FanHouse Benoudrih

What a night for Kevin Martin. The dynamic guard for the Kings -- and currently the league's No. 3 scorer -- learned Thursday morning his sore wrist was actually a fractured navicular bone, a pretty brutal injury in terms of risk and recovery. Sources tell FanHouse Martin was strongly recommended by at least two doctors (including Sacramento's team doctor and a separate hand specialist) to undergo reparative surgery or to put the in a cast for 6-8 weeks. The franchise, however, left the decision to Martin, who kept a third option -- play through it wearing a soft cast -- open temporarily.

Martin told reporters he'd sleep on it and make a decision Friday. Sanity has prevailed over machismo, and Martin told the Sacramento Bee's Sam Amick today that playing with a soft cast has been ruled out. Martin will either put a hard cast on the arm, or undergo surgery.

A lot of Kings fans, myself included, spent the 2008-09 season bemoaning the inability of Sacramento starting point guard Beno Udrih to cleanly pass the ball. But let me assure you: Beno has no problem passing the blame.

A candid, borderline cheerful Beno discussed the abominable 17-win season with Sacramento media Monday. And his opinion on what went wrong was impossible to misinterpret: blame coaches Reggie Theus and Kenny Natt.

"Sometimes last season, I didn't know if I was a small forward or a point guard," the 6'3 Udrih said. "We were definitely confused. We didn't have roles."

Before we get started, it should be noted that NBA bloggers are kind of hard to please when it comes to teams spending money. On the one hand, we sneer in disgust when teams refuse to spend money, patting their fans on the head as we chastise ownership for being "cheap" and turning a profit without ever seriously pushing for a title.

On the other, we tend to flip out when someone spends irresponsibly. There is a salary cap and a luxury tax, after all, and handing off a bazillion dollars to that small guard who has difficulty with creating his own shot and thinks he can tell you what his nickname should be when it should clearly be Iggy can draw our ire as well. Not that I'm naming names.

So it's kind of a sticky situation to begin with. Of course, the Raptors have just poured maple syrup over their particular situation in regards to Andrea Bargnani.

As teams get eliminated from the 2009 NBA playoff picture, Fork 'Em figures out what went wrong.

(Man, how long has that fork been in dude's back? Looks rough.) The Kings have not been above .500 since December 4, 2006. Officially eliminated from playoff contention earlier this week, Sacramento hasn't been able to put together a winning streak of even two games since the second week of November. The Kings boast (boast?) the fifth-worst defense of the modern era. To date, Sacramento has racked up an 0-24 record against the East.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. What went wrong? What went wrong?! Wrong question, Holmes. Everything went wrong.

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.

In the days following the 2007 draft, you'd be looked at as a joker if you insisted they'd someday chant Rodney Stuckey's name in Detroit. You'd look like even more of a nutter if you said it'd happen two months into his sophomore season. But here he is, racking up 38 points and seven assists to lead the Pistons in a tough win over Sacramento to the spirited chants of "STUCK-EY! STUCK-EY!." (However, the appearance of the wave at the Palace in the fourth makes me also question the Detroit crowd's judgment.)

Particularly awesome is how thoroughly Stuckey wasted Kings point guard Beno Udrih, who not only could not dream of stopping Stuckey's penetration but also couldn't get a decent shot off against the kid's physical pressure. Udrih finished with two points, three assists and two turnovers in 20 minutes.

Millsap Back at Work: Paul Millsap wasn't gone long, and thank goodness. Millsap brought his lunch pail to L.A., and though the Jazz fell to the Lakers by a baker's dozen, Millsap turned out a stellar game: 16 points, 17 rebounds, three assists, two steals, two steals and zero turnovers. Every night like this pushes Carlos Boozer closer to the edge of the world.

Doin' It Wrong: Knicks games typically create nutty lines ... but not like this: Jared Jeffries had only one point for the 'Bockers in 29 minutes, but racked up five rebounds and four blocks. Someone needs to get Jeffries a copy of Seven Seconds or Less or a 2004-05 Phoenix game tape.

Rook Check takes a look at the progress of NBA Rookies throughout the season.

The story going into yesterday's game between the Clippers and the Warriors was obviously the fact that it was Baron Davis' first game facing his former team. But that wasn't the case when the final buzzer sounded. Because while Davis played well (though not well enough to get his team the win), another guard on the court stole the show, and chances are, you've never heard of him.

Warriors' rookie Anthony Morrow got his first career NBA start, and made the absolute most of the opportunity. He scored 37 points on 15-for-20 shooting, and also grabbed 11 rebounds. Morrow was an undrafted free agent, and was signed by the Warriors after playing well for them during Summer League.

If you had never heard of Morrow before yesterday, don't worry: neither had Baron Davis, who praised Morrow's amazing performance afterward:

"Oh my God, who was that guy?" Davis said. "He just came out of nowhere. We had watched him and coach told us he can shoot. But he's just one of those guys. Nellie keeps guys like that on his team, and when he got the confidence to score, he got hot. He got hot. He got hot. He couldn't miss."

While Morrow was on fire against the Clippers, he'll likely face a tougher challenge when being defended by ... oh, just about anybody else. The Clips have a habit of allowing a guard on the opposing team to go off; Beno Udrih torched them for 30 the game before during the Clippers' loss to the Kings. Still, that was an exciting first start for Morrow, and he'll get his chance to prove it wasn't a fluke this Tuesday when the Warriors host the Blazers.

During our NBA Most Likely series, I talked about how European guard Sasha Vujacic's lack of respect around the NBA causes him to get in a lot of confrontations.

Some have hypothesized that it is Sasha's pretty boy Euro look that causes him to be disrespected by some of the players throughout the league. Well, Sasha might have another European guard joining his club of disrespect.

Raptors rookie Roko Ukic is already feeling disrespected. After his first NBA game, he's already become well aware what most NBA players think of young European guards.

Via TrueHoop, let's watch New Jersey's Devin Harris get hustled off a London playground by an English streetballer.


If it's any consolation, chum, Jason Kidd would have lost at least 20 seconds sooner ... although there's the off chance Kidd's missed jumper could have rendered the Englishman unconscious.

After the jump, one more puny white kid destroying a star NBA guard. If you dislike Kobe Bryant or the Lakers on any level, I'd highly recommend you check it out.

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Yesterday we had the overview; today we have the predictions. The Pacific Division appears to be no better than a two-team race, with a third team potentially in the mix, and the last two teams, well, finishing in last. Let's start things off in the cellar and work our way up, shall we?

The Los Angeles Clippers (again, regal) are going to have a tough go of it due to the enormous drop off in talent they have between their starting lineup and the players coming off the bench. In fact, if you want a visual of said drop off, go watch this, and pretend the guy jumping off the building is falling in the space between the talent of the Clippers' starting players and that of their bench players. And the parachute not opening represents the gigantic FAIL that the Clippers can expect this season anytime the bench takes the floor to try and hold onto a lead. It's not going to be pretty, folks.

Up north where the Golden State Warriors play, it won't be pretty either, at least for the first few months of the season. That's because their best player (apologies, Mr. Maggette) decided to engage in low-speed moped riding during the off-season (this still amazes me ... the moped = injury part), which will lead to his absence from the lineup, and an unavoidably bad start for the Warriors.

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A season ago, the Pacific Division was able to send just two of its teams to the playoffs, but one of them went all the way to the Finals. And while that's not likely to change this season -- at least the part about the two playoff teams -- each club definitely has its share of intriguing story lines.

Let's start off in Los Angeles, where the Lakers' playoff run last season took place with one of the team's key components on the sidelines. There are always many stories in Laker-land, but a lot of the team's fans seem to be most interested in this one: With the return of Andrew Bynum, do the Lakers have a shot to win 70 games?

Despite the recent flood of positive Andrew Bynum stories hitting the L.A. papers lately (seriously, his P.R. machine is working overtime), I'm not convinced that his addition to the lineup automatically makes the Lakers unstoppable. There's the whole thing about figuring out how to co-exist with Pau Gasol, and how Lamar Odom will perform (likely) playing further away from the basket. When you add in the fact that even if the team was capable of winning 70 games, there's really no motivation to do so, unless someone else is on the same ridiculous pace and it would mean home court advantage.