Tom Lorenzo Posts

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

The Nets lost their 15th game of the season, as they are now two games from tying the record for the worst start in NBA history. Last night it was Greg Oden and the Trail Blazers who did them in. Oden was large, going for a team-high 18 points, eight rebounds and four blocks. It was a fairly balanced attack with six Blazers scoring in double-figures. If we must nitpick, it's a little disconcerning that Brandon Roy failed to hit the 20-points mark for the fourth straight game. Somebody's not getting a 'big ups' at many Thanksgiving dinners this year, I presume.

For the Nets it was all Brook Lopez. He followed up Wednesday night's five-point performance with 32 points, 14 rebounds and two blocks against the big Portland front-line. Chris Douglas-Roberts also redeemed himself by scoring 18 points to along with three rebounds, three assists and two steals. Not much help elsewhere, as the Nets inch closer to John Wall.

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

Don Nelson missed a pretty sick game last night due to his battle with pneumonia. The Warriors, under Keith Smart's tutelage, beat the Mavs 111-103. Only six Warriors saw action, with Monta Ellis, Anthony Morrow and Vladimir Radmanovic playing all 48 minutes. Ellis led the way with a game-high 37 points, eight assists, four steals and, unfortunately, 11 turnovers.

Anthony Morrow scored 20-plus points for the second straight game going for 27 on 9-of-16 shooting, nine rebounds, three steals and six three-pointers. I can't stress enough how undervalued Morrow is. I'm sure you can tell as I can't seem to stop talking about this guy? Radmanovic is a nice deep league add right now as he double-doubled for the first time this season -- 14 points, 12 rebounds, four steals and two three-pointers. I don't think he's quite add-able in standard leagues, as I can easily stop talking about him. But if he keeps playing 40-plus minutes per game, that might change things. Don Nelson should be back on Saturday. The best I can say is, "we'll see."

In the last installment of The Specialists we took a look at a few players to target if you're in need of blocks, steals and three-pointers. I'm sure we'll return to those categories at some point in the near future, but for now this post is going to focus on the free-throw. Not just FT%, but also free-throws made.

There are currently four players in the league who attempt more than 10 free-throws per game -- Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and LeBron James. You can argue that Dwight Howard's 57.6 FT% on 10.3 attempts is his Achilles' heel, while in contrast Carmelo Anthony, the 3rd overall player in standard formats, is elevated by his 86.0 FT% on 10.5 attempts. His ability to hit 10-plus foul shots at such a high rate lightens the burden of having Emeka Okafor and his 49.0 FT% on 3.3 attempts. Combined, Okafor and Anthony post a 76.2 FT%. By contrast, having Steve Nash and his 93.6 FT% on 3.4 attempts coupled with Okafor brings their combined free-throw rate to just 70.8-percent. But you're not going to find many bulk free-throw shooters who hit 85-percent from the line on the wires. So think about mixing quantity with quality at this point.

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

Michael Redd returned to action last night after missing the past nine games. Redd played just 11 minutes, scoring four points on 1-of-3 shooting from the floor and 1-of-6 from the free-throw line. Brandon Jennings wasn't much better shooting 6-of-21 from the floor and turning the ball over five times in 31 minutes. The most promising performance came from, you guessed it, Ersan Ilyasova -- 20 points, 8-of-13 from the floor, one three-pointer, four rebounds and four steals. Check and mate.

The Spurs out-rebounded the Bucks 46-29 and shot 51.3-percent from the floor. Tim Duncan was the leader of this joint with 24 points and 14 rebounds. Matt Bonner, yes that Matt Bonner, came alive for the first time in a few weeks with 23 points on 6-of-8 shooting from beyond the arc. Typical performance. He was on and off the waiver wires last season thanks to his three-point shooting. It's up to you, but I don't think he has standard league value.

This post is in response to a question a reader posed regarding the "games played" strategy in roto leagues. For those who may not be familiar with what I'm talking about, most standard roto leagues mandate an 82 game 'cap' at each position. Which means, you are only allowed to have an active player in your point guard position for 82 games. You can use the games whenever you want, with whichever player you choose. But, once you hit the 82-game mark, be it in February or April, you can no longer start a player at the point guard position.

This rule is put in place to keep owners from 'streaming' -- this means keeping owners honest and not having them add and drop a handful of players each night just to accumulate stats. Certain head-to-head leagues use an add/drop cap, usually at five moves per week.

Simple enough, right? But the question remains, what's the best strategy for using your games played? How do you manage the totals? Some people have different ways of approaching the games played strategy, but I'll give you some tips that I feel work best -- at least for me.

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

After starting the game 1-for-10, Kevin Garnett finished strong hitting four of his last five field goal attempts, including the game winner in overtime. Paul Pierce lead the way for the Celtics scoring 33 points, while Rajon Rondo just missed posting a triple-double going for 14 points, nine rebounds, 10 assists and four steals.

The Knicks with another one of those famed moral victories, were led by Al Harrington's 30 points off the bench and David Lee's 22 points and 15 rebounds. The Knicks are 3-10 on the season, yet they lead the league with seven moral victories -- two more than the New Jersey Nets, yet almost as many as my fantasy football team.

Court Vision is a breakdown of the weekly schedule to help you set your fantasy lineup.

The Nuggets have arguably the most favorable schedule with home games against the Nets, Knicks and a home/road series against the T-Wolves. For starters, the Nuggets have won 15 straight home games, while averaging 117 points per game at home. Then there's the fact that Minnesota is allowing 114.4 points per game on the road, while the Knicks yield 105.5 points away from The Garden.

And do we need to get started on the Nets? Yes, the 0-13 Nets. New Jersey is 27th in the league offering 8.8 steals per game and 25th in opponents rebounding at 44.6 per. With that, Kenyon Martin made top of my list in this week's waiver adds. Look at Ty Lawson in deep leagues as well. Chris Andersen should tattoo the Knicks on the defensive end of the ball. Eh? Tattoo? Get out of my way, I'm on fire!

With that, let's break down the schedule.

Who's Got Next is a weekly look at some of the top players widely available on the waiver wires.

Larry Hughes owners let out a sigh of relief on Friday when news dropped that the Knicks were no longer interested in signing Allen Iverson. It seemed to me that we would have seen his name on a majority of waiver wires come Saturday morning if the Knicks did happen to pull the trigger on Iverson. And given that fact that Hughes has been stellar of late, providing 14.2 points, 4.4 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 2.3 steals and 1.3 treys over his last ten, losing his production would have been disappointing. Now, though, with Nate Robinson on the Mike D'Antoni's s-list, Hughes should start getting a serious look and his ownership percentage should see an increase into the upper-80s, possibly the 90s.

What I'm getting at is, go pick up Larry Hughes. The Knicks play four times this week, and I suspect Hughes to get the bulk of the minutes at the 'two' going forward.

Looking at the schedule for Week Five, here are a few guys available on most waiver wires who are worth giving a look.

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

Kobe Bryant told Craig Sager last night that is was good to have Pau Gasol back. I couldn't have said it any better. Gasol was indeed back, and back in a big way -- game-high 24 points on 9-of-15 shooting, 13 rebounds and a blocked shot. The early effects of Gasol returning played out in the frontcourt: Andrew Bynum went for 11 points and eight rebounds in 25 minutes, while Lamar Odom came off the bench to play 25 minutes and put up 11 points and eight rebounds. A thoughtful gesture, considering Gasol has played eight full seasons, prior to this one, and missed the first 11 games before making his return. It was definitely his night.

The NBA's leading rebounder, Joakim Noah, pulled down 15 boards to go along with 12 points, four steals and two blocks. He's having a great season. The same can't be said for Derrick Rose, though he did come on last night and score 20 points and dish six dimes. Let's hope this gets him going.

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

The Knicks bench came up big as they erased a 19-point deficit in the second-half on their way to picking up their second victory of the season. Al Harrington led the way with 26 points on 8-of-13 shooting, while Larry Hughes added 22 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and three steals. Hughes has trumped both Nate Robinson and Toney Douglas at the 'two' and continues to look like a safe add.

Danilo Gallinari's big goose egg was overshadowed -- literally? -- by the return of every Knick fan's favorite big man, Eddy Curry. Big Slacks had 10 points and four rebounds in 12 minutes coming off the bench. Mike Breem said it best when he insinuated that the Knicks were going to start giving Curry more playing time in order to showcase his "talents" with the hopes that someone will bite on his contract. That says a lot, doesn't it?

For the Pacers it was Danny Granger who led the way with 33 points on 12-of-18 shooting and five treys. He wasn't very helpful in the second half, scoring just three of his 33 in the final two quarters.