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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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Tuesday, March 16
Damian Lillard forgets about forgiveness, helps Portland recover from a 17-point deficit, and baptizes New Orleans with a 50-burger
These Pelicans don't have any idea what they are doing. Yesterday's L to Portland was New Orleans' season in a nutshel. The Pels are on the verge of becoming a playoff team, but then they're suddenly not. Today they're looking into potential veteran-trade moves, tomorrow they're holding onto everybody and looking to add one more body to make a postseason run. On Tuesday, the Pelicans were 17 points up over Portland, but all they end doing was eating an L thanks mostly to a masterful game by Dame, whose time surely arrived.
Lillard dropped 50 pops on New Orleans, the first time he's reached that mark this season and the eighth such performance league-wide since the start of the year. The most impressive thing about this game from Dame, though, is how he cooked those 50 chicken wings: he needed 41 minutes of playing time, yes, but he only attempted 20 FGA (!) and hit 13 of them--to go with a perfect 18-for-18 from the charity stripe. It was the most efficient 50-point game of the year, doing so on just 20 FGA compared to the second-best FVV's 54 points in 23 shots.
- No need to say Dame led yesterday's slate to the tune of 75 FP. With that out of the way, it was LeBron who put on another show thanks to a monster 25-12-12 line in just 31 minutes against Minny. Not the strongest of opponents, sure, but LeBron's 2.02 FP/min were absolutely crazy to witness.
- Speaking of monster games in short playing time, what about Moses Brown and his 20-16 dub-dub with 5 blocks for the Thunder? Brown broke into the top-6 performers of the night thanks to that mighty line and although he started at the center spot, he only logged 30 minutes of playing time. Moses is available in 80% of Yahoo leagues and he could be a nice WW target for those in deeper leagues in the need of high FG% and boards.
- Will Ricky Rubio be moved ahead of the trade deadline? Hard to know, but Minny seems to be still too deep into its rebuilding effort and therefore such a move would make sense. Watch out for that, because a change of scenario might turn Rubio into the player he showed he can still be yesterday: magnificent 19-2-12-3 line shooting 73% from the floor with just 1 TO for 1.7 FP/min and a top-10 finish in the fantasy leaderboard.
- The Rockets stink, but they might have found a gem in marginalized Kevin Porter Jr. The sophomore got to Houston via peanuts-trade and he can't stop racking up numbers. Another day, another great game for KP who played 41 minutes and closed his performance at 22-4-8-2-2 doing it all across the board.
- Not a lot of surprises among bench-players around the Association in yesterday's slate. Your usual suspects were the ones to thrive in those off-the-pine roles, including Montrezl Harrell (25-4-6-1-1), Josh Hart (16-9-2-2-1), JaVale McGee (16-8-1-1-2), Dwight Howard (11-12 with 3 blocks), and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (20-5-1-1-1 with 6 treys). Of those, feel free to go after Dwight while Joel Embiid recovers from his injury (expected to be 2+ weeks out).
- Not related to yesterday's games but still interesting for those in deeper leagues: Trevor Ariza looks to be close to joining Miami via trade. The Heat are seemingly negotiating a deal with OKC that would see Ariza land in Florida. This is pretty much what happened to Iggy a year ago, with the same Heat traded for him to get him from exile. Iggy went on to play 21 games from the moment he was traded, averaged 20 MPG, and then re-signed with the team this past summer. Expect something similar happening to Ariza, who is still available in 98% Yahoo leagues.
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