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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 23
New Orleans demolishes a hurting Lakers squad, Josh Hart puts on an ultra-rare stat line, and the Pelicans core looks as strong as ever
Tuesday's game between Los Angeles and New Orleans didn't look any good on paper, and it didn't look much better on the court for the Lakers. Missing all of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Marc Gasol, and with Montrezl Harrell playing 34 minutes but still refusing to start, all they could do was finishing 17 points below a Pelicans team that run them out of the gym. That was mostly thanks to great performances by both Zion Williamson (27-9-5-1 in just 29 min.) and Brandon Ingram (36-3-4 in 34).
But the most impressive outing was that logged by Josh Hart. Hart played just 27 minutes on the night coming off the bench, yet his line was as unique as they come. Hart finished with a 2-15-5-5 while hitting just a single two-point FG of the 9 he attempted. This is the 71st time a player has been able to log a 15-5-5, which isn't that rare throughout the history of the L. That being said, Hart is the only player ever to log such a line off the bench, let alone scoring only 2 points and hitting only one field goal. Magic Johnson and Arvydas Sabonis did it with 2 FG made (both finished with 14 points in those games, though) while Andre Drummond, Josh Smith, and Charles Oakley shared the fewest-points-mark in such games at 8 each until Hart broke a new barrier with his couple of pops yesterday.
- Great day for big man Enes Kanter, who keeps putting up numbers for a Blazers time that looks poised to make a move prior to the deadline and could bulk up the rotation with someone a la Aaron Gordon. Until that happens, though, Kanter will stay out there giving his fantasy GMs goodies such as those coming from his 19-19-6 dub-dub against Brooklyn on Tuesday.
- Given what he'd been up to of late, it was nice to watch Deandre Ayton go for a high 17-16-3 dub-dub to go with 3 blocks on top of that. It's been quite an average-ish season for Ayton in a pretty solid Phoenix team, so we'll see if he raises the bar ROS and improves his fantasy value a bit going forward.
- Getting back to the Lakers, only Kyle Kuzma was able to break for more than 35 FP against the Pels, which definitely sucked for LA and probably for those trusting the Lakers' secondary/rotational pieces. Kuz put up a 16-10-7-1 line hitting 4 treys in his 34 minutes of playing time, and he profiles as the major beneficiary of LBJ/AD absences going forward giving his leading role and his skill set. Kuzma is still available in 35 percent of Yahoo leagues.
- Will the Pelicans move on from Lonzo Ball instead of risking losing him for nothing this summer? There is a chance it happens, but fear nothing. Kira Lewis played 20 minutes off the pine for the Pels yesterday and put up a nice 16-1-6 with 2 blocks, shot 57% from the floor, and avoided turnovers entirely. Are we looking at the PG of the future in New Orleans? Maybe, and he's just rostered in 1% of Yahoo leagues!
- Al-Farouq Aminu played his first great game for the Magic after coming back from injury. He put up 45 FP thanks to a 17-10-6-2-1 stuffed line in just 29 minutes on the court. This might be the type of performance Aminu averages ROS, given that Gordon will be move, Fournier might be to, and Orlando is about to enter into full-rebuild mode.
- All of Kyle Lowry, Norman Powell, Aaron Gordon, Andre Drummond, LaMarcus Aldridge, Evan Fournier, and Victor Oladipo are near-locks to get traded in the next 36 hours prior to the deadline. I will be discussing the moves that happen in upcoming daily columns to see how they fit in their new teams and how viable they are to acquire, if they're worth trading for, etc...
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