While it mildly upsets me every time people talking about Working the Waiver Wire when really it’s more about picking up Free Agents, LestersLegends.com has Volume 1 of their Waiver Wire Bin, 5 guys to take a look at now. Lester also has the players of the day with the usual 30 point, 12 rebound, 10 assist, etc. performers.

Brendan continues his Rotation Reports with the Southwest Division. Lots of 6th man action going on there.

Tom Carpenter of SportsIllustrated leads off his Fantasy Clicks with J-Rich’s exploratory surgery, which luckily didn’t lead to any real surgery, so he (J-Rich, not Carpenter) should only be out for about a week. Carpenter goes on to say that you should target both Elton Brand (yay!) and Andre Iguodala (double yay!) because both are underperforming. Hopefully the managers in your league who currently employ them have a short fuse and are ready to cut them loose. More on Derrick Rose (triple yay!), Nene, and Greg Oden as well. Tom’s column has a much better logo than The Commute, but I believe that is negated by the fact that The Commute has a much better name. While on the SI.com site, I was happy to see that they have an actual Cheerleader of the Week feature. Glad to know that GMTR isn’t the only self-respecting sports site that pushes the tushes a little bit.

Today was a short commute. More time with the family.

I received an interesting trade offer today in one league - Nene Hilario for Gerald Wallace. It’s a ridiculous offer at first glance, but if you take a look at the numbers, Nene is actually outplaying Wallace this season. In fact, Nene is currently outplaying most of the NBA. Through 7 games he’s 11th on the GMTR player rater, one spot ahead of Chris Bosh. He’s doing it by averaging 15.6 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2 blocks in about 35 minutes a game.

There is no way that he can keep it up, right? Well, the answer to the question is no, he’s not going to finish the year 11th on the player rater. But I think there is a good chance he ends up on a lot of most improved lists at the end of the season (with the very large caveat that he stays even marginally healthy, like say 60 games healthy).

Why? First – and I’m amazed by this – Nene just turned 26 years old. So, the Nene that comes to mind when I think about him (which is all the time), the one who could actually stay on the court, was a 20/21 year old who averaged 11 and 6 his first 2 years in the league. Now he’s supposedly entering the prime of his career on a team lacking so greatly in frontcourt depth, that they are actually affected by a Chris Andersen injury (in a bad way, not in a ha ha that’s funny way). Nene is currently averaging 35 minutes a game and unless Denver makes another trade, he’ll continue to average at least that many minutes.

If you take Nene’s career stats over 35 minutes, they look like this: 13.5 and 8 with 1 block a game. It’s not quite what he’s doing now, but sticking it into the player rater with his career percentages and he comes out at #43. That puts him directly ahead of these three players:

Brandon Roy
Kenyon Martin
Pau Gasol

Not bad company to be in.

So, Nene owners, what are you going to do with him? Ride the hot streak and hope he doesn’t get hurt? Trade him while you can? I rejected the Nene offer because it felt like I was buying oil at $140 a barrel. And while Gerald Wallace is an injury risk himself, how can you not have Nene’s games played totals in the back of your head: 1, 64, 16, 7.

Line of the Night: Basketball Monster might not think so, but as far I I’m concerned, Dwight Howard (1.17) could have gone back in time to miss every free throw ever attempted since James Naismith invented this crazy game, and he still would have earned LotN. Howard had a monster of a game, going for a triple-double the hard way - 30 points, 19 rebounds and 10 blocks. Ok, he did shoot 46% from the line, but Howard owners will gladly take whatever bricks he throws at them when he’s putting up triple-doubles like that.

Honorable Mentions: BM has a man crush on Wilson Chandler’s (1.59) game – 27 points, 7 rebounds, 3 steals, and 4 threes as he helped the Knicks throw down 132 points on Memphis (even Chris Duhon (0.69) was good for the Knicks). I’m loving the fact that I started Chandler this week in the Readers league; 25 and 12 with 2 blocks for Kevin Garnett (1.13), who helped the Celtics take care of business against the Hawks 103-102; at this point, we’re pretty much going to give Chris Paul (1.12) an open invitation to the honorable mentions list, especially if he continues to throw down 13+ assists on a nightly basis; and Beno Udrih (1.09) owners have to appreciate the strong game (30/5/7) after he started the season on a cold streak.

Waiver Wire Line of the Night: I guess Willie Green (0.78) would be your top waiver wire performer. Willie saw 30+ plus minutes for the first time this season and responded with 17 points and 9 assists off the bench. I’d fully expect Green go back to the 15 minutes a game he’s been getting up to this point in the season, so I wouldn’t rush out to pick him up.

Jeff Green (0.61) is owned in 59% of Yahoo leagues. So, if you happen to be in the 41% of the leagues where he’s available, you probably want to grab him. Green had 25 and 10 in 41 minutes last night as Kevin Durant sat out the game with a sore ankle.

Someone you might want to keep an eye on: Rookie JaVale McGee (0.36) got 27 minutes and went for a career-high 13 and 10 with 3 blocks in the Wizards first win of the season. Look for McGee to steal some minutes away from Etan Thomas, who – with a sweet 1 point/2 rebound performance yesterday – doesn’t exactly have a lot of job security.

The Biggest Loser: Nothing is more frustrating than a fantasy player you can’t trust, and I think Grant Hill (-0.66) and Raja Bell (-0.51) fit that bill. The duo combined to shoot 0-10 from the field as Phoenix lost to Houston 94-82. Hill’s line was 0/3/0 in 21 minutes, while Bell had a much better 0/3/1 in 23 minutes. Well, it’s at least 20% better.

Dishonorable Mentions: Speaking of players you can’t trust: Andrei Kirilenko (-0.55). 1-7 shooting, 3 points, 2 rebounds. That’s just life with AK.

And if you were banking on Mario Chalmers (-0.46) being your starting PG after his hot start to the season, I’d be worried. Last night he could only manage 1 assist to his 5 turnovers, while shooting 1-4 from the field. Meanwhile, Chris Quinn got just as much play as Chalmers and had 5 assists with 0 turnovers. I’m no NBA coach, but I think only one of those guys played like a PG in last night’s game.

All Eyez on Me: Only three games tonight, the best of which is probably Denver @ Cleveland. Who wants to bet that LeBron drops 41 points again tonight?

Dallas @ Chicago: Plug and Play… Gerald Green. With Josh Howard most likely out again with a sprained wrist, Green should get the start for the third straight game. He’s averaged 15 points and 9 rebounds in the other two starts. And if Nels is to be believed (and he’s usually a trustworthy guy), then Erick Dampier has a good chance of running wild all over Aaron Gray. Well, maybe not running wild so much as having a decent game.

Welcome to The Commute. It’s like Henry Abbott’s First Cup, only it happens later in the day. I also considered Happy Hour as a title, so please feel free to vote (write-in candidates acceptable) in the newly improved INTENSE DEBATE comments.

First on the agenda - before I talk more about the new and improved INTENSE DEBATE comments - what is The Commute? Well, The Commute is sort of like the Carnival (or Carnivore) of the Fantasy NBAs that I so seldom post around here. It’s also sort of like the Day Number posts in that I hope to do this on a daily basis, because honestly, why waste all this time I spend reading about fantasy basketball with just some dynamic shared links in the sidebar? I go through the day spending way too much time in Google Reader, and I also usually get at least one or two relevant links from my Google Alerts. So, in The Commute, I will collect those links and when I feel like it and/or have time, I will comment and/or blockquote from them.

Next up: New Comments! Yee HA! Got my invite to install Intense Debate and did so as promptly as possible. I’m happy to notice that people without Intense Debate accounts are able to comment as easily as ever, and now we can try to expand the community ever further into some sort of fantasy basketball fetishist social network. If you didn’t realize that was the entire point of this blog in the first place, you may quietly excuse yourself now and no one will think less of you.

So, you can now reply to comments instead of having to use @user, and you can rate comments so people can get an idea of how reliable the commentors on Give Me The Rock are. You can also use your Intense Debate profile on other blogs that support Intense Debate (which should be a lot once it becomes a default plugin for WordPress), and have the ability to aggregate all your commenting action in one location. And also in that profile, you can add, well, a profile! Add links to your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and lots of other things (I haven’t done this just yet, but I’ll get around to it). You can also easily pull in your Gravatar (even though that only really matters to the couple of people commenting who have gravatars).

Okay, so on to the actual fantasy basketball content!

Everyone’s Favorite: OJ Mayo has made the Hot Spot on Yahoo’s NBA Home page. Usually I don’t put much faith in the 3 players they display there, but Luol Deng and Ben Gordon have been heating up as well, so maybe they finally got a good formula. Or they finally got lucky.

Starting now from the left: NovaFantasySports.com provides their weekly Hot or Not. It’s kind of like the real Hot or Not except with more words and less pictures. They also agree that OJ Mayo is hot. So are Chris Duhon (though not as much as Jamal Crawford), Brandan Wright, Zach Randolph, and Nene Hilario.

Eric Karabell takes a look at the impact off-season moves are having. Because it’s one thing to look at them when they happen and make predictions. But Karabell looks at what is going on now with Andre Iguodala, Chris Kaman, Andrew Bogut, Mike Conley, and Chris Bosh.

I recently discovered newsday.com’s fantasy sports column written by Adam Ronis who is one of those guys who enters the Big Money fantasy competitions.

Speaking of guys who enter Big Money fantasy leagues, Evil E analyzes the team he drafted in a league with a $650 entry fee. Get inside the head.

Lester Legends recap for 11/11 - the top performers in Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals, Blocks.

Stephen Kersey at Hoops Fantasy talks about the Knicks. An excerpt:

First of all, Jamal Crawford and Zach Randolph both appear to be safe bets. Crawford has been very consistent over the last few years and should put up similar stats this year. Don’t expect to see a big jump in his production because although he has a green light this year, he’s always had a green light. Randolph, on the other hand, should see his production rise — due partly to D’Antoni and partly to Eddy Curry being out of the way.

FantasyBasketball.com’s The Pulse blog talks about the explosion of Ronnie Brewer. Of course, we had him listed at 105 on the Player Rater, so theoretically he should have been drafted in just about every league in existence.

Brendan continues 2nd Round Reach’s Rotation Reports with the Central Divison in which he tries to offend an entire country who’s sole purpose is to offend nobody.

And finally, another guy (Adam Ronis being the first, Evil E being the second) who isn’t scared to throw his picture on his blog, CBSSports’ Sergio Gonzalez. This time he’s writing about Nick Young, who has been filling in ably for Gilbert Arenas. Sure, he’s no Gilbert Arenas, but then, Gilbert Arenas is no Black President. There is also a list of guys to look at picking up.

And there you have it. The Commute. Oh, here’s my exit.

I was breezing my way through Slate Magazine this morning and, to my surprise, not only did I see a short article about Free Darko and their new book: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, but said article got top billing on the front page of Slate. My first reaction: What the? My second reaction: Wow.

Now, in all honesty, I’ve never been a huge FreeDarko fan. Slate calls FreeDarko “the Web’s leading destination for the obsessive, overliterate, free-thinking NBA fan.” I couldn’t agree more with that statement and for whatever reason, it’s just not a demographic I fall into (must be the ISTP personality type).

However, much like Lifetime television or the Jonas Brothers, I might not get it, but I can see why the formula works. And personally, it’s impossible not to be damn impressed with what they’ve done: Going from a blogspot.com site to NBA experts and published authors in about the same amount of time it took me to write Chris Bosh’s player recap in our draft guide. It’s great to see the so called new economy at work, where the internet provides a platform to success for anyone willing to put in the time and effort. I actually might even buy the damn book because I respect and support the road they took to get there. Plus the illustrations look cool.

Just don’t make me read it.

Line of the Night: LeBron (1.30) scored 41 for the third time in four games, adding 5 rebounds, 6 assists, and shooting 80% from the line! Someone’s been practicing!

Honorable Mentions: Allen Iverson (1.19) had 30/7/9 but only shot 47.4%, which was not as good as LeBron’s 67%. Tayshaun Prince (1.08), who due to a typo I just made will now be called Yayshaun, had 26/11/2 and made all 10 of this free throws. Take that, LeBron! Al Horford (1.07) unleashed a little bit of Beast Mode on the Bulls, scoring 27, grabbing 17 rebounds, and blocking 6 (!) shots. Note to daily lineup changers: Play your big men against the Bulls. Joakim Noah and Aaron Gray are stopping No One.

Waiver Wire Line of the Night: Speaking of the Bulls lack of defense, Thabo Sefolosha (0.72) had 13/1/3 with 3 steals and 2 blocks. The Bulls were +16 with him on the floor. I guess that’s what happens when you let your real second string players go against the other team’s second string players. I can’t recommend actually picking him up, though, until he scores double digits in a few games.

The rest of the list from last night looks pretty bleak in terms of guys who might be available. Hopefully that means that you have the guys who are performing well on your team and aren’t playing against too many of them this week. Speaking of playing against people this week, how did I end up playing Erik (from Points in the Paint) in 2 leagues this week?

The Biggest Loser: While Dahntay Jones (-0.32) ended up at 113 on the night for the Nuggets, JR Smith (-0.73) once again takes on all 156 other players to come up with the worst line of the night. I just have to harp on this because Smith was supposed to be the big winner in the Billups/Iverson trade, but it continues to look like that hope was vastly misplaced. Smith played only 18 minutes, going 1/7 from the field, scoring only 3 points with 1 rebound and 1 assist.

Andrew Bogut (-0.39) also had a pretty bad night, going 2/7 for 5 points, with 7 rebounds and a steal. Everyone’s new favorite pick up Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (-0.30) got 30 minutes to Bogut’s 20, but MaM only came up with 9 points, 7 rebounds, and a block. Time to go back to Charlie Villanueva (0.13) maybe?

All Eyez On Me: If New Orleans can take it to overtime with the Lakers tonight, Chris Paul may be able to get his first LotN of the season. Better hurry, Chris: we’re almost 10% of the way done.

If it’s not Chris Paul, then check out Danny Granger playing against the New Jersey Our Defense is Full of Holes like a Net(s).

But, if I had to watch a game just to watch a game, it would definitely be Portland v Miami. I’m ready to jump on both those bandwagons come playoff time. Memphis and NY should be a fun one to watch too, plenty of fantasy potential there. Not so much with the playoff potential, though.

Line of the Night: T.J. Ford (1.2) came up 3 rebounds short of a triple-double during Indiana’s 107-99 win over OKC. He had to settle for 24/7/10, which as Danny Granger noted, is “pretty good for a 5-7 guy.” It’s safe to say that people had fairly low expectations of Ford going into the season, and although it remains to be seen if he can stay healthy, his performance has solidly exceeded expectations so far this season.

Honorable Mentions: Did someone say OJ Mayo (1.11)? It’s ridiculous that lines like this - 33 points, 3 threes and 3 steals – isn’t out of line with what he’s already put up this year. Is there still time for me to put down money on him winning rookie of the year? 33 points, 4 threes and 4 steals for Dwyane Wade (1.09), but the turnovers (6) continue to be a problem; 24 and 10 for Yi Jianlian (1.03), which means next game he’ll score like 3 points; and Kevin Durant (1.01) put up a delicious 37 points, 8 boards and 3 blocks.

Every Time Dwight Howard Hits a Free Throw, an Angel Gets Its Wings: Which is unfortunate for all the wingless angels out there. You might be wondering where Dwight Howard (he of 29 points and 19 rebounds last night) finished on the nightly rankings. He ended up 21st overall thanks to a 13-20 free throw performance. If you’re in a H2H league, no sweat, dump FT% for most assuredly winning boards, but that FT% is a roto league killer.

Waiver Wire Line of the Night: In one league, I almost plugged in Steve Blake (0.79) for this week of games, but instead went with Chris Quinn (-0.08). For this night at least, Blake lords over the wire. He finished with 20 points and 4 assists in 32 minutes against the Magic. I’ll give him this: he is averaging a lot of minutes.

Was Leandro Barbosa (0.65) already dropped in your league? The minutes still aren’t there for him yet (22 last night) but a couple more 27 point games and maybe he’ll squeeze his way back into the rotation. And Rookie Darrell Arthur (0.49) is still starting for the Grizzles. He had 10/7 with 2 blocks and 2 steals in 24 minutes.

Biggest Loser: A few good men to choose from today, but let’s roll with Rashard Lewis (-0.51), who shot 27% from the floor (0-5 from three) to finish with 6 points.

Dishonorable Mentions: Steve Nash (-0.35) did have a decent 12 and 6, but he shot 27% and provided your fantasy team with 6 turnovers. With Matt Barnes back for Phoenix, the crappy Grant Hill (-0.27) has returned. In 15 minutes last night, he didn’t score any points. And Troy Murphy (-0.43) left the Pacers/OKC game in the second quarter with a stomach flu. Fantasy shows no mercy, though. His 13 minutes, 0 point, 3 board performance counts as a game played nonetheless.

All Eyez on Me: Milwaukee @Cleveland: Is the game we’ve all been waiting for. Mo Williams facing off against his former team! Ok, well, LeBron is always a must watch. And Michael Redd is expected to be out again with a sprained right ankle.

New York @ San Antonio: In bizzaro world, the Knicks are gunning for their 5th win, while a loss would put the Spurs at 1-5. We also get to see what kind of encore performance Jamal Crawford can put on, and what a Tony Parker-less Spurs’ backcourt looks like. The Knicks are scoring the 3rd most points per game, while the Spurs give up the 4th most in the league, so it should be a high powered offensive game for the Knicks.

Atlanta @ Chicago: Atlanta – still undefeated.