The Minnesota brass tried to warn us. They told the whole world Michael Beasley had cleaned up his act, rededicated himself and bought, like, five braid pattern books for his hair in the offseason. And so far, dude is charging through defenses and those cornrow styling publications at an alarming clip. After his 42 point mishigas last Wednesday, he’s scored 35, then 25 and then 28 points last night, making him the second-highest scorer in the league over the last seven days. I know, I know. It’s like visiting the Island of Misfit Toys. But as sure as I am that a cowboy riding an ostrich wouldn’t be so bad, I can see this being the year for Beasley. Not a year, mind you. The year. Let’s not go nuts here. Beasley won’t always have this much freedom. He’s got Love and a whole lot of nothin’ helping him out in Minnesota. It appears as if Beasley’s gonna have all the time he can stand to score in bunches now that the Wolves management gave Rambis that stone tablet with the engraved message: “Beasley + Love + 32 minutes a game = you keep your job.” And they say nothing is written in stone. I’d love to tell you Beasley can keep this up for another 20 weeks. He might be able to, but trust don’t come easy when one deals with Minny or B-Easy. Still, there’s no reason the 38 mpg he’s averaged in the last week will decrease much (who would they go to?) For now, ride it unless someone offers you a legitimate top 25 player. If that happens, take it and sleep comfortably for the remainder of the season. If not, what’s the worst that can happen? He runs out of tortoise shell patterns for his hair and falls into a deep depression?
Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy basketball:
Jonny Flynn – The second-year guard won’t make his season debut on Wednesday after all. Luke Ridnour looks like he’ll be healthy enough to give Timberwolves fans (both of them!) the return-from-injury plotline they were looking for tomorrow. Luke will be in like Flynn … which is sad in its irony.
Darko Milicic – Game of the season from the DarMi Initiative! Despite early foul trouble, Milicic scored 13 points, grabbed 12 boards, five dimes and four blocks in a season-high 38 minutes. Hey, that’s great. Just wonderful. Really. But if you grab him off your waiver wire, you and I are finished.
Kwame Brown – Returned from injury to post a 3/3/3 blk line in 11 minutes. Why am I spending so much time covering shmoos whom you should not implement onto your fantasy rosters? I like to express myself using the negative spaces. I’ll go over everyone you should not roster and if I don’t mention them, it means they’re fantasy worthy. Next up: Chris Quinn!
Tyrus Thomas – Dropped a 20/10 dub-dub with four blocks after a poor performance (4/9, no blocks) on Saturday. In his last four games, T-Time is shooting .513 and averaging 13.5/7.8 with three blocks per contest. He’s going to give great performances like tonight, and bleak performances like Saturday and they’ll often come one after the other. Still, if his numbers shake out to 14/8/3 bpg, who are you to poo-poo a clunker or two?
Robin Lopez – Out for at least two weeks, but likely significantly longer with sprains to both his MCL and PCL in his left leg. This is actually more good news to fantasy owners than bad, as by now, Hakim Warrick and Channing Frye are owned in more leagues than RoLo. If you’re in a league where either of those guys are still available, grab them in the opposite order they were listed in that last sentence.
Trevor Ariza – A constipated line of 13/7/2 with three thefts and a three. He’s still only shooting a yak-tastic sub-.370 on the season. Just think, if he still played for Houston, that sucker would be somewhere in the .200’s.
Marcus Thorton – Inactive for the second game in a row. My money’s on either a hurt leg/trade announcement a-comin’. Dude, how crazy would an announcement about Thornton being involved in a hurt leg trade in the black market be? Yup. It’d be crazy all right.
Peja Stojakovic – In his first four games of the season Peejy-Steegy has scored 3, 7, 11, and 17 points with at least a trey in each game. I’ll start to consider thinking about possibly picking him after his scoring average continues to climb into the 50s.
Serge Ibaka – Went for 22/11 with four blocks and a steal. Fun fact: Ibaka’s scored in double digits in each of his last four games. Funner fact: He’s had 15 blocks in that span. Funnerest fact: Serge’s full name is Sergeballu LaMu Sayonga Loom Walahas Jonas Hugo Ibaka. Personally, I would have gone with Hugo instead of Serge, but whatever.
C.J. Miles – Scored 16 points and not much else in place of Raja Bell who usually doesn’t even do that much. So … a win-win?
Carmelo Anthony – Scored 20 points and grabbed 22 boards in 38 minutes. Cool. Wait, what? Well, that answers who’s going to rebound for this broken team, now who’s gonna hand out the assists?
Charlie Villanueva – Carlos Newhouse went 18/8/2 with a block, steal and pair of threes in just 25 minutes. There’s not a whole lot of hands a pair of threes beats in Hold ‘Em but in basketball when a player gives you a pair of threes, you hold ’em.
Al-Farouq Aminu – Started. Yay! Played 28+ minutes Yay! Sank two threes Yay! Ended with a 14/1/1 line Ya– really? That’s it? What was all that ‘yay’ talk about then? You can lead Aminu to the court for 28 minutes, but you can’t make him not stink. What’s a minu? That’s for a later time.
Jordan Farmar – Took over for the ejected Devin Harris and, um, literally took over adding a 15/12 double-double in 35 minutes. Harris will be back (eventually), so this isn’t a call to grab Farmar (I’m more likely to tweet that anyway), but if something happens to Harris, lace up your roller sneakers tight and hurry to the waiver wire tout suite (that’s French either “really quick” or “with pants”) because he’s likely to average a low double-double most games.
Kris Humphries – Pretended to be Troy Murphy and scored 12 points in a spot-start. He also grabbed 13 boards, or one fewer thanthe combined total Brook Lopez has grabbed in his last three games.
Terrence Williams – I quickly skimmed the game recap (so sue me – I’m sure you were real jazzed to watch the Clippers and Nets go at it at 11:30 at night!) and read something about Avery Johnson holding out Williams’ groin for precautionary reasons (‘er something). I’m not sure what that was all about, but it didn’t sound promising. What did sound promising was that everything will be back to normal by the time the Nets play Utah on Wednesday.
