FanHouse Andrew Bogut

The season is officially upon us. It tips off Tuesday night as the Cavaliers welcome the Celtics to town. This moment we've all been waiting for.

Of course it seems as though you've got your fantasy teams in order. You came up with a more creative team name than "[Your Last Name]'s Team" and you're pretty sure you're the team to beat. But before you go and slack off, there's still work to be done. You need to embrace the math that is the weekly lineup.

It's not quite as easy as playing Player A over Player B just because you drafted him three rounds earlier than Player B. Sure it's safe to say that you're going to start guys like LeBron James each week, no questions asked. But for several players on your team it's crucial to look at the schedule and team matchups in order to gain the upper hand.

Each week it shall be my duty to break down the upcoming schedule and point out a few of the more favorable, and not-so-favorable, matchups. This could help make those start/sit decisions a little easier.

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FanHouse previews a player to watch from each NBA team in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Luc Richard Mbah a Moute is not going to set the world on fire. But he's the type of player that can provide the gasoline.

To say Mbah a Moute was under the radar last season is to vastly overestimate the strength of radar systems. Coming out of UCLA, Mbah a Moute was considered a project like so many rookies. He didn't possess the wowzer tangibles (standing only 6-8 and being listed as a power forward will do that to you), didn't stir the senses with playmaking, and was considered a good college player that he might make it with some time.

And then Mbah A Moute actually hit the floor.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Bucks were awful last year, but at least they had an excuse: Michael Redd, the team's leading scorer six years and counting, and Andrew Bogut, the franchise center who signed a $72 million extension before last season, each missed more than half of the season with injury.

The good news? Both players are healthy entering camp and should be primed to make up for lost time. The bad news? GM John Hammond has rebooted the supporting cast in their absence, trading Richard Jefferson to the Spurs in a cost-cutting maneuver while losing Charlie Villanueva and Ramon Sessions to free agency.

When a fifth-place team loses three of its top four scorers and doesn't even receive a legitimate starter to show for it, you know it's going to be a long year.

Several NBA players missed significant parts of last season because of injury. Here's a quick rundown of how some of them are doing with training camps set to begin next week for most teams:

Gilbert Arenas, Washington (knee): He's had three surgeries on his knee in a year and a half, but Arenas said he'll be ready for the start of training camp. Of course, he took things a step further by saying that had he continued to rehab in Washington, instead of working with trainer Tim Grover in Chicago, he wouldn't have made it back as fast.

Who doesn't like a list, especially on a Monday morning when that's about all you can handle? From now till the regular season starts, we're going to throw our own Top Fives at you.

Since this is the first one, and it's the middle of the offseason, how about five players who look a lot better in August than they do in December, a lot better in the summertime than in winter? Here are five players who have had better offseasons than regular seasons in their NBA careers.

Overrated might be too strong a word here -- but it's time for these guys to start earning earning their money.

So, you may or may not have seen the feature we did for the NFL Draft in which we took every single team and decided who the worst draft pick in the history of that franchise was. And it was so awesome and fun to do (and totally not time consuming at all) that I decided to roll it out for the NBA as well.

So, for every NBA team, we give you a horrible draft pick -- either a straight bust, or player picked ahead of another player who was far better, etc. -- and then a snarky reason as to why said pick was the worst in franchise history. Your suggestions in the comments, please. And happy draft day!

FanHouse fixes a decade of draft-day blunders in Revisiting the NBA Draft.

The 2005 NBA Draft would change the course of the future of two teams -- the Atlanta Hawks and Milwaukee Bucks. There was no clear-cut No. 1 pick, but Utah's Andrew Bogut was big, skilled and NBA ready. He wasn't the most convincing or dominant No. 1 pick, especially with Dwight Howard averaging a double-double in his rookie season, but he appeared to be the best choice for the Bucks.

Meanwhile, the Hawks decided on a player who was a sixth man of his college team. Marvin Williams had all the physical tools to be a star but played just one season at North Carolina. He fed off the Tar Heels' national title run and opted for the draft. It sounded like a good idea, although he was only 19. It's not that these were poor choices. Neither Bogut nor Williams are busts. They are productive NBA players, but when compared with the next two drafted, they are disappointments.

As teams get eliminated from the 2009 NBA playoff picture, Fork 'Em figures out what went wrong.

Through the first half of the season, the Bucks rode as one of the great surprises of the NBA. A team sunk in the dead space between truly atrocious and just plain bad in 2007-08, Scott Skiles (and Michael Redd and Andrew Bogut) had Milwaukee back on the map, threatening to crash the postseason and even peeking into one analyst's Top 5 around the New Year.

During Saturday night's overtime game between the Celtics and the Bucks, Kevin Garnett and Andrew Bogut had themselves a little dust-up. Bogut caught KG in the face with a (somewhat Kobe-esque) follow through, and Garnett responded with an open-handed smack to Bogut's face. Here's a look at the incident, which at the time resulted in a technical foul for both players.



The league is said to be looking at taking further disciplinary action, and frankly, I don't see how they can't. Clearly, this not simply another case of "KG being KG," where the league can choose to ignore his actions because he's an "emotional" player. Please. The man plainly and intentionally swung at Bogut in retaliation for getting hit on Bogut's follow through.

While Bogut's contact was incidental, I don't think even the most rabid of Celtics fans would say the same for KG's slap. If Steve Nash can get a game suspension for simply walking over to break up a fight, Garnett should get at least that much for so obviously trying to start one.

UPDATE: The league has weighed in, and Kevin Garnett has indeed been suspended for one game. The suspension will be served tomorrow night when the Celtics host the Knicks.

When Suns' head coach Terry Porter mentioned before the season that he was considering resting Shaquille O'Neal at various times throughout the season, I took it as him saying it was something he may do occasionally. As it turns out though, it appears to be the rule rather than the exception so far, and (needlessly) doing so at this point in the season cost the team a game that would otherwise have been winnable last night in Chicago.

The Suns planned to give Shaq the night off in Indiana, when the team was playing the second game of a back-to-back, and the big fella had put in 24 strong minutes the night before in New Jersey. In fact, Shaq was dressed in a suit up until about 20 minutes before tip-off, but was called to action after starter Matt Barnes left the team to be with his fiancee, who was giving birth to a set of twins. O'Neal played less than 12 minutes though, and with Amare Stoudemire blowing up for 49 points, the team got by without him.

After a day off, the Suns traveled to Chicago, but decided to give Shaq a night of rest because they again were facing back-to-back games, and the thinking was that tonight's opponent, the Milwaukee Bucks, would pose a bigger challenge in the paint than the Bulls. The Bucks have Andrew Bogut; the Bulls play Drew Gooden and Joakim Noah. But with the Suns already missing one of their starters, did they really need to give Shaq a night of rest, just six games into this young season?