FanHouse Tim Duncan

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

Both Tim Duncan and Tony Parker sat out last night's game against the Raptors. Of course, as you'd imagine, the Spurs put up 131 points and defeated the Raptors by seven points. Duh. I mean, who needs Tony Parker and Tim Duncan anyway? The Lakers won a ring last year without them, didn't they?

Manu Ginobili went off for 36 points, eight assists, six threes and four blocks. I'm not saying the rabies shot had anything to do with his performance, but I'll let you go ahead and draw your own conclusions. George Hill stepped in and filled Parker's shoes quite nicely -- 22 points on 8-of-15 shooting and five assists. Parker's due back next week, so I'm not sure that Hill has long-term value.

Chris Bosh on the other side of the ball scored 32 points on 8-of-16 shooting from the floor and 15-of-17 from the line, plus 10 rebounds, a block and a three. Fun fact: Chis Bosh is 6-of-6 from the three-point line. The Raptors shot 59.2-percent from the floor in a losing effort. That always hurts.

You're going to have to forgive us here in the early season for a bit. If we don't report on trends that are developing, we're ignoring what we're seeing. If we do tell you what we see, we're over-emphasizing games that are so young in this season that they can't even legally get into a screening of New Moon.

Basically, that's my way of imploring you to remember that we do take these things with a gigantic mountain of salt, but here's what happened. And trust me, the Spurs are going to want to brush this one off.

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.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Wednesday, there are 6 days remaining.

As much as we like to get lathered up over today's talented stars like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, it's sometimes good to step back and put them in perspective.

They still don't hold a candle to Michael Jordan.

If you think they do, come back to us when they reach Double 6's, which is the number that explains Jordan's greatness as well as any statistic ever placed beside his name.

The power forward position is the deepest of all positions. Much like I mentioned how many of the the best power forwards are eligible at center, many small forwards and centers have dual eligibility at power forward. The range of ability consists of some of the league's best rebounders, scorers, three-point specialists, and efficient shooters. Some fantasy owners load up on power forwards and slot them into their center and utility positions. This position runs so deep, so deep that 50 players may not be enough to cover each and every fantasy relevant power forward. The depth leaves great value toward the end of drafts, but there's no reason to sleep on the players atop the draft board.

Again, I followed Fleaflicker's fantasy basketball positional eligibility. The rankings are based on standard, 8-category head-to-head (H2H) scoring: points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, three-pointers, field-goal percentage, and free-throw percentage.

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The center position is often considered the thinnest position. Possibly because most leagues require you to start at least two centers, or maybe it's because once you get past the first 12 or 15 centers you start seeing players queued up who have some serious deficiencies in their game. The one saving grace is that many of the league's top power forwards are also eligible at center.

You'll often hear guys strategize about getting out of the draft with a few centers who can rebound, block shots, and shoot a high percentage from the field while doing limited damage to their team's free-throw percentage. That's not so easy to do, however. The strategy here is to find a center who has limited free-throw attempts. If you're drafting Dwight Howard you have to be careful of his 59.4 FT% since he gets to the line 10.8 times per game. On the other hand Andris Biedrins' 55.1 FT% is manageable because he got to the line just 3.5 times per game last season.

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Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Monday, there are 50 days remaining.

Back in 1996, the NBA asked a group of basketball experts to come up with a list of the 50 greatest players in the history of the league. It was the 50th anniversary of the NBA, after all.

It was an impressive list, of course, with the likes of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Rick Barry, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan, etc. The full list can be seen here.

A hundred years from now, those players likely will still be on any list of top-50 players in league history. But what about some other players on that list, the ones toward the back end of 50 ... Paul Arizin, Dave Bing, Sam Jones, Hal Greer, Dave DeBusschere, Bill Walton, Robert Parish and a few others?

Who doesn't like a list, especially on a Monday morning when that's about all you can handle until your third cup of coffee?

As the opening of NBA training camps approach, we'll start breaking down the league by position, presenting our biased opinions with an eye on personal prejudices and the upcoming season. Remember, it's not who the best was last season -- that's history -- but who will be the best over the next 82 games and into the playoffs.

Since we're starting with centers, we'll have to begin by discussing those we don't like this season.

Who doesn't like a list, especially on a Monday morning when that's about all you can handle?

If Ron Artest is a wild card when it comes to chemistry, and Allen Iverson is a tough guy to play alongside of, then who are the NBA's best teammates? Let's talk glue guys this a.m.

Here's one guy's Top 5 Teammates list -- players you want to play with.

In the dog days of summer, every NBA team is filled with championship dreams.

OK, that's a crock of Jerome James-flavored gumbo. Most teams are well aware that the only gold at the end of an NBA season's rainbow is named Jose. And I'm not talking about just the Clippers or Kings here. I'm also talking about the Hawks and Sixers and Hornets and Jazz. There are only a handful of teams that are genuinely in the hunt. And most champions will tell you it takes a precious combination of talent, obscenely hard work, and lots and lots of luck to cash in the ticket to immortality. Some teams expect to contend for a championship. Rarely does any team expect to win a championship, if it's not currently holding the ring (or waiting for it to arrive in the mail).

The San Antonio Spurs, of course, are a pretty rare team. And they have been for the last decade. And much of their success is due to their equally rare head coach.