I watched two games last night. The first being the D.C.-Sacramento open gym scrimmage. The second being the L.A.-Cleveland Globetrotters fiasco. Last night, according to those two games, the NBA died. Too bad mi amigos. I mean, really, if you watched either of those games and thought, “Yeah. There’s nothing better I could be doing with my time” then I can also assume you a) live alone, b) already beat your ‘Halo’ videogames several times over, and c) probably listen to a shocking amount of Animal Collective. Anyway, Francisco Garcia’s DRtg went from 107 to 109 simply by letting Nick Young sink seven treys on his way to 43 points last night. This won’t happen every night for Young. This won’t likely happen more than twice more this season for Young. It happened last night because an average defender wasn’t ready to play and neither team have any real plan when they hit the court. He’s a .440 career shooter who shot .636 last night. This could have just as easily turned into another Young 3-for-8 night in which he gets replaced by Kirk Hinrich for 30 minutes, instead of staying on the court for 45. If you managed to avoid getting benchslapped by Young last night, bully for you. With the exception of Saturday’s game against the Bobcats, he’s shooting and scoring at an exceptional rate, though D.C.’s last five games have come against the Hornets, Sixers, Nets, Cats, and Kings – not exactly a firebrand of talent. If you missed Young’s production last night, relax. It happens. Though it probably won’t happen again this season. As far as the Cavs go? It’s entirely likely that their’ bench will play almost as many minutes as their starters from here on out. So there’s that.
Here’s what else went down in the season’s messiest night of fantasy basketball:
Tyreke Evans – Missed last night’s game with a sprained ankle, but it seems he’s leaning about 60-40 toward playing tonight in Boston. I don’t know about you, but I’m having a blast this season playing Will Tyreke’s Ankle Snap In Half Tonight?
Francisco Garcia – 26/4/1 with 2 blocks. Luther Head entered the rotation in place of Tyreke, but, as the plaque in the main building of my community college reads, “You won’t benefit by using your head.” Perhaps I read that outside of Planned Parenthood. Who can remember. Either way, if Tyreke doesn’t play, skip a Head and deploy Garcia.
Carl Landry – Hot lately, averaging 15/5 in six games this month. The secret to Landry’s small resurgence? Threaten him with having to stay in Sacramento if he continues playing like crap and making himself untradable.
Pooh Jeter – 11 dimes. Okay. So, now we know how many assists Eugene Genie is capable of when he’s playing among high schoolers.
Josh Howard – He’s out for another week, maybe 10 days with a torn you-don’t-really-care-because-he-hasn’t-been-fantasy-relevant-since-2008. Anyway, six days from now I’m planning on dropping banana peels in his path just to see if I can keep this this hilarious daisy chain of injuries going through the spring!
Andray Blatche – 16/13/4 with four steals, all of which happened despite playing only 29 foul-plagued, shoulder-sprained minutes. The shoulder sprain doesn’t sound like a big deal. He’s had eight double-doubles this season, four of which have come in the last 11 games. If you don’t own him, he might still be just under the radar enough for you to get a deal. If you do own him, tell anyone trying to get a deal from you to go fudge themselves.
Andre Iguodala – Continuing with our Andre/ay theme, Iggy returned after missing the last seven games. You wish he’d stayed away as he went 1/4/7 on 0-for-7 shooting in 33 minutes. You should have been benching him before he got hurt, no reason to stop benching him now.
Andres Nocioni – He’s hurt, played less than three minutes and Iggy’s back. He’s an across-the-board dump, which is different than an overboard dump, which is what happens when someone is in your boat’s bathroom and you’re having a taco emergency.
Jodie Meeks – I can’t believe how much I’ve talked about Jodie Meeks this season. He usually goes in 3-6 games hot ‘n’ cold streaks. He’s about three games into a hot streak, so jump aboard before it’s all over. NOTE: 13/2/3 with three treys counts as part of a “Jodie Meeks Hot Streak” or “Meeks Streeks” if we’re in the marketing department of a kid’s television show.
Darren Collison – 21/13. First double-double of the season. He only shot .320 in the previous two games and distributed 10 assists over that span, so I’m not convinced the 2009 DarCo is back. It wouldn’t take more than two more solid games to convince me though. I’m a pushover.
Tyler Hansbrough – 12/9/2 in 25 minutes. He’s had one worse game than this and one better since entering the starting lineup. Last night’s production is a fair assessment of what you should expect from Insani-Ty.
Martell Webster – 18/5/0 with a steal and 2 treys as he took up a few minutes from the still-injured Beasley. If B-Easy misses any games (and it looks like he’ll miss a week or more), Wes Johnson, Webster and Anthony Tolliver are your pickups in that order.
Ty Lawson – 16/6/5. Played almost as many minutes as Chauncey Billups (7/0/7) and did more with them. Damn this trade. I haven’t been this agonized waiting for a big change to happen since my pre-pubescent health class.
Arron Afflalo – 31 points on 11-for-14 shooting. Does that sound like a pace he’s likely to maintain?
Kenyon Martin – Returned. 6/2/4 with a block in 20 minutes. Blah. Give him time.
Josh Childress – Started in place of the injured Grant Hill and ended with 5/5/2 in 26 minutes. That ain’t gonna do it.
Ronny Turiaf – Pepper Ronny played 38 minutes and played arguably the best game of his career: 19 pts/10 rbd/3 ast/3 stl/2 blk/1 tov. Considering I just said it was arguably his best game ever, this would suggest it’s on the outlying side of the median. Meaning, don’t pick him up expecting him to suddenly start doing this every day.
Marcus Camby – If you ain’t cookin’ (1 point on 0-for-6 shooting), you oughta clean (16 rebounds, 6 blocks and a steal).
Manny Harris – Exploded for 8/6 in 41 minutes!
Alonzo Gee – 12/8 with three steals and a block. At some point, Gee should have realized that he was leading his team in several stat categories and decided it would be fun to find the luxury box Dan Gilbert was sitting in and give him a determined thumbs up whenever he did pretty much anything during the game. Kapow! I gotcha, D.G. A.Gee won’t let you down! Kapow!
