Sports Blog

Fresh off of fantasy baseball and right in the middle of fantasy football, the start of the fantasy basketball season could not come at a more hectic time. Yet, here we are in week one of the NBA schedule with a few days of games already under our belts.

An NBA season is a grueling, 82 game marathon. And while most fantasy drafts have already been completed, fantasy basketball, perhaps more so than any other fantasy sport, is all about picking up free agents early in the season. During the early parts of a season head coaches are experimenting with different lineups and figuring out how to best utilize new players. As a result, you will see certain players surprise you with great production and others disappoint you with poor production.

The key to winning in fantasy basketball is determining early on which players off to a hot start are for real and which ones are imposters. Conversely, it is just as important to figure out which players off to slow starts are most likely to turn it around. This week we will take a look at players off to a hot start that should continue to make a positive impact on your fantasy team.

As always, the players recommended here are available in a majority of leagues because you do not need me to tell you that Lebron James is going to have a good fantasy season.

PG Randy Foye, Washington Wizards (Owned in 27.4 percent of ESPN leagues): Foye is technically a combo guard, but he is eligible to start in fantasy at both guard positions. A good sign for Foye is that in the Wizards’ first game of the season — a game in which Foye came off the bench — he logged more minutes (30) than starting shooting guard Mike Miller (22). Although he isn’t quite the three-point threat that Miller is, the fact that he can take over point guard duty for Gilbert Arenas makes me believe that he will continue to log more minutes than Miller this year. Plus, with Arenas’ laundry list of injuries, it is not absurd to assume that Foye will find himself as the starting point guard sometime this season.

SG Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors (Owned in 64.8 percent of ESPN leagues): Yes, I am well aware of head coach Don Nelson’s propensity for switching lineups more often than he does underwear, but Stephen Curry is too good to keep off of the floor. The rookie has a deadly outside shot and is somehow already more dependable than teammates Monta Ellis and Stephen Jackson, the latter of which is being actively shopped around the league.

SF Shane Battier, Houston Rockets (Owned in 54 percent of ESPN leagues): The fact that Battier is not owned in all but the shallowest of leagues is mind boggling. The Rockets are without their two biggest scoring threats (Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady), playing with a relatively inexperienced point guard (Aaron Brooks), and an offensively irrelevant center (Chuck Hayes). Someone has to put up fantasy points and they won’t all be coming from new teammate Trevor Ariza.

PF Yi Jianlian, New Jersey Nets (Owned in 5.3 percent of ESPN leagues): I’ll admit that he has been a mild disappointment thus far in his career, but let me remind you that he is only 22 years old and still learning the nuances of the NBA. He opened with a very strong game against the Minnesota Timberwolves (17 points, 12 rebounds, 2 blocks), and while it may be unrealistic to expect that level of production all season, I see him as a legit fantasy contributor in 12-team fantasy leagues.

C Marc Gasol, Memphis Grizzlies (Owned in 16.3 percent of ESPN leagues): The center position is arguably the toughest to fill in fantasy basketball, and this is especially true for leagues that require you start two of them. Gasol may not be as good of a scorer as Al Horford or the dominant shot blocker that Dwight Howard is, but he his above average in both and also grabs a lot of rebounds. The Grizzlies also have a lot of players that like to jack up a lot of bad shots early in the shot clock (Rudy Gay, O.J. Mayo, Allen Iverson, Zach Randolph), so if your fantasy league counts offensive rebounds as a category Gasol is even more valuable.

While the Los Angeles Lakers were busy beating the Denver Nuggets in game one of the Western Conference finals, the other Los Angeles basketball team was rewarded for yet another year of mediocrity.

The Los Angeles Clippers won the right to the first pick in the upcoming NBA draft despite the Sacramento Kings having the most ping pong balls and the best chance to win the lottery.  This will be the third time the Clippers have selected first overall, the most recent being in 1998 when they selected eventual bust Michael Olowokandi.

It was scary news for fans of Blake Griffin, the Oklahoma Sooners stud who has been widely considered the best player in the draft and the most likely number one pick.  Given the Clippers history of drafting — either selecting complete duds (Olowokandi) or letting solid picks get away (Lamar Odom) — one has to wonder what this does to the teams off-season strategy.

There have been rumblings that the Clips would love to unload Baron Davis back to the Golden State Warriors or shed salary by letting go either Marcus Camby, Zach Randolph or Chris Kaman.  However, with the injection of such a promising young star the Clippers may be able to reload instead of rebuild.  Owner Donald Sterling is notoriously cheap, though, so it is probably safe to assume he would like to shed salary and ride promising youngsters Al Thorton and Eric Gordon.

Of course any potential move may prove to be futile because Sterling refuses to give head coach Mike Dunleavy the pink slip even though his players did everything but submit letters of resignation last season.  The Clippers are one of the most disappointing and perpetually losing franchises in all of sports, so even the good fortune of leap frogging into a top pick leaves the basketball world waiting to see how they will mess this one up.

Sacramento, who dropped all the way to fifth, couldn’t have been too surprised by their bad luck as the team with the best chance to land the number one pick hasn’t actually walked away with the selection since the Orlando Magic took Dwight Howard in 2004.  The Washington Wizards also had a bit of bad luck, dropping from second to fifth.

With the NBA salary cap looking to go down for the first year since its inception, look for draft day (June 25) to be a busy day that could feature a swap of high picks and talented stars in their final years of their contracts.

And if you are a Clippers fan, well, it is never too late to become a Lakers fan.

Image Source: Sports Illustrated

This week in sports blogs and news:

• San Diego Padres Rookies Dress Up Like Hooter Girls - Sports By Brooks
• Top 7: In-Game Collapses this Decade - Joe Sports Fan
• Just Your Average 80-Year Old Bodybuilder - Yahoo
• A-Rod Reached Divorce Settlement with Wife - NY Daily News
• Mets Minor Leaguer Kills Girlfriend’s Cat Out of Jealous Rage - With Leather
• Tallest College Basketball Player Ever, Out for Season - Deadspin
• Josh Howard Doesn’t Appreciate the National Anthem because He’s…- Larry Brown Sports
• Andy Reid… - The Sports Hernia

This week on the Smarter Sports Blog we covered:

•  “Look! He’s Breakdance Fighting!”
• Week 2 Fantasy Football Stats
• DeSaun Jackson Celebrates Touchdown Before Scoring
• Dog Rips Off Boy’s Ear, Mom Makes Him Play Soccer
• NBA News: Gilbert Arenas Has Knee Surgery No. 3
  

See that picture above? That’s what $111 million gets ya. Sleeping on a couch, missing yet another month of the NBA season.

Why would I say such a thing?

Well, Mr. Gilbert Arenas if you had forgot, signed a six-year, $111 million contract, this of course was AFTER he already had two knee surgeries. I kind of relate it to paying full price for a Corvette that has been wrecked twice. You can repair the car and make it look new, but it will never run the same.

I’m sure the Washington Wizards are hoping the third knee surgery Arenas underwent on Wednesday will be his final one, making him ready to play after a month into the season.

If he has more complications, then I’m sure we’ll soon be reading about how the whole Wizards front office develop heavy drinking problems as they suck up Arenas’ guaranteed contract.

Gilbert Arenas Jerseys  Washington Wizards Gear

Source: Fox Sports

Photo Source.

When Brett Favre announced his retirement at the end of last season, we all had one thing on our mind: How long until the old gunslinger flirts with a comeback?

Well, whoever had their money on the beginning of July, proceed directly to Go and collect your two hundred dollars.

Watching the press conference of his retirement, you can’t question Favre’s love for the game. To see a grown man crying in front of a national TV audience, seemingly trying to justify his departure from the game on the spot, is a sight that should remind us all of why we love sports in the first place.

It is easy for people to label athletes as money hungry, selfish or disloyal, but at one time in their lives they were all just kids on the playground playing a game they loved. They spend their entire lives watching game film, fine tuning their bodies and preparing to entertain the millions of us who love the game just as much as they do.

So while the media will criticize Favre for toying with us once again – after all he has flirted with retirement and has held us all hostages for a few years now – I say Favre should do whatever he wants. If he wants to play, the Packers should let him play. If they don’t want him, they should release him and allow him to play somewhere else. Nobody likes to see legends fall from grace, but after all the time they spent working for us, don’t we owe it to them to let them have one last hurrah?

As a child, I was obsessed with Michael Jordan. I watched him win 6 championships in Chicago and more than anything I wanted that shot over Byron Russell in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals to be how I remembered Jordan forever. Then a couple years later, even though I didn’t want him to for my own selfish reasons, he played a couple forgettable seasons with the Washington Wizards.

And you know what? I still remember Jordan for that memorable shot. I still admire his game, and if he wanted to, I’d watch him lace up his shoes one last time.

Brett Favre has been the face (not to mention the arm) of Green Bay for 16 years. He brought them an NFL championship, racked up several awards, and brought hope and joy to millions in the process. Could you walk away from all that?

If your favorite NFL franchise called you right now and said they wanted you to be their starting quarterback, could you say no?

Brett Favre isn’t my favorite quarterback (Joe Montana) and Green Bay isn’t my favorite team (49ers), but this summer I’ll be rooting for both.

Brett Favre is a living legend. If he is has the “itch” to play again, I say we let him decide if he wants to scratch it.

Photo Source.

I wonder if Gilbert Arenas thinks he’s worth more than $100 million?

Rumors are swirling and there is chatter out there that when the NBA free agency period begins tomorrow at midnight, the Washington Wizards are ready to make Gilbert Arenas a rich man. A very rich man.

The Wizards are expected to make Arenas an offer that is around six years, and valued at or above $100 million. Not too shabby. The deal would obviously make Arenas one of the top paid players in the NBA. Which he definately deserves…when healthy. That is the only knock on the All-Star point guard. He’s had two knee surgeries in the past year and that definitely throws up a red flag on anybody looking into pulling in top dollar.

After opting out of the final year of his contract, Arenas was quoted saying, “I have a number in mind, a number I feel I’m worth and we’ll just have to see what they come with.”

For his sake, lets hope the Wizards at least offer him more than $12.8 million a year.

That’s how much the final year of his contract was worth.

Wow, it takes a very greedy man to walk away from guaranteed millions. Good luck Gilbert.

Source: Washington Post