FanHouse Kobe Bryant

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."

We hear quite a bit about how well Kobe Bryant and LeBron James play at Madison Square Garden, the so-called Mecca of basketball. But Sunday's action reminded us that Paul Pierce belongs in that discussion, too.

Pierce scored 33 points in Boston's overtime win against the Knicks Sunday. It was the sixth career 30-point game at MSG for the longtime Celtics, matching Kobe, Dirk Nowitzki and Allen Iverson for the lead among active (or very recently active, in A.I.'s case) players. LeBron has five 30-point games at the Garden.

Of course, Pierce has been around quite a bit longer than LeBron, and as an Eastern Conference player he plays at MSG twice as frequently as Bryant and Nowitzki. But the mark is still impressive. (In case you're wondering, Michael Jordan holds the modern era record for 30-point games at MSG as a visitor, with at least 17. Basketball-Reference only has a game-by-game box score data going back to 1986-87.) Pierce was the fourth visitor to hit 30 at the Garden this season, following James, Andre Iguodala and Chris Paul.

These days, we expect greatness from our NBA stars, and Kobe Bryant is one who delivers on a consistent basis. On Sunday night, he drilled one of the craziest shots of his career in the Lakers' game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Kobe got the ball on the low post, guarded closely by OKC's James Harden. As he tried to spin to the hoop, Harden bumped him just enough to force him along the baseline right behind the basket. Thinking he would draw the foul, he fired up a shot from near out of bounds along the baseline that sailed high over the backboard and fell perfectly through the net, mimicking Larry Bird's famous shot that forced a rule change and Rajon Rondo's high-soaring floater over the Sixers' Jason Smith.

The Lakers got two points for Kobe's circus shot whereas Larry Legend's shot was then against the rules. The NBA later changed those rules, declaring that if the shooter is clearly in bounds, such a shot would count. I'm sure Kobe is glad for the rule-change, giving him yet another spot on the court for him to hit improbable shots from.

Check out the video after the jump.

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Trevor Ariza was a fan favorite during his days in Los Angeles, and an integral part of the Lakers squad that won a championship just a few months ago. So it's no surprise that when he returned on Sunday as a member of the Houston Rockets, fans greeted him with a long standing ovation, while his former teammates Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher presented him with the ring that he earned as a key member of that title-winning team.

Video of the brief but heart-felt ceremony, after the jump.

Just how bad was the beatdown that the Nuggets put on the Lakers Friday night? In case the 105-79 final score wasn't enough of an indication, try this on for size: Denver held L.A. to just 23 points in the second half, which was the lowest ever in the Lakers' franchise history.

The Nuggets were feeling pretty good about themselves after the win, and they should: it was a quality victory in which the home team executed on both ends of the court for 48 minutes. But they would also be wise not to get ahead of themselves. Because while L.A. was at the top of the standings heading in, honestly, the 7-1 record was a bit of a fraud.

The reality is, the Lakers right now are nowhere near that good, and are a far cry from playing like the team that finished last season as the world champions.

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 -- Do as I say and not as I do.

Or, at least not what Kobe Bryant once did.

While bound for free agency in the summer of 2004, the Lakers star openly spoke about teams he might consider. But Bryant now says Cleveland star LeBron James is making the right decision by deciding earlier this week to stop talking about his impending free agency.

"He doesn't need to,'' Bryant said in an interview with FanHouse while in Denver for Friday's 105-79 loss to the Nuggets. "He did the right thing by not talking about it. I mean, what can you say?''