Special mention atop this column is deserved for Andre Iguodala, Nicolas Batum and Tony (SLJW) Allen, three of the league’s best man-on-man defenders who all had a chance to guard James Harden over the past week. Not that Harden is a marked man or anything, but after going for 37 and 45 in his first two games — and earning the No. 1 ranking in last week’s edition of these rankings — the guy should strike a personal endorsement deal with
NYK @ PHI: The unbeaten Knicks are apparently that much better than the 76ers, who they trounced for the second straight day. Carmelo Anthony (21 PTS, 7 REB) got a lot more help from Raymond Felton (16 PTS, 8 AST) and Ronnie Brewer (13 PTS, 10 REB) in the rematch. J.R. Smith (17 PTS, 7 REB, 5 AST, 2 STL, 1 BLK) has been superb off the bench. Ageless Rasheed Wallace looked pretty good in 13:33, with 10 points including
Let the fantasy games begin! Finally, it’s the NBA season. That means all our leagues are keeping score too. If you’re in a Roto league, relax. It’s not a race. Start your best players and sit anyone with a question mark. In Head-to-Head leagues, play everyone. On Page 2 today, I look at H2H streamers. Page 3 is my FanDuel lineup for tonight — yes, there are one-day leagues, even with only three games on the schedule. The $1,000 Tournament for Sheridan
Friday was the final night of exhibition games — hooray! — and this is a huge weekend for fantasy basketball drafts. We’ll take a quick look here at all the results, along with what we learned, if anything. Later today, around 2:00, be sure to return for the debut of our Week Ahead column by Jeff Nichols. Every Saturday afternoon, Jeff — the master strategist behind our Fantasy Basketball Primer — will review the previous week (today, the entire preseason) and
(This is another in a series of 30 guest columns that will run in October, when optimism reigns supreme across the NBA. The theme will be “Five Reasons to Feel Positive About … ” We encourage you to follow the authors on Twitter and visit their sites. – CS) The early portion of the free agency period gave off the appearance that the sky was literally falling on the Dallas Mavericks. The chase to try to land Deron Williams fell short as
Dallas Mavericks All-Star forward Dirk Nowitzki had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee Friday and will miss at least six weeks, jeopardizing the team’s hopes of contending in the Western Conference. According to a release from the team, Nowitzki had the surgery at Texas Sports Medicine, with the procedure performed by team orthopedic surgeon T.O. Souryal. Nowitzki should be able to resume on-court activities within six weeks, making his return sometime in early December. After the Mavericks won the NBA championship in 2011,
Here are this morning’s top NBA news stories: “Lawson, Nuggets nearing an extension?” by Yannis Koutroupis from HoopsWorld “For the Nets’ Joe Johnson, No more Iso-Joe,” by Howard Beck from the New York Times “Marcin Gortat aims to prove more than a Steve Nash creation,” by Michael Schwartz from Valley of the Suns “Andray Blatche of Brooklyn Nets wears No. 0 as a reminder of troubled stint with Washington Wizards,” by Zach Braziller from the New York Post “Presence of coach Mike Brown helped allure Antawn Jamison to L.A.,”
What is it about this desire to compare LeBron James to that of Michael Jordan? Clearly, James has a ways to go before you can put him in the “greatest of all time” category. This is not to say that he won’t get there – he is certainly on pace to put up historic numbers when all is said and done – but pitting him against Jordan right now just doesn’t seem very fair, given how much more Jordan has