Line of the Night/Waiver Wire Line of the Night : We mentioned on the podcast that Nate Robinson (42% owned) was in prime position to explode thanks to yet another Kirk Hinrich injury that is going to keep him out the week. And explode he did against the Pacers, playing over 40 minutes in the start and finishing with 19 points, 3 threes, 5 rebounds, 9 assists and 3 steals (2.28 WARP) for his best fantasy game of the season. At this point, Robinson (who has a two-week WARP of 0.97 – which is the 10th best in the league over that span) is a must add probably until Derrick Rose makes his return.

Honorable Mentions: LeBron James scored 31 points, shooting 13-14 from the field, with 8 rebounds and 8 assists (2.09 WARP) in a win over the Bobcats. With the way that Charlotte has been making opposing players look lately, I figured that LeBron would have broken Wilt’s single game scoring record in this game. He’ll have to settle for the not-quite triple-double.

Shawn Marion scored a season high 23 points on 10-14 from the field, adding 3 steals and 2 blocks (1.86 WARP) against the Thunder. While he’s not quite vintage Matrix anymore, Marion has shown more life this season than in the past few years and he’s up to #57 overall on your player rater over the last month of the season.

Paul George with 21 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, 2 blocks (1.86 WARP), David West with 29 points, 11-18 from the field, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 blocks (1.72 WARP) and George Hill with 22 points, 3 threes, 6 assists (1.44 WARP) all had top-10 fantasy games last night and combined to take down the Bulls 111-101. Is anyone really rushing for the return of Granger in this situation? Even Danny Granger isn’t sure about it.

With both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin out for the Clippers, Jamal Crawford picked up the slack with 28 points and 3 threes (1.53 WARP) in 33 minutes off the bench. Of course when Jamal Crawford is leading your team, you lose to the Wizards 98-90, which is what happened to L.A. last night as they got flashbacks of what life used to be like in the pre-Griffin days.

And it only took about a month worth of games, but Ricky Rubio is finally showing some signs of life – scoring a season high 15 points and dishing out a season high 14 assists (0.81 WARP) in Minnesota’s loss to the Blazers. Derrick Rose is a better player than Rubio, but Rose owners might want to take note of how long it took Rubio to really get back into the swing once he returned to the court. You could be looking at a very disappointing end of the season if you’ve been stashing him all year.

Pick Up Lines: Bradley Beal is dealing with an injured wrist. Jordan Crawford is now getting single digit minutes at the back of the Wizards’ bench. Trevor Ariza is also coming off the bench for the Wizards. All of that has opened up playing time for a couple of guys. Martell Webster (12% owned) – who we’ve mentioned before – scored 21 points, with 5 threes and 5 rebounds (2.07 WARP) in the Wizards’ win over the Clippers. While Webster has flown under the radar in many leagues up to this point, he’s been starting for the majority of the year and has been solid, if a little unspectacular, for that run. His upside isn’t a high as some other free agents, but he’s a solid plug and play option that is fairly reliable.

Also for the Wizards, the well-traveled Garrett Temple (1% owned) scored 15 points, adding 3 steals and 3 blocks (1.19 WARP) in his fourth straight start at shooting guard for the team. Temple hadn’t done much at all in his first three starts (scoring a combined 8 points in three game), so you’ll want to see him repeat this performance at least once before picking him up, even in deep leagues.

The Sixers and Magic stumbled to a pretty pathetic 78-61 final score, but Nick Young (32% owned) was solid for the Sixers, scoring 15 points and adding 6 rebounds, 4 steals and 2 blocks (1.53 WARP) in 36 minutes. It was Young’s fifth straight start thanks to a Jason Richardson injury, and now word is that Young could keep the starting job even when Richardson returns (as a way to try to keep Richardson healthy, of course) which means that Young could have decent value in most leagues for the rest of the season.

Dante Cunningham (4% owned) scored a season high 23 points on 11-17 shooting from the field, adding 3 steals (1.12 WARP) off the bench for the Wolves. Derrick Williams may still be the starter, but Cunningham is playing much better and is the only one of the two worth picking up right now.

Lance Stephenson had his fourth straight good fantasy game, scoring 15 points, adding 4 rebounds and 5 assists (0.96 WARP) in 34 minutes against the Bulls. The eventual return of Danny Granger is going to destroy any fantasy value he has, but until then he’s worth a look if you need some guard help.

Taj Gibson – with 10 points, 11 rebounds and 5 blocks in 44 minutes (0.89) is another guy that we mentioned in the podcast. He’s makes a great add if you need a big as long as Joakim Noah is out and he is starting at center.

Jazz shooting guard Alec Burks (1% owned) scored 14 points, with 4 assists and 2 steals (1.07 WARP) while playing a season high 31 minutes in an overtime win over the Kings. Yes, the game came against the Kings and went to overtime, so he’s unlikely to repeat this type of line again, but his minutes have seen an up tick since Gordon Hayward sprained his right shoulder and is at least worth a watch in very deep leagues based on his potential.

Biggest Loser: It’s great that Nicolas Batum is a tough guy and wants to play through his current wrist injury. But if these are the types of lines that we are going to be getting – 4 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists and 7 turnovers (-0.75 WARP) – in 35 minutes against the Wolves, then the dude needs to take a seat and sit the next few plays out. Over his last 4 games, Batum is shooting 38% from the floor and is averaging only 8 points a game.

Andrei Kirilenko left last night’s game with a right quad strain, scoring 2 points (1-4 from the field), with 0 rebounds and 0 assists (-0.64 WARP) in only 14 minutes. He’s day-to-day with the injury, and we’ll have to wait and see if any additional information comes out about how much time he’ll miss.

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Daily rankings and stats come from the FBC H2H Player Rater (beta version). They are based on the stat Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) an estimate of the number of wins a player produces per week in H2H leagues over a replacement (waiver wire) player.

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