Day 12 of 170: Rudy Gay Taking It to the Level Above the Next Level

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Fantasy Basketball
Posted on: November 7th, 2010

Line of the Night: The hot start continues for Rudy Gay (1.24), who scored 32 points against the Kings on 11-19 shooting. He also was 9-9 from the line and added 9 rebounds. It’s good news for Gay owners to see that he’s still scoring like a guido on spring break even with Zach Randolph back in the lineup. He’s also averaging 42 minutes a game, which is very unlikely to keep up.

Honorable Mentions: After a horrific beginning to the season when he couldn’t buy a three pointer, Anthony Morrow (1.02) is down to 62% ownership in Yahoo leagues. That may be on the up and up today after Morrow connected on 4-7 threes, scoring 25 points with 7 boards and 3 steals for the Nets. Most encouraging was his 35 minutes on the court, compared to 25 for Terrance Williams.

It’s a Texas Mountain High for Carmelo Anthony (0.99), who led Denver to victory in Dallas with 27 points, adding 5 boards, 4 assists and 4 threes, 4 steals.

Gerald Wallace (0.98) was obviously motivated by the lack of man love from Erik and I in the GMTR podcast this week. He put up a 25 points and 14 rebound double-double as his way of telling us that he is actually better than Monta Ellis.

Tony Parker (0.95) put up 24 points, 14 assists and 5 steals as the Spurs won in overtime against the Rockets.

The Utah Jazz barely squeaked out a win in double overtime against the Clippers. But double-OT means that fantasy owners are all winners, including those who own Paul Millsap (0.68) – with a nice 25 and 13 double-double – Deron Williams (0.58) – 30/8/7 – Eric Gordon (0.43) – 27 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists – and Chris Kaman (0.71) who scored 23 points.

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Pick Up Lines: Kirk Hinrich (0.79) scored a season high 21 points for the Wizards last night. He is currently owned in 30% of Yahoo leagues and is still starting at SG while Arenas slowly inflects the Wizards’ starting lineup with himself. But even when Arenas takes over the starting gig, there will be plenty of minutes in a 6th man role for Hinrich as the Wizards are currently only going about 8-9 deep in their rotation.

Despite the return of Mo Williams, Daniel Gibson (0.57) is still getting 27-28 minutes of run off the bench, while Ramon Sessions is down to about 18. Gibson was his mighty-mite* self again last night scoring 19 points on 7-11 shooting with a couple threes. That just made me think of great new promotion: anytime a player goes 7-11 from the field during a game, 7-11 the convenience store should give away big bites to everyone in attendance. That one was for free NBA…

Injuries of the Night: Yao Ming sat for the Rockets. Then both Aaron Brooks and Kevin Martin left last night’s game with sprained ankles. And the Rockets still almost beat the Spurs in overtime. But that’s besides the point. It’s unknown at this time if either player will miss any games, but for once Kevin Martin’s injury appears to be less serious as he was able to walk off the court by himself.

If Brooks were to miss any time, either Kyle Lowry (who is day-to-day with back spasms himself) or rookie Ishmael Smith becomes the main beneficiary. Smith had 11 points and 7 assists coming off the bench last night filling in at PG. Courtney Lee is the man if Kevin Martin misses time, or maybe we should just say when Kevin Martin misses time.

You may want to sit down for this, but Vince Carter was also injured last night. Carter strained his right hip flexor after slipping on the court and is listed day-to-day. Mickael Pietrus or JJ Reddick would start in place of Carter if he’s seriously hurt, and neither guy has shown any reason why they should be picked up.

The Biggest Loser: Linas Kleiza (-0.77) had the second worst line of any player who stepped foot on the court (the worst was Jerryd Bayless (-0.79) in case you wanted to know). Kleiza scored 6 points on 2-8 shooting, with 2 boards, 0 assists and 0 threes. Klezia has now gotten 23 minutes or less in the Raptors last three games and Mr. Impulsive Erik has just dropped him in the 14-team Experts’ League we play in together. Actually, that sounds about right to me.

On Tap:

Golden State (4-1) at Detroit (1-5) – The Warriors held the Jazz to 78 points on Friday, which means they should be able to hold the Pistons to about 50. Rodney Stuckey is expected to play in this one after kissing and making up with Coach John Kuester.

Boston (5-1) at Oklahoma City (3-2) – Rondo looks to improve on his league-leading 15.5 assists per game. Provided his feet cooperate.

Philadelphia (1-5) at New York (3-2) – After starting 252 consecutive games for the Sixers, Andre Iguodala will miss this game with Achilles’ tendon injury. Evan Turner is expected to start in his place.

Both the Hawks and Lakers look to go 7-0 today, but have to go through a couple of decent teams in the Suns and Blazers, respectively.

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* Got to love the NBA: Daniel Gibson is still 2 inches taller than me.

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Tags: Aaron Brooks, Anthony Morrow, Daniel Gibson, Kevin Martin, Kirk Hinrich, Linas Kleiza, Rudy Gay, Vince Carter