FanHouse OJ Mayo

After building a rising core of young players featuring Marc Gasol (arguably their best all-around player at this point), O.J. Mayo (arguably their best scoring player at this point) and Rudy Gay (arguably ... Rudy Gay), the Memphis Grizzlies followed that up by trading for the untradeable Zach Randolph, drafting the undraftable Hasheem Thabeet, and signing the unsignable Allen Iverson. It's pretty much been advanced anti-fan warfare against the seventeen fans they have left.

And the hits just keep on comin'.

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.

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

Who Are Those Masked Men?

Dwight Howard turned in a stunning 14-of-16 performance from the free-throw line against the Raptors. But Howard wasn't the only Orlando player who made stepped outside the box. Starting 'two' guard J.J. Redick scored a career-high 27 points adding six rebounds, five assists and five three-pointers. Jameer Nelson and Ryan Anderson added five three-pointers apiece, with Nelson scoring a team-high 30 points and Anderson chipping in for 20.

I wouldn't get too excited about J.J. Redick, since both Vince Carter (ankle) and Mickael Pietrus (flu) missed Sunday's game. Both are expected back this week, which pushes Redick back into his famed role as a bench player.

Jason Williams played just 11 minutes, scoring two points and adding a mere three assists. Blame it on Jameer Nelson, who decided that Williams' services were no longer necessary. Take a cue from Nelson, Williams is not worth an add in standard leagues.

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

Marc Gasol is svelt. No lie. Gasol spent the summer running up mountains in Spain. I've never run up a mountain anywhere, much less mountains in Spain. You always hear stories about players losing weight coming into camp, but Gasol's slimming is evident. He doesn't look like the same player. The big knock on him last season was that he lacked explosiveness. So Gasol shed 25-30 pounds to improve his speed and agility. It was a wise move by Gasol, who will fight for playing time with Zach Randolph and Hasheem Thabeet. But when you get down to it, if the Grizzlies are going to make significant progress this season, Gasol will have to be a large part of that journey.

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

The Grizzlies are not a joke. They are the punchline. That's where they've fallen to. They aren't even the setup for the joke. They're just mentioned as the end point.

A little under two years ago, Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace (and by that, we mean owner Michael Heisley) traded Pau Gasol for cap room and some loose junk. The only valuable component they got out of the deal was Marc Gasol. The move elicited everything from mockery to outrage from pundits and even league personnel. Things have not improved considerably since.

I don't aim to defend the practice of cheating on your SAT, as Bulls star Derrick Rose is alleged to have done prior to enrolling at the University of Memphis in 2007. Even at age 17, Rose should know better. His brother Reggie Rose should have known better. Any other advisers potentially involved in the alleged fake-out should have known better. No excuse erases that.

But humor me for a second. We're told by David Stern that the NBA age minimum is a business decision, that the league's owners benefit from being able to see these bucks play for a year elsewhere (college, Europe, D-League). That the league benefits from being able to remove its scouts from high school gyms and AAU tournaments. That, in the end, the players benefit from the softer transition from amateur to pro.

Rose, one of the league's brightest young stars, saw his reputation take a massive hit Wednesday, all for a violation that never would have occurred if he didn't have to wait a year to join the league. The age minimum rule essentially paved the way for the criminalization of Rose's image. And Rose isn't the only one.

Maybe we're being a little too old school here, but it's hard to fathom Joe Dumars or Karl Malone or Bill Laimbeer getting into trouble because they forgot to pay for the diamond necklace they ordered.

O.J. Mayo needs to man up.

If you're a professional athlete and going to get in trouble, at least make it something like Reggie Miller chasing another man's fianceé, or Jamaal Tinsley getting into a bar fight or Stephen Jackson waving a gun, or even Charles Barkley, 15 years ago, throwing another drunk through a plate-glass window in Orlando.

At least those are macho mistakes.

Josh Childress started for an NBA team. Von Wafer played significant minutes on an NBA playoff team. Linas Kleiza once scored 41 points in an NBA regular season game (this ain't no summer league, man!) And they're all members of Olympiakos B.C.

Now since Childress decided to taste the awesome flavor of Dolmades, there has been no great exodus. However, that's now three NBA-quality players that aren't even the huge stars on OBC. Which begs a question. We know the NBA elite boast teams that could defeat them pretty handily, but how would Olympiakos do against the low of the NBA?

This is a game of chicken. Down on one end of the street is USC, revving its engine. On the other end is the NCAA, doing the same. And they are about to start barreling toward each other. Which one will chicken out?

I'm going with the NCAA on that one. It has been three years now since we knew that USC had become the classic college sports cheat. USC athletic director Mike Garrett figures Trojan football is too big and strong to be touchable. Heisman winners getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from shady characters hanging around. Basketball coaches getting into the mud, and maybe a slush fund, to recruit. That's just a start.

The NCAA has had the goods on USC for years now. And still ... nothing.

Allen Iverson needs to lay low for a while.

After establishing himself as a potential Hall of Fame guard, with offensive skills never before seen in the league and establishing himself as a perennial winner who's only flaw was that he was surrounded by insufficient backup, the last year has done a lot to tarnish that reputation. After being traded to Detroit he was an outright disaster, unable to find his place in the offense or in the locker room. Meanwhile the guard he was traded for, Chauncey Billups, lead his team to the Conference Finals.

As a free agent this summer, Iverson needs to go somewhere quietly and rebuild his image, much the same way that his old coach Larry Brown has in Charlotte. But it might be another small market team Iverson ends up with. One that now features an... eclectic makeup of personalities.

Iverson might be headed South for the Winter.