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Hello and happy weekend to the fantasy basketball world. It’s crunch time with many leagues’ playoffs wrapping up and roto contests speeding to the finish line. I’m coming to you from the boardwalk of Pacific Beach in the San Diego area. Spring Break! Woooo! [Yeah, dude, you’re old and have three kids with you; settle down.] So, I’m going to get right into the Friday Night recap, and skip the story about that one time I rented an AirBnB in a really sketchy part of town and there was a creepy basement with some sort of gargoyle living in it that would look up to me and screech, “Mamu?!”

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Denver’s post-deadline pickup of Reggie Jackson is an ill omen for Bruce Brown, and that manifested itself on Thursday. With Brown (53 percent rostered in Yahoo! standard leagues) relinquishing backup point guard responsibilities, he struggled to find footing, finishing his night with just two points, two rebounds, two assists, and no threes or defense. I fear he won’t have enough volume moving forward to put up counting stats, or enough time to make for it with defense. I’m ready to cut bait  on him right now.

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The universe got jokes. In 2014, Jerome Dobson and Joshua Campbell from the University of Kansas published a paper called “The Flatness  of the US States” back in 2014. Their motivation? To clap back on the general perception of Kansas being flat. NERDS!!! Anyways, I’m not going into to the technicalities of the study but they deduced that Florida, Illinois, North Dakota, Lousiana, Minnesota, Delaware, Kansas, Texas, Nevada, and Indiana are the flattest states in the US. On Sunday, Kyrie Irving was traded from the Brooklyn Nets to the Dallas Mavericks, so from New York to Texas, where he should automatically feel a oneness with the terrain. 

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Last night I was able to test out a new Seuss-style story during my kids’ bedtime:

“An Ant-man with cool fluffy hair, who went the nation’s capital and let it rain from behind the arch. He was hitting ‘em on the pull up. He was hitting ‘em on the spot up. He nailed 3s on the swing. He nailed 3s on the run. He hit 3s from the corner, at the top. He created a skookum of 3s like it was a skookum of tallywade  ….”

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I was prepared to lead this Friday Night Recap with a fancy take on Aaron Gordon, but King James had other plans. With Anthony Davis sitting the second half with a bum foot in the Lakers-Nuggets game, Denver had a double-digit third quarter lead and were cruising to a road win. Then LeBron James stepped into the center spot and ran circles around Nikola Jokic and friends, finishing with 30 points (13-20 FG, 1-4 3pt, 3-4 FT), 9 boards, 4 dimes and 2 steals along with a +26 in the 126-108 victory.

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Welcome to your midweek guidance for Week Nine!  In this post, I identify widely-available players who can help you win your head-to-head matchup.  After a placid start to the week, Stephen Curry sustained a shoulder injury late in the Warriors’ Wednesday-night game.  While I hope this doesn’t amount to anything serious for Steph, the production vacuum that results from him potentially missing multiple games cannot be overlooked.  In other news, those of you who exercised patience with rookie centers Jalen Duren and Walker Kessler are being rewarded of late.  Hopefully you were all able to snag one of them before the gold rush.

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Much to the disappointment of pundits chomping at the bit to argue whether the Lakers play better without LeBron, L.A. lost again Friday night, 120-114 to the Kings, because De’Aaron Fox maneuvered about the roost like the sly creature he is, feasting on chicken defenders and dropping bags of leftover bones through the net left and right. Fox finished with 32 points (13-19 FG, 2-5 3pt, 4-5 FT), 7 boards and 12 assists. He’s averaging about 25-5-6 with a steal and just under 3 turnovers to start the season. His 3-point shooting (36%) has been slightly better than years past, as well as from the line (86%), but it’s inside the arch he’s been lethal, converting 63% of 2-point shots. Also, mark the “Clutch” checkbox next to Fox’s name on the stat sheet, as he led the Kings to victory with 10 fourth-quarter points on 5-of-7 shooting and three rebounds, four assists and a crucial steal.

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Darius Garland returned to the Cavaliers, putting up 29 points and 12 assists in a close victory over the Boston Celtics. In both games where Garland and Donovan Mitchell have played the Cavs bigs have struggled to score. Jarrett Allen had 15 points last night while Evan Mobley had 14, both were below regular season averages. As for the Celtics, it’s hard to win games when Jayson Tatum shoots 8-21 from the field. On a positive note his defensive numbers were quite solid last night: nine defensive rebounds and four blocks. 

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On a recent podcast with Son, I let slip, “If you’re a center that doesn’t get blocks, I don’t think I have any use for you.” It was a knee-jerk line, one that I hadn’t much considered before it fell out of my mouth, and I’ve been wrestling with how true that might actually be ever since. For most of the summer, I’ve been vexed by the center position because, outside of the elite guys, the shortcomings of the position are obvious and numerous. For many, their usefulness in category leagues extends only to rebounds, blocks and FG%, and oftentimes those few spoils are sacrificed at the altar of points, dimes, triples, and free-throw percentage. Drafting a center that doesn’t, it’s a steep tradeoff in the best of circumstances, so when looking at someone like Deandre Ayton – a top-50ish, center-eligible player who produced exactly enough swats last year to break even in the category by z-score – I began to wonder what exactly the point was. 

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Can LeBron be corny at times? Yup. Does LeBron flop sometimes? Premier League players break down his tape. Is LeBron entering the final stages of his hooping career? Father Time is undefeated. That said, is LeBron one of the greatest players of all time? He almost won a chip with Eric F’ing Snow at point guard. He’s Magic Johnson in Karl Malone’s body with Zion Williamson hops, before Zion morphed into the long lost Klump. He’s won the chips, received all the accolades and awards, and is still doing this at age 37….

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