NBA basketball player or homeless man?

Line of the Night: Greivis Vasquez? Do we give preferential treatment to players who hit running floaters off the backboard with 12 seconds left to seal the win? It might seem that way as Vasquez’s 25 points, 9 assists, 2 steals (2.49 WARP) appears to be a good – but not great – game. It definitely helped that Vasquez also had no turnovers in this game and also hit a couple threes while knocking down 7-7 from the line. It’s not one for the record books, but it’s a very efficient game from a player who is not exactly known for his efficiency on the court.

Honorable Mentions: The Justin Bieber of the NBA, Kyle Korver, scored 17 points, with 3 threes, 8 rebounds and 2 blocks (2.11 WARP) in the Hawks loss to the Suns. Al Horford also continued his reign of being the best fantasy center in the league with 20 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks (1.93 WARP). But those two great games were no match for the bombs thrown out by Jeff Teague (3-10 from the floor) and Josh Smith (2-11) in the loss. But more on Smith below.

It wasn’t a triple-double, but Kevin Durant scored 25 points, adding 14 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks (2.07 WARP) as OKC lost to the Nuggets on a last second shot by Ty Lawson. Russell Westbrook also scored a season high 38 points in the game (1.57 WARP). For his part, Lawson was only 4-13 from the floor before he hit that shot with 0.2 seconds left, but you’ve got to appreciate his testicular fortitude he showed by taking that shot.

Marcus Thornton appears to be back from basketball purgatory, as he ripped off his third straight 20+ point scoring game in a row, finishing with 25 points and 5 assists (1.75 WARP) against the Spurs. Too little, too late at this point for Thornton owners? Well, not if you were able to pick him up off the scrap heap later in the year.

Bradley Beal continues to put up sick stat lines for the Wizards. His latest includes a career high 29 points, with 11 rebounds and 4 threes (1.84 WARP) against the Knicks. Over the last two weeks, Beal is ranked #12 overall on our player rater.

Waiver Wire Line of the Night: Tobias Harris-sanity? We’ll have to come up with a better name than that. Harris (who is still only 27% owned in Yahoo leagues) did something I thought might have been impossible – followed up his improbably three game run since joining the Magic with an even better game – scoring a career high 27 points on 11-15 from the field, adding 3 threes and 10 rebounds (2.27 WARP) in 31 minutes on the court. At this pace, he’ll be better than Kevin Durant at the end of the season. And far be it from me to stop anyone from running out and grabbing Harris (in fact, I’m right there with you), but here is my one word of caution. Harris is shooting 70% from the floor over his last 4 games. Unless your name is Tyson Chandler, that is not sustainable. There is a 100% chance that Harris will regress sometime in the immediate future, the question by how much and will he still be worth owning when that happens. But I’d much rather find out the answer to that question with Harris on my team than without.

Pick Up Lines: Thabo Sefolosha (22% owned) has quietly been a top-50 fantasy player post-All Star break, averaging 2 threes. 1.4 steals and 1 block a game over his last five games. He did it again against the Nuggets, scoring 8 points and adding 12 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals and 3 blocks (1.84 WARP) in 37 minutes on the court. If you are punting the point in a category based league, then Thabo is worth a look.

Danilo Gallinari made his return to the court for the Nuggets, but that didn’t stop Wilson Chandler (42% owned) from going off again, as he scored 35 points and hit 6 threes (1.67 WARP) in 36 minutes off the bench. Chandler had the hot hand in this game and long-term a healthy Gallinari is going to cut into his minutes and limit his fantasy value, but for now Chandler is playing as well as he’s had all season.

Backup PG Patrick Beverley (0% owned) scored 13 points, adding 3 threes, 6 assists and 3 steals (1.62 WARP) in only 22 minutes off the bench for the Rockets. He’s been getting 15-20 minutes of run lately for Houston and is playing well in limited minutes, but Jeremy Lin would have to miss time for Beverley to have any real fantasy value (although that could happen since Lin has an ankle injury). He’s definitely worth a watch in deeper leagues.

Both Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap sat with injuries, so Enes Kanter (5% owned) got the start for the Jazz at center and absolutely dominated Bismack Biyombo and the Charlotte Bobcats, scoring 23 points on 10-12 from the field, with an incredible 22 rebounds (1.50 WARP). I know the Bobcats are the sorriest excuse for a basketball team this side of the Washington Generals, but wow. For comparison, Derrick Favors had a much more modest 8 and 7. Jefferson was seen in a walking boot prior to the game, so there is a chance he misses more than just this one game with the injury, and those in daily leagues may want to take a shot on Kanter for the short-term.

Biggest Loser: The worst fantasy game of the night belongs to Jarrett Jack, who scored 2 points (on 1-9 from the field), with 3 rebounds and 1 assist (-1.11 WARP) in only 19 minutes against the Celtics. The Celtics’ guards apparently came into the game with one goal, and that was to lock it down, as Stephen Curry finished only 6-22 from the floor himself.

Josh Smith had a 5 point on 2-11 shooting game in a loss to the Suns. Smith did contribute 10 rebounds and 5 assists, but also turned the ball over 5 times (-0.94 WARP).

How many times have we seen Marcin Gortat at the bottom of this list? I’m going to say just about every time he touches the court. Gortat’s 2 points (1-6 from the field), 2 rebounds and 0 assists (-0.87 WARP) is not even his worst game of the season. We might need to give him a new nickname based on his year so far: Gorsuck.

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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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