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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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Wednesday, May 5
A chalky night with no surprises around the slate other than the Suns dropping one to the rising Atlanta Hawks, and the Pacers falling to Sacramento
Even on a day that saw a ton of strong teams fighting for a better postseason berth during the home stretch, there was only one "surprise" in the Association on Wednesday night. The Hawks have now won three consecutive games, the last one against Phoenix yesterday--and not by a small difference, beating the Suns by 32 points.
In a conference reversal, Indy was the team from the East to lose yesterday to a Western Conference team in Sacto, who left the Pacers in a slightly more precarious situation as Indiana is now just 0.5 games above Washington in the 9th seed. The Wiz lost to Milwaukee, but they are 7-3 in the past 10 games and making a strong push to finish with that ninth seed when all is said and done.
- 179 down, three to go. That's Russell Westbrooks' triple-double running record, which is getting closer by the day to the mark Oscar Roberson put up more than a while ago and has him really close to tying O-Rob and even surpassing him before the end of this regular season. Russ got himself a 29-12-17-3-1 stuffed line, but that went for nothing as the Bucks defeated Washington on Wednesday.
- While Bradley Beal dropped a slate-high 42 points on Milly, it was much more impressive to find Anthony Edwards reaching that scoring mark for the Wolves against Memphis. You read that right, Ant lit it up with 42 pops (8 treys), 6 boards, 7 dimes, a steal, and a block to spare. This is the second time Ant has scored 40+ points as a rookie, joining LeBron as the only two teenagers with multiple 40+ point games in the history of the L. He also became part of a three-teenager group (he, LeBron, and Kevin Durant) to get a 40-5-5 line. Not bad.
- Kelly Olynyk is a pending free agent. Are we sure the Rockets will pass on re-signing the big man? Christian Wood is definitely the younger and higher-upside player in Houston's paint, by Olykyk has been great and yesterday he proved his worth once more with a great 27-11-8-1-3 all-across-the-board contribution for 63 FP on 40 minutes of playing time.
- Even on just 14 minutes off the bench, Daniel Gfaford was fantastic with a 12-10-2 dub-dub for the Wiz that included a swatted shot. The Wiz started Alex Len at the C position, but all he could was finish with a putrid 2-4 line in 17 minutes, which sucked to watch.
- Jordan Clarkson wasn't his usual deadly shooter with only 2 treys against San Antonio, but he was still able to drop 30 pops on the Spurs with 6 boards and 4 dimes. The shooting was good overall at 75% from the floor on 16 FGA, and he also went 4-of-5 from the free-throw line. Clarkson was the best reserve on Wednesday's slate of games.
- The Nuggets ran New York out of town and recent-signee Austin Rivers was one of the deciding factors on that outcome. Rivers played 28 minutes off the pine and reached 42 FP translated from a tasty 25-3-3-3 stuffed line that saw him hit 6 triples while committing only one TO. The Nuggets, as you know, have suffered a ton of injuries of late, so it's crucial for them to have every role and secondary player contributing like this if they want to make a deep postseason run.
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