Fantasy Basketball Night In Review: Wednesday, December 1

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.

NBA Recap for Wednesday, December 1

Jae'Sean Tate leads Houston to its fourth straight victory; Giannis and LaMelo puts on a show facing each other with the former hitting the game-winning layup while reaching 40 points

The Rockets were able to start the season with a ridiculously bad 1-16 record winning their second match of the year against OKC to then embark on a 15-game losing streak... that has them now winning four straight, two of them against the OKC thunder to put those series at a positive 3-0 hard to comprehend. Houston got the third win against the Thunder yesterday with a magnificent outing by Jae'Sean Tate, whose 32-10-7-2-5 packed line had no rival on Wed.'s DK slate...

...other than Giannis, that is. Antetokounmpo posted the same DKFP as Tate (69.5) but he did it with a 40-12-9-1 near trip-dub, and that is with 6 TOs baked in, so the tally could have been even larger. The Bucks edged Charlotte by just a couple of points, namely those coming from a Giannis layup to give them the lead in the closing seconds. Miles Bridged threw a heave toward the rim to end the game and he was this close to hitting it. Just imagine.

• Shout-out to LaMelo Ball, who fell just 5 DKFP short of Giannis/Tate with an impressive 8-trey performance for the Hornets accompanied by a full 36-5-9-3-1 all-across-the-board contribution. The turnovers were absolutely insane at 7 on the day, but it must be said that the shooting was impressive with Melo hitting 54.5% of his total 22 FGA and going hundred on his 4 FTA.
• Fantastic 13-18 dub-dub by Embiid, who not happy enough with that went on and dumped 6 dimes, 2 steals, and 3 blocks on Boston. The shooting was horrific, though, at below 18% on 17 field goals. Tatum dub-dubbed for the opposing Celtics thanks to a 26-16-2-1 game that saw the Beantown Boyz edge Philly by a single point on a low-scoring affair (88-87).
• Almost a top-10 finish for rookie Evan Mobley, who turned out to be the best Cav-man against Miami on Wednesday. 17-11-4-1-4 with a couple of treys to his name, can't complain. Franz Wagner, speaking of rooks, finishing close to the top-30 with a 15-3-5-3-1 line in Orlando's defeat of Denver.

• As I already highlighted Tate above, I can only talk to you about Miami's starting center on Wednesday Dewayne Dedmon. DeDe played 31 minutes and put up a sound and unexpected 11-13-3-1-2 dub-dub for the Heat with the only blemish of not visiting the free-throw line at all. Not that we can't hate that thing a lot, though.
• Two more rookies other than Mobley making it to the top-10 most valuable plays of DK's slate: Davion Mitchell came off the pine for the Kings, played 29 minutes, and dropped 20 pops in defeating the Clipps while adding 3 boards, 2 dimes, and 2 steals to that contrib; Brandon Boston, on the other side, logged 24 ticks for the Clips and put up a solid 13-3-1-1-2 line himself.
• Second great game of the year by Armoni Brooks for the Rebuilding Rocks. He is not doing it daily, but it's good to see he has some fire inside. Moni finished the day with an 18-4-0-2-2 that is giving John Wall pause when it comes to him wanting to come back to his playing ways in the H-Town.

• The dawg Jonas Valanciunas went from Dirk Valanciunas a couple of nights ago to Darko Valanciunas yesterday. The line? A silly bad 6-5-1-1 shooting 12.5% (!!!) on just 8 FGA. I guess the 4-for-4 on freebies saved his game a bit, but that doesn't mean he didn't suck, which he surely did.
• The Sixers and the Celtics engaged in a very putrid offensive game in which none even reached 90 points. Nothing surprising, considering Jaylen Brown and Tobias Harris had very interesting duds on Wednesday. Jay put up a 9-4-3 shooting 27% and Tobi finished at 8-6-1-1-1 with a 36% success from the field. Nothing to love.
• Christian Wood had to leave the Rockets game early and was on a boot after the game, so expect potential bad news coming from Houston... Karl-Anthony Towns fell hard to the floor and although the X-Rays have come back negative we'll see if he doesn't miss one or a few games... Kevin Porter Jr. suffered a thigh contusion and didn't return for Houston either... The Warriors have recalled James Wiseman from the G League... Bam Adebayo is expected to miss 4-to-6 weeks of play after undergoing surgery on his thumb.

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