluke than anything else. Peep at yesterday's line from Poku, and you'll understand why that was in fact the case: 4-6-2 and 18 FG% in 27 minutes starting at SF...

Download Our Free News & Alerts Mobile App

Like what you see? Download our updated fantasy basketball mobile app for iPhone and Android with 24x7 player news, injury alerts, lineup notifications & DFS articles. All free!

More Fantasy Basketball Analysis