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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Wednesday, April 28
The Utah Jazz put together a 154-piece and force Sacramento into the bad side of their history books; Denver (W) gets one game short of tying the Clippers (L) record
First things first: the Kings are definitely the Kangz, no matter how good things look at certain times here and there throughout their seasons. Just yesterday, in a game in which they faced a Conley/Mitchell-less Jazz, Sacramento fell down 105-154 in which amounted to their worst home defeat in the history of the franchise. That's right. Worst. Home. Defeat. Ever. No wonder way, as Buddy Hield was the best King on Wednesday with just a packed-but-low 18-5-7-2-3 line for 45 FP. Utah didn't even need much for its no. 1 player Rudy Gobert, whose 12-10 dub-dub (with 5 swats on top) was more than enough.
Staying West, watch out for the postseason race getting tighter down the road, boys. It all looked like we're on our way to have a Nuggets vs. Lakers first-round matchup, but the Clips seem to be determined to flop and Denver doesn't know how to lose a game these days. There is just a one-game gap between both teams, and I'm pretty sure the Clips don't want anything to do with facing the Lake Show in the first round. The Suns' win also kept them in the run for the no. 1 seed currently in Utah's possession.
- Another triple-double for Russ, this one to the tune of an 18-18-14 with 2 steals against the Lakers in another W for the Wiz. Beal finished with 27 points and that means he's leading the PPG race edging Steph Curry with 31.3 PPG to Steph's 31.2. Another fun race to keep an eye on through the next three weeks of play.
- Nobody will get surprised by Russ' line. What about Lonzo's, though? Triple-double for the older of the Balls who cooked himself a nice 16-12-12-4-2 in what was his best performance of the season to date with 65 FP. Ball is a pending free agent and we all can assume now that he's going to fill his bag big time come next offseason.
- A day for secondary players at the guard positions around the Association: Facundo Campazo was impressive starting for Denver and putting together a 19-6-10-2-1 stuffed line, Aaron Nesmith came out of left field with his 15-9-0-3-3 performance for Boston off the pine, and Gary Harris was fantastic for Orlando with a 19-6-7 himself starting at SG. None of the three are rostered in even 25% of Yahoo leagues and look good as deep-league WW additions ROS.
- I don't know what Cleveland is going to do with Kevin Love, or what they actually would be able to do with him given his monster of a contract, but the truth is that Love is more cooked than not. Not the worst performance yesterday with a 6-10-6-3 Draymond-esque line, but his best days are truly over.
- Capela's night was one to forget for Captain Clint: ultra-low 9-8 outing with 2 blocks to make up a bit for it, but low 22 FP tally overall in just 24 minutes of playing time against the Sixers, which didn't even need to run their own JoJo for long as Embiid played only 25 minutes (17-7-1-1-3).
- This was something to expect given the sky-high scoring and the difference on the scoreboard by the final buzzer, but as ridiculous as it sounds seven Jazz players finished inside the top-9 players in plus/minus yesterday with Ilyasova's +24 being pretty ridiculous considering he just played 14 minutes.
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