Line of the Night: The not nearly as sung as he should be Danny Granger (5.5) had a career high scoring night, finishing with 37 points off 6-12 from three. He added 5 boards, 2 assists, 2 steals and a block, although the Pacers suffered a playoff crushing loss from the Bobcats. While he won’t make the playoffs, keep Granger high on your cheat sheets for next season.
Honorable Mentions: Overall, it wasn’t the most impressive day of fantasy performances. The little-heard-from-this-year Cuttino Mobley (5.3) had 30 points and 4 threes, adding 10 rebounds and a couple of blocks; believe it or not Vince Carter (5.0) is still playing and putting in an effort for the lottery bound Nets. He only scored 21, but had 10 assists and 4 steals; Andre Iguodala (4.9) went for 22/6/7 with 3 steals; Elton Brand (4.6) is officially back with 21 and 14 with 3 blocks (alright, he’s been awesome since his first game back); and Mehmet Okur (4.6) finished with 20/15/5.
Waiver Wire Line of the Night: Raise your hand if you had Kirk Snyder (4.4) in your lineup yesterday. Raise that hand up high so the whole class can see. Ok. All of you with your hands in the air are dirty lying bastard liars! Kirk, who is still wearing a Houston Rockets jersey on his NBA.com page, scored 22 points for the Wolves (off 9-11 shooting), adding 11 boards and 3 steals in 38 minutes on the floor. Despite the minutes, Kirk doesn’t pass the 70% test, which means we give him a pat on the back for a job well done and never hear from him again (38 minutes or not, the 70% test rules all. Trust me.).
Two guys who have been pumped up on GMTR lately are Francisco Garcia (4.4) and Ramon Sessions (4.0). Garcia may not score with much efficiency (he had 16 points off 5-14 shooting yesterday), but he will consistently net you steals (3 yesterday) and blocks (3 again); and Sessions has come out of nowhere to become a 10+ assist a game guy. Yesterday he had 12/6/13 with a couple steals.
The Biggest Loser: With the Nuggets fighting for a playoff spot, you would think that Kenyon Martin (2.0) could put up a better line than 4 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist in 30 minutes of play against the Jazz. You would think.
Dishonorable Mentions: Foolishly, I believed in Brevin Knight (1.4) this year for some reason that probably involved unhealthy amounts of alcohol; Josh Childress (1.9) has been the equivalent of a fantasy head-on car crash this season. Yesterday he had 5 points, 4 rebounds and no assists in 30 minutes of play against the Celtics; and finally, the Memphis Grizzles are so bad even their stadium is giving up, as a section of their stadium collapsed about an hour before the 8pm start of their game against the Wolves.
Loser of the Night: Rotoworld.
Their advice is suspect at best. Most often it is either unwaveringly rudimentary or flat-out stupid. But their advice is not their value.
Their only value is keeping people up-to-date. That’s what makes them worthwhile.
I may seem a little whiny here (ok, totally whiny), but the fact is they blew it two nights ago and again yesterday.
Leon Powe has been a star over the past month. A star. And anyone embattled in the playoffs would have had to be blind not to scoop him up.
So for Rotoworld to have missed the fact that he was to be out (when the news was clearly out there — both times on Boston.com)infuriates me. They are supposed to monitor the sports pages so I don’t have to.
They are idiots. They can be competed against and beaten. Patrick, Nels — let’s shut em down in 08 and 09.
I’m in the championship game right now and Rotoworld is killing me.
They were right on Ramon Sessions though. (But I still hate em).
Comment by nbaroto.com — April 13, 2008 @ 11:13 am
I’m not a Rotoworld guy myself, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. As I’ve been told by someone in “the industry”, the guys writing those player write-ups are the bottom of the barrel interns who are looking to get into the game (it’s a first step for a lot of those guys). As such, they’re really not qualified to be advising people about their fantasy teams (especially people as knowledgeable as us). Personally, I find it useful to ignore them all together.
Comment by Patrick — April 14, 2008 @ 7:54 pm