Troy Murphy signed with the Celtics, who seem to be gunning for the all-time record of broke-down NBA big men. Erick Dampier feels like he should be on this team. You get the feeling Rajon Rondo spends most of his free time Skyping kids his own age during road trips while the rest of the Celtics roster goes out to see “The King’s Speech” for the third time? As far as Murphy goes, what can I say? We’ve been waiting for him to play all season and he hasn’t. Technically he has, but he looked like a coma victim taking his first steps on atrophied legs during that time. I expect the same immediately from Murphy right away. But for better or for worse, he’s likely going to grab big minutes if he shows any pulse. He was a top 30 pick just a year ago and, as far as anyone can tell, there’s no reason he still can’t finish the season that way. Just understand that we’re talking about three weeks-worth of production – and almost certainly not top 30 production.
Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy basketball:
Eric Gordon – Returns tonight. You know the drill. Give it a game or two, then forget you ever knew Randy Foye.
Mike Bibby – Your new starting PG for the Miami Heat. He averaged 9.1/2.5/3.6 in 30 minutes per contest starting for a highly athletic, playoff-bound club with a multitude of scoring options. At best, I see his 1.9 3ptm improving a tick, while his assists and points droop ever so slightly. If you owned Bibby before, keep owning him. If you had no use for him before, keep pwning him.
Larry Sanders – Starting for the next week in place of Andrew Bogut. He started that run going 2/8, with a trio of blocks. He’s unlikely to remain that cold and even if he does, he’s not shooting much worse than Bogut had been (.355 in the previous seven).
Carlos Delfino – An absence of Bogut, an absence of Ilyasova, a presence of Brockman. As long as this keeps up, be sure to roster Delfino (16/10/4, with four steals and two blocks last night).
Richard Hamilton – Kuester shuffled up the cards and re-dealt. Surprisingly, the Stuckey-Gordon-Daye-Wilcox-Monroe starting lineup actually make sense. My assumption is whenever Prince gets healthy (any day), he’ll return to the starting lineup, but McGrady (also healthy any day now) won’t. Hamilton’s 10/2/3 in 26 minutes leads me to believe he has slight worth again. If you were shopping for someone with “slight worth,” well, giddyup!
Reggie Williams – 25/4/2, with five treys while Dorell Wright took an extended dinner break. Unless it turns out that Wright was more injured than he felt at game’s end, this was a fleeting game for Reg’.
Tyson Chandler – Outside of his 23/13, .713 FG% Saturday, the league-leader in True Shooting Percentage has shot .294 (5-for-17) in the last week. Then he sprained his ankle. He’s on that same team I have with Parker, Gay, Smith and Felton. If there are more typos than usual in this post, it’s because I threw my laptop against the wall two or three times before getting through this blurb.
Jason Terry – 30/2/4. Sometime after his 20th point, JET made a point to stare over at Beaubois to ensure he appeared appropriately guilty.
Louis Williams – Shot 1-for-8 last night. Shooting .350 in his last eight games. He’s scored 16+ in three of those games, but really, it wasn’t worth it.
Hedo Turkolgu – Got tossed after earning a second technical while arguing from the bench, leaving with no points on 0-for-4 shooting. That’s so Hedo! Also, he won’t make my top 150 list next season.
George Hill – Played poorly, shot poorly, turned the ball over six times. That said, no one on San Antonio played well. Except for Tiago Splitter whose season was supposedly over – which I guess was just a metaphorical thing.
Marcus Camby – Nate McMillan removed Camby’s time restriction, but Marcus clearly wasn’t ready for that and re-applied the restriction himself by playing crappily (1/7/2, with a block in 19 minutes).
Chase Budinger – I said this two days ago: “He’s a 15/6/1 player who will sink a pair of threes every game and give you solid shooting from the free-throw line. Your team can use that. Every team can use that. So go use that.” Why am I awesome? Because last night he ended with 14/5/2, and went 2-for-2 from the line. Adam, he missed all of his three-point attempts. You’re right, Al Talics. I’m worthless.
Wesley Johnson – 20/8/2 against L.A. He’s averaging 19.7/5.7/3 in the three games since the trade deadline. Go ahead and grab him while he’s playing well, but I don’t see it lasting. Firstly, he’s averaging 39 minutes a game. As Martell Webster is near his return and Anthony Randolph‘s minutes have increased in each game he’s been a part of the team, he won’t maintain that average. And Secondly, he’s averaging .480 from the floor in those three games, which is about 30 percentage points too high.
Kevin Love – He’s shooting .265 (9-of-34) against the Lakers this season. sarcasm\ Hope they don’t meet in the first round of the playoffs! /sarcasm If there’s any knock against Love, it’s that he could b considered a bit soft against winning teams. His worst field goal shooting this season came against the Lakers, Celtics, Mavericks, Kings and Hawks. The two games against the Kings both happened in the first 10 games of the season when Love was playing fewer than 30 minutes. ‘Member that!?!
