FanHouse Carmelo Anthony

ESPN has assigned its Spanish-speaking correspondent Alfred R. Berrios to keep up a weekly ranking of the NBA's Latinos for its ESPN Deportes property. Celebrating the game's Central and Southern American tentacles is a positive thing, and the NBA has long sought to integrate the multitudes of Spanish-speaking sports fans in the United States and abroad into its fold.

But ESPN's list is just weird in terms of inclusion and exclusion.

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

The first thing I thought of while watching the Warriors-Cavs game was: The Seven Samurai. And the tag-line for the film is nearly perfect -- "The Seven Warriors Who Became the Seven National Heroes of a Small Town." OK, so maybe we can take out "national heroes of a small town" and replace those words with "fantasy contributors for one evening."

Last night the Warriors went into Cleveland with just seven active players. Each, however, posted double-digit point totals, with Monta Ellis leading the way -- 23 points, eight assists, and three steals. Anthony Morrow looked pretty good himself, dropping 18 points and hitting four of his seven three-point attempts. All in all, you can't go wrong this week adding Morrow, Anthony Randolph, Stephen Curry or Corey Maggette. I'm still not sold on Mikki Moore or Vladimir Radmanovic, but I'm sure that will change over time.

DENVER -- Final four week turned into a flop of finalists.

Meetings of last season's conference finalists got started Wednesday when Cleveland took a huge lead and clobbered defending East champion Orlando 102-93. An even bigger dismantling occurred Friday night at the Pepsi Center.

The way the Nuggets demolished the Lakers, you'd have thought they tried to smuggle coke into the building.

The Nuggets got some revenge against the defending West and NBA champions 105-79. It wasn't even that close.

"Hopefully, this is a big message, not just to the Lakers but to the whole NBA. We're a legit team,'' said Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony, who scored a game-high 25 points and outscored Lakers star Kobe Bryant 18-0 in the second half (no, that's not a misprint).

DENVER -- Andrew Bynum was talking to his brother early this week when he got the news.

Amare Stoudemire, despite being Phoenix's starting power forward, was listed on the All-Star ballot at center for the Western Conference. That happens to be the same position played by the Lakers' Bynum, and many had considered him the favorite to be the starter after Houston's Yao Ming was lost for the season due to injury and Shaquille O'Neal was traded from Phoenix to Cleveland of the East.

"I was definitely surprised,'' Bynum said in an interview with FanHouse about Stoudemire being listed at center even though he's started every game this season at forward, with Channing Frye having opened at center for the Suns.

DENVER -- Two guys sat in front of a locker at the Pepsi Center on Sunday night who have combined to win four NBA scoring crowns.

The stars on hand were Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony. OK, it must be said Iverson, a Memphis guard who sat out Sunday's game due to injury and was visiting his old Denver teammate, has four titles to none for Anthony.

But just wait. Anthony might be this season's scoring king.

True, the Nuggets forward has played just three games. But the race isn't close. He's averaging 37.7 points to 31.3 for runner-up Kobe Bryant of the Lakers.

Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the lig. Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

It's not every day that we get to see a player hit for 40 points or more in an NBA game. So on Sunday, when we had three different players meet or surpass the mark, it's definitely something worth discussing.

Especially when two of them did it in the same game.

With just two games on the schedule last night, Home Delivery might have to start jinxing a can down the street. I suppose it's helpful to get out of the house every once in a while.

And On the Third Day, D. Rose

Derrick Rose returned to action after missing most of the preseason due to a sore ankle. At times, on Thursday, he played as if he was at or near 100-percent. Rose logged 33 minutes scoring 13 points and picking up seven rebounds and seven assists, along with one steal and just one turnover. This is good news for Rose owners, especially since he's not 100-percent as of yet. Things should only get better from here.

Luol Deng looked "Deng good" as he led the Bulls with 17 points on 8-of-13 shooting and nine rebounds. He's starting to look like a nice value pick for a 10th-rounder. Hopefully he can continue to improve and stay healthy this season. John Salmons had an 'off' night shooting 3-of-15 from the field and just 1-of 9 from beyond the arc. He scored just 10 points, but made his performance a little easier to swallow with his three steals.

The NBA season is a mere two days old, but the dunk I'm about to show you that Carmelo Anthony threw down over Paul Millsap on Wednesday is in fact, the dunk of the year.

'Melo said after the game, "Once I got the steal, I knew it was just me and him,'' Anthony said. "I wasn't going to lay the ball up. I was going to try to dunk it. If he'd have blocked it, he'd have blocked it. It went the opposite way."

But don't take my word for it: after watching the video, you can read what Dwight Howard and Quentin Richardson had to say about it, via updates they made to their respective Twitter pages after seeing the sensational highlight.

DENVER -- Midway through Wednesday's game, Denver coach George Karl suddenly stopped writing "Rookie'' on his coach's board and instead wrote "Ty.''

Could it be that Ty Lawson, in his very first NBA game, dispelled the myth that Karl doesn't have an appreciation for rookies?

"Things might be changing,'' Lawson said. "Every day up until (Wednesday) he wrote 'Rookie.' But he changed it to 'Ty.' I don't know what that means.''

What it means is Karl has got himself one heck of a rookie. Lawson scored 17 points and handed out six assists to help the Nuggets to a 114-105 opening-night win over Utah at the Pepsi Center.

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