FanHouse Travis Outlaw

Welcome to the first edition of Home Delivery, your comprehensive roundup of last night's NBA action from a fantasy perspective. Read along each morning as we bring the headline news to you in a format your grandpa would appreciate -- wait, what's a newspaper?

Man Ditches Agent Zero and Gets With Agent Hero

Gilbert Arenas returned to action Tuesday night against the Dallas Mavericks. As an Arenas owner, I'm a bit giddy over his performance -- 29 points, nine assists, 10-of-21 shooting from the floor and 8-of-9 from the free-throw line. It's easy to look at his performance and state that he's "officially back," but we need to contain ourselves and play it cool. At least for one day.

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Cherry Picking recaps yesterday's action.

The Blazers and the Rockets are both playoff teams that have their share of obvious flaws. In fact, neither one of them have any business getting out of the first round this season. But thanks to the way the seedings shook out, one of them will advance by default.

Unfortunately for Portland fans, that team is going to be the Rockets, and the reason is rather simple: This Blazers team is just not built for the playoffs.

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It's trophy time in the NBA, and the FanHouse crew has submitted its ballots. Find out which players deserve to take home the hardware and which ones don't, in our NBA Awards series. First up: Sixth Man of the Year.

The Sixth Man award, as you probably have guessed from its name, is given to the player believed to have the biggest impact for his team coming off the bench. Over the past couple of seasons, the discussion is one that's been dominated by two names -- Manu Ginobili and Leandro Barbosa. This year, however, we have a new group of players in the conversation, and, while the voting was close, we were able to come up with a clear cut choice.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

NBA superstar LeBron James is having an amazing season, having led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the best record in the NBA. This makes him the leading candidate for the 2009 NBA MVP, if not bigger, Fabio-like levels of stardom. In this video we catch up with LeBron to hear what he thinks about the award, as well as the Fabio comparison. Plus, we ask LeBron who he pick if he had a vote. We also hear from Al Thornton, Steve Blake, Nicolas Batum and Travis Outlaw, and get their picks for the 2009 MVP too.

Check out the video after the jump.

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.

Go ahead, keep offering up your qualifier-laden assertions that Kobe is the greatest. The most current line: "Kobe is the best closer." Yet anyone who watched LeBron James single-handedly beat the Blazers late Thursday would disagree.

Travis Outlaw had an extremely hot fourth quarter -- 5-of-5 FGs, 11 points -- until LeBron switched onto him late. From there, Outlaw missed four straight shots, including a three that LeBron blocked after making up roughly 15 feet during the wind-up.

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.

Brett showed you what Dwyane Wade pulled to end Miami's double overtime thriller against the Bulls. But Flash did a bunch to get to that point, as well. Wade racked up 48 points, 12 assists, six rebounds, four steals and three blocks.

Since at least 1986-87, no player has gone for 48 points, 12 assists and three blocks. Only one man -- Michael Jordan -- has had 40 points with 12 assists and three blocks. Heck, only two players since 1986-87 have done the 48 points/12 assists bit: Larry Joe Bird and Stephon Marbury. (!) Wade is unbelievable.

Imagine Nate McMillan's Olympic predicament. As an assistant on Mike Krzyzewski's staff, he had to concerntrate at the task at hand -- or at the very least, keep a straight face -- as Spain's Rudy Fernandez torched the Redeem Team's collection of All-Stars (and posterized Dwight Howard) for 22 points in fewer than 18 minutes.

Behind the stoic front, though, he was going nuts, just like most of the fans back in Portland. From Jason Quick of The Oregonian:

"I'm sitting there (in the gold medal game) with a straight face, trying not to smile," McMillan said. " (Spain) are the guys we have to beat, but I'm caught. That's my player and I want to (he claps his hands twice) but I gotta (he makes a serious face) because we are going up against him."

[...] "I was so impressed with him that it was to the point where after the second time I saw him, I didn't sleep that night because I was moving my rotations around," McMillan said. "I swear I did not sleep. I could not sleep thinking about him. Because I'm saying, 'We can put him here, do this with him, do that with him and Brandon (Roy), and do this... So he's playing for us. Oh yeah. I see that right now."

So what did he dream up? For now he's planning on using Fernandez on the second team alongside Jerryd Bayless and Travis Outlaw, although Fernandez will occasionaly share the court with Brandon Roy. If Fernandez plays as well as he did in Beijing (which isn't out of the question given the quality of competition he faced), can the Blazers keep him out of the starting lineup? I like Steve Blake as much as the next guy, but I don't see how they could.

That's a hard foul by Lamar Odom, without a doubt, but I'm not entirely convinced it was a flagrant (though it may have been retaliation for this). The reason it looks bad is the angle at which Brandon Roy hits the ground -- if he didn't land square on his hip and was able to bounce back up, I'm not sure there would have been as much post-play posturing.

(That said, if the Blazers did think it was a dirty hit, I'm not all that impressed with their lack of action. Maybe it's just because I overdosed on Bad Boys highlights Tuesday night, but all Odom had to deal with was a little verbal jawing from LaMarcus Aldridge and Travis Outlaw before being separated by the refs and other players. Actions speak louder than words, fellas, especially when your team leader is still writhing on the floor in pain.)

It's not like Travis Outlaw has actually been invited to the dunk contest, because we'd probably know by now if he had. But he's just letting us know that, if he does get the call, he has no interest in participating, as he's had some bad experiences in similar competitions in the past.

When Outlaw was in high school, he took part in the McDonald's All-America dunk contest in Cleveland.

"I had a bad experience,'' Outlaw said. "I missed all of my dunks.''

He said he tried a windmill dunk, a leaner in which he took off from deep in the key and another dunk he couldn't remember.

"I couldn't get one down,'' he said. "After that, I was like, 'All right, I'm done.'''

Look, I understand being a little fearful of embarrassment when all eyes are focused on you, especially when you've choked in a similar situation. But that was high school, and Travis has been in the NBA for five seasons now. And when you have the ability to throw down like this, I really don't think there's anything to worry about.

B-Ball, B-Fast is a weekdaily look at last night's NBA action from a fantasy perspective. Bookmark it and visit often.

Cup of Coffee
Consider yourselves lucky that you're getting this post today. I have made no secret of my mancrush, so my first inclination when I heard that Andrew Bynum would be out for eight freaking weeks was to end up hanging from the nearest ceiling fan by a guitar string. Then I realized the closest thing I own to said string is a fake plastic Gibson with five colored buttons. So I'm here. And Bynum is not. You can't drop him and keeper league teams out of contention should actually trade for him. He will miss eight weeks and in his fantasy stead will be erstwhile "phenom" Kwame Brown (seen here getting half-postered by the quite miniscule Earl Watson.)

Hot Cakes
Kwame posted 10 and 10 last night but it was in 38 minutes against the Sonics and everyone rebounds against them, so that's a misleading false sliver of hope. If he keeps up the decent play, I say sell, since he will not be scoring and Chris Mihm will probably reappear in three weeks for about a week or two (before getting hurt again) to steal playing time. Even if he doesn't, Chris Webber looms as a triangle offense passing presence/center option on the cheap for the Lakers who would be available in just around a fortnight. (Yeah, I rolled with fortnight and yeah, snatch him up if you need dimes and minimal boards.)

In that same game, Nick Collison registered a monsterous 24 points and 18 boards. Besides telling us that Collison is starting to heat up (add him if you can) while averaging over a dub-dub in January, this also tells us that Kwame cannot play defense. Suddenly, you want to start your centers against the Lakers in daily leagues. Did not want to do that when Bynum was in there. So there's that. Hurray tiny silver linings! Sigh.