Beast of the Night: Dirk Nowitzki not only hit the game-winner in Milwaukee last night, he also finished with 32 points, 1 three, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 1 block while shooting 48 percent (12-25) from the field, 88 percent (7-8) from the line and didn’t have any turnovers. He’s the hottest fantasy commodity to come out of Germany since Heidi Klum. Read More »

Calling Mario Chalmers the modern day “Glove” might be pushing it. While he doesn’t deserve Gary Payton’s title just yet, Chalmers is still a budding game-changer on the defensive end of the floor.

In his rookie season with Miami, the former Kansas Jayhawk was good for two picks per game (fourth best in the NBA). In the postseason, he bumped that number up to 2.9 spg. So far this season he’s recorded at least one steal in every game,and is averaging more than two thefts a night.

During the offseason, Mario gave us his secrets on how to pad your steal stats… Read More »

With points, rebounds and assists covered, let’s move on to discuss some late-round thieves who could help your fantasy team with a steals deficiency. Again, these players are listed in no particular order. There’s much room for discussion here, so please populate the comments section below with your reactions. Read More »

Now that we’ve covered late-rounders who will help fill in your teams’ scoring and rebounding weaknesses, let’s move on to assists. Again, these are players who will likely be available in the later rounds of most fantasy drafts but could offer good value in this specific statistical category and are not listed in any specific order. Read on, respond and let us know if you’d remove or add someone to this list. Read More »

Last year we debuted the “Highs and Lows” system — previewing the NBA season by predicting the respective ceiling and basement for each team. Same theme, different season…

Added: Carlos Arroyo, Quentin Richardson, Shavlik Randolph

Lost: Jamario Moon, Luther Head, Mark Blount Read More »

There’s no question that the class of 2008 is front-loaded with talent. And now that the rookie jitters are gone and contract extensions are in sight, how will they fare after a year in the League under their belts? The reality is, a case can be made for almost 30 guys to be on this list in some way. For instance, where do Danilo Gallinari and Roy Hibbert go with such strong coach-backing? It’s still too early to close the book on any of these guys, but so far here are my predictions. Read More »

Whether you’re spending your valuable TV time or your valuable ticket money, when you settle in to watch an NBA preseason game, you hope everybody — or at least somebody — on the court treats it like Jason Terry did last night. In the Mavs/Pistons game that aired on NBA TV, Terry almost had you thinking something important was at stake. It seemed at every dead ball he was trying to hype up the Dallas crowd, raising his arms and screaming or doing his little “Jet” dance, and then between the lines he was locked in like it was a playoff game. Read More »

I’m trying to be a man of the people this season, so per a reader’s request, here are the results of a mock draft I participated in recently. It was for a 12-team, head-to-head format league with the standard nine categories and 10 starting spots (PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, Util, Util).

I’ll list each round (with my picks in bold) followed by brief comments and will list my final team from this mock draft at the bottom. Here we go. Read More »

Nothing against LeBron and Josh Childress, but the unique selling point of last night’s Cavs/Olympiakos (Greece) game was Shaq vs. “Baby Shaq.” If you don’t remember, Baby Shaq is Sofoklis Schortsanitis, the big (6-9, 300-something) Tractor Traylor-looking dude who once upon a time gave Team USA problems but has since turned into the Blazers-era Shawn Kemp of the Euroleague, as his weight is a constant issue and sometimes gets in the way of his considerable skills … Big Shaq got the best of this one, putting up 12 points and five boards next to Baby Shaq’s four and five. Read More »

When the NBA season gets underway, nobody has a longer list of scheduled ass-bustings on his calendar than Mario Chalmers. And not in the sense of getting lit up — more like dishing it out. All summer long, it seemed every out-of-work PG either brought up Miami as a possible destination (or the media did it for them), as if Chalmers would be a small obstacle in their taking a starting job next to D-Wade in the Heat backcourt. If and when those guys get signed, and just to the public in general, Chalmers will get to show them why Pat Riley wasn’t interested. And now you can add Rafer Alston to that list. Read More »