RADIO
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, November 17
The Phoenix Suns prove they are for real with their 10th straight victory while the Lakers can't do a thing to stop the Bucks as they're hurting for a certain LeBron James to come back
It sounds ridiculous, yes, but it is as real as it gets: Phoenix has stringed ten consecutive wins and they're now leading just one game behind the Warriors for the lead out West. Only the Rockets have a longer streak... only they do on losses instead of Ws. The Suns did little but enough to edge a Luka-less Mavs team on which Deandre Ayton dumped a 19-13-2 dub-dub with a block, while teammate Devin Booker finished with a low 24-9 and no more contributions.
Moving East, Milwaukee welcomed Khris Middleton back after a bunch of days and defeated LA by seven pops in a game that saw Giannis become the no. 1 DK play thanks to a season-high 47 points to go with 9 boards, 3 dimes, a steal, and a block. The shooting was sublime from the Greek, hitting 78.3% of his 23 FGA and connecting on 72.7% of his 11 FTA. Middleton overtook Ray Allen as the most prolific three-point scorer in franchise history. Oh, and somehow Talen Horton-Tucker was the leading man of the lowly Lakers. Sheesh.
- Jimmy Butler serving us a tasty performance on Wednesday to the tune of a 31-10-10 packed trip-dub against the shitty Pelicans. Only Giannis bested Jimmer's 1.73 FP/min on the day as the Buck put up a 1.84 FP/min efficiency mark facing LA.
- Tatum got his shooting right after a while and dumped 34 points (with 5 treys baked into them) on Atlanta... though the Celtics dropped the game to the Hawks. Boston is still waiting for Jaylen Brown to come back from injury, but it's not that Atlanta had a monster game yesterday from anyone in particular as John Collins was the best Hawk ranking just 16th with a 20-11-1-2-1 good-not-great outing.
- Hard to see the likes of Lu Dort (34-8-2 with a block), Kristaps Porzingis (21-8-7-1-2), and Alex Caruso (12-10-9-2-2) putting up top-10 fantasy tallies going forward, but they thrived on a 13-game slate yesterday. Shouts out to fantasy GMs out there trusting all those subpar players if only for a night.
- Tons of valuable fantasy plays on a huge slate of games. Larry Nance Jr. has flown under the radar for most of the season balling in Portland, but his 16-9-3-3-1 performance off the pine was the best in terms of ROI given his availability/DFS salary.
- Caruso, THT, and Dort (all mentioned above) were fantastic too. Cory Joseph was the second-best off-the-pine play of the day with a high 18-5-2-1 line given his 31 minutes of playing time for the Pistons. Cam Reddish proved vital for Atlanta's W over Boston thanks to a 19-2-1-3-1 stuffed outing in 27 minutes.
- Cade Cunningham is starting to heat up for good, folks. Depressing start to the year for him with putrid shooting outcomes that are not quite fixed yet, but the volume is so high (18 FGA, 4 FTA, 28.2 USG%) and the minutes so bulky (34) that he's just making it on brute force: 16-8-6-2-1 all-across-the-board contrib from the freshman.
- Julius Randle couldn't help the Knicks top Orlando with a filled-but-low 13-5-3-1 line hitting 4 treys but turning the ball over three times while committing 5 PF in 32 minutes of play. Another biggie boy, Jonas Valanciunas, could not play much better than JR with a 13-8 (and one block) himself...
- Spencer Dinwiddie played 29 minutes for the Wiz against Charlotte... and all he did was finish with a stupid 0-3-2 line, shot 0-for-5 from the field, never visited the charity stripe, and fumbled 2 TOs.
- No injury scares yesterday, with the biggest-impact development coming from Luka's absence in Dallas rotation opening the door to a marvelous Jalen Brunson... Rudy Gay could play tonight for the Jazz and debut this season, though there is no confirmation about it as of this writing.
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