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After being in the playoff hunt for a nice portion of the season, the final stretch saw the Magic pull ahead and make a playoff appearance. As a result, the Hornets slowly shifted to the youth movement, seeing their young core get meaningful minutes. Franchise cornerstone, Kemba Walker, moved on to greener pastures, literally and figuratively, and will be running the show in Boston. Jeremy Lamb will assume an important role for the revamped Pacers. The Hornets will be infused with youth and will likely be bottom feeders, but the fantasy landscape is bright.

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Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

If you are new to the site, welcome to the Razz-party. You’ll feel smarter for having found this glorious blog, and feel silly for not finding it earlier in life, because life is too short to miss something this good . 

A little refresher on my background, before getting into the meat of this post. I was a frequent flier to the blog for vital information on all every day sports. A couple of years back, our fearless leader, Son, was looking for a few good writers. That is when Beyond the Glory was born, and three years later, it lives on. As a major Will Ferrell fan, the title of my dime is a play on the movie Blades of Glory, a true underdog story… if I’ve ever seen one. A play on words, as most of the players I write about are under-owned, under-valued or, sometimes, straight up overlooked in almost all fantasy leagues and formats. In other words, you’ll need to search well beyond the first ten names on the waiver wire to find the guys I like to target. In the past, I have more often than not focused on a single player per article, but this year I may dabble in a little bit of a different approach. I’ll be talking about three players per week; suggested pickups for 10-team, 12-team and 15-team or deeper, leagues. If that’s not living Beyond the Glory, I don’t know what is. As for the preseason content, I will be focusing on one player per week who could be a steal later in drafts, so stay tuned for some league winning content from now until opening night. 

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(Just FYI, All of these players are hovering around the 50 mark in the overall rankings so far.)

These are your finalists for RazzWired player of the first half! Pretty sure I got the HTML code right for the poll, but if it doesn’t work for some reason, just comment your vote below, and I’ll add em up for next week!

A few first half honorable mentions:

  • C.J. Miles
  • Ish Smith
  • Omri Casspi
  • And for deeper leagues – Raymond Felton!

(Ish and Omri didn’t make the vote because of their shorter length of relevance.)

This was a rather quiet week for waiver adds, so I’ll just give a small preview for the second half.

Obviously, Myles Turner has to make the list of up and comers for the second half.  The last couple games, he’s really had a breakthrough, and barring injuries, he could be a top 75 play in the second half.  He’s currently forcing his way into playing time, and with his skill-set, the only thing stopping him is health.  The minutes may not get over 30, but the production should still be there.

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Wow, how good is Russell Westbrook? Two nights after dropping 40 points and 14 assists against the Grizzlies, Westbrook scored 43 points, 8 assists, and 9 rebounds on Wednesday. The Thunder controlled the game, but never really put the game out of reach for the injury-riddled Pelicans. Whenever the Thunder needed a basket, Westbrook had no problem getting to the hoop or finding the open man. My only knock on Westbrook’s game is the turnovers, but when you’re posting near triple doubles every night, you’re allowed to turn the ball over as much as he does.

Now his stats are inflated a little because Kevin Durant has been sitting with a hamstring injury, but Westbrook is still a top 10 talent even with Durant in the lineup. Should Durant leave the Thunder next season (to go to, say, the Wizards!!!), Westbrook would enter my top three, along with Steph Curry and Anthony Davis.

Now onto the other notables from Wednesday night:

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Twas the first night of the playoffs, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even Eddie House.  Wait, I can’t rhyme house and House.  At least I would think not, I tried to tell my buddies who listen to rap that Rick Ross’ “Everyday I’m Hustlin” is lazy because he rhymes Atlantic with Atlantic.  “But they are different uses of Atlantic!”  Pssssh.  Wow, way off track.  The playoff brackets were hung on the league sites with care, all in hopes St. Terrence Jones would be there.  And be there he was!  “Stop it with all the Christmas shizz, it’s March already!”  Don’t start a war on Christmas with me, intolerable commenter!  Dwight Howard was a late scratch with an ankle, and while we all know TJones starts anyway, it opened a bigger void for the TJ.  TJ Entered the Void.  Lots of minutes for the TJ.  38 in fact, for 30/5/1/1/4 hitting three treys and not having a single TO.  Now, before you go crazy sauce on me, remember this was against a defending force of Marvin Williams and Enes Kanter.  Jones got whatever he wanted.  The Jazz were singing to him like Selena Gomez.  Oh man, wow, sad that I know that… Anyway, Dwight will be back for the Rox next game on Thursday and I’m not ready to snatch up TJ really any differently that I was before.  We all know his upside and the situation was ripe – this was against a terrible team and an influx of minutes from a last second scratch.  I think TJ could easily disappoint his next few given his sparse usage when Dwight returns.  Here’s what else I saw last night in fantasy hoops:

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