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2/28 - There’s nothing like a Warriors-Timberwolves game to generate some offense. Yesterday’s 126-123 score didn’t disappoint in that regard. Kevin Love’s 46th straight double-double was no cheapie, with 37 points and 23 rebounds. Four Warriors scored 20 or more points.

In GuruGolf, a blind squirrel found a nut yesterday, as my Blue Light Specials team posted the top best ball score (-52) by a 3 stroke margin. The top worst ball score was a +48 by Knights, whose margin over the next best worst team was 8 strokes! Kevin Stadler’s +5 on one hole yesterday certainly helped that margin.

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2/25 - Some years, the NBA trade deadline passes with a lot of chatter but little action. Not so this year. And the dust probably hasn’t settled yet, as some players may yet be bought out – making them available to re-sign elsewhere. Stay tuned.

The Miami Heat attempted 79 FGs last night in Chicago, and their big-3 took 80% of those shots. LeBron and Wade each connected on 50% or better, but Chris Bosh managed a staggering 1-18. On a night when the Heat bench players managed to score only 2 points, they could have used a bit more from their third musketeer. Blogger Chris Joseph of Miami NewTimes aptly posted that Wade and LeBron “did their best Butch and Sundance versus the entire Bolivian Army imitation...”

Tonight’s NBA schedule will be busy once again, with all but 6 teams in action. It’s uncertain now many of the newly traded players will be available and active, which could have roster-setting implications – particularly for daily contests.

Tip of the hat to Gurupie RecycledSpinalFluid for finding today’s quote.

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2/24 - The NBA trade deadline is this afternoon, and there’s already been a lot of activity – enough that it almost feels like you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

At the beginning of the season, it’s common to overreact to a good game from a player and assume that it’s the new normal. So I don’t want to assume that the fantasy impact for Billups is a plus, Carmelo is neutral, and Amare is negative – but that’s how it looks after one game. Of course, as Scott Skiles remarked, they haven’t even practiced together yet. Then again, with the Knicks playing 8 times (and traveling 7 times) in the next two weeks, practice time is going to be hard to squeeze in.

The Mayakoba Golf Classic is underway. 200+ GuruGolf teams have been populated with only 68 different golfers this week, headed by J.J Henry, on roughly 45% of all foursomes. He seems like a surprising guy to be so widely owned, but he hasn’t missed a cut yet this year (in five events), he’s averaging better than 4 birdies per round, and he’s tentatively scheduled to play next week as well, so it does make sense.

If you are looking to play in one of the RotoGuru Invitational Baseball Challenge (RIBC) qualifying leagues this year, signups are now underway. You can check in here to see if you’ve pre-qualified for a AAA league. Then find the thread for the league you want to join and sign up.

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2/23 - Not only did the Nuggets get a 13-point win without Carmelo, but they didn’t even need any of the incoming Knicks players. And the game was not as close as the score suggests, as Memphis closed the gap by 13 points during 4th quarter garbage time. As expected, Ty Lawson had a very solid night with 21 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds, 6 steals, and 49.5 RSCP. Although the Nuggets have said they plan to keep Raymond Felton, with the trade deadline looming, I’d keep my bags packed if I were Felton.

The NBA schedule is full tonight, with only 6 teams sitting. It’s been reported that Carmelo and Billups will be active for the Knicks tonight, so they shouldn’t be short-handed.

The Mayakoba Golf Classic tees off early tomorrow morning in Cancun, Mexico. More than 100 GuruGolf teams still have multiple inactive golfers – so don’t forget to retool your foursome if you’re one of them. There have also been a dozen withdrawals from the field this week, so even if you did your moves already, it would be a good idea to recheck.

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2/22 - The “Melo-drama” is over, and the internet is now rife with opinions on how the Nuggets/Knicks trade will impact the teams and the related players. My reaction is that we’ll just have to wait and see. First of all, the NBA trade deadline is still looming, so some of the involved players might not have reached their final destination. But even if they have, it’s folly to assume too much certainty as to how players will react to new surroundings, new roles, and new teammates.

The Nuggets will have to play shorthanded tonight, though, as they host Memphis. The Denver PG battle may be contested (or even worse, shared) between Ty Lawson and Raymond Felton, but for tonight, only one of those two will be available in all likelihood. For daily contests, that’s probably a good opportunity to contemplate for tonight.

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2/21 - I didn’t watch much of the NBA weekend festivities. And when I did watch the dunk contest, I was happy to have it delayed on TiVo, because the fast-forward button got a heavy workout.

As is often the case, the Northern Trust Open provided a stiff challenge for many GuruGolf teams. Only 14 foursomes (out of 219 teams that started with four active golfers) had all four golfers make the cut, and only about 30% of the teams had at least 3 survive. More critically, almost 22% had only one or no golfers survive (and sometimes one survivor is worse than none.) Three teams shared the top bestball score of -43, while philflyboy cruised to the worstball honors by a four stroke margin.

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2/18 - All Star break. Time to chill for a few days.

I’m going to try to use this time to begin to do some planning for baseball. In particular, I need to begin planning and then organizing the RIBC leagues, since the baseball season starts in just under 6 weeks. Hard to believe when I look out the window and still see a foot of snow on the ground. Hopefully, by early next week I’ll be ready to post the particulars and start the recruiting.

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2/17 - Perhaps if the Cavaliers could play all of their games against teams from Los Angeles, they’d forget about losing LeBron. I know that the Lakers have been off their “A” game recently, but last night’s loss in Cleveland was a stunner.

There was a triple double in the NBA last night, albeit not in Cleveland. Andre Iguodala posted a Kidd-like stat line with 13 points, 10 assists, and 12 rebounds. Iggy was my second round draft pick in the RIHC this year, and he has been modestly disappointing, not even in the YTD top 50 in the ESPN player rater. But on a night when my first round pick, Chris Paul, put up a 8-5-2 triple single, I’m happy to get a solid contribution from #2.

GuruGolf is off and running again, this time for the Northern Trust Open. D.A. Points is the most widely owned golfer, but on less than 19% of rosters. Only ten different golfers appear on at least 10% of rosters, so this looks like a week when differentiation is as wide as it ever gets.

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2/16 - Often, it seems that one of Miami’s Big three gets the spotlight, while the other two defer somewhat – at least statistically. Last night, they all got their share of stats, with Lebron, Wade, and Bosh combining for 90 real points, 141 RSCP, and 131 FDP.

The Northern Trust Open tees off tomorrow morning in Southern California. This is the last GuruGolf tournament in the west (for awhile), as the PGA Tour heads to Mexico, Florida, and Puerto Rico for the next five weeks. If you’re planning ahead in GuruGolf, be aware that next week’s GuruGolf event is the stroke-play event in Mexico and not the WCG match-play event in Arizona – so the top 64 golfers in the Official World Golf Ranking won’t be GuruGolfing next week.

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2/15 - It looks like it was a tough night for fantasy hoops. Josh Smith played well. Pau Gasol was respectable. But many of the top producers were hard to find in advance – like Carlos Delfino, Courtney Lee, and Dante Cunningham.

The NBA schedule heats up for the next two days, with seven teams playing twice, and only one team not playing at all – San Antonio. Plan accordingly.

The RotoHog salary cap Basic game ends at the All Star break, but the Season 2 game (post ASB) has already been launched. Those prices are already included in the RotoGuru sortable stats as a separate game choice. It appears that prices are simply a snapshot of the actual Season 1 prices on February 1st, so players whose prices were depressed for any reason on that date (e.g., schedule, injury) might be at a bargain level. On the other hand, there has been no attempt to rescale the general price level to correspond to a $35,000 roster cap, so there will still be plenty of challenges in assembling a post-ASB roster. The Assimilator will have Season 2 prices starting on Friday.

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2/14 - The Cavs busted their losing streak on Friday night, toppling the Clippers by 7 in overtime. They then apparently deferred to the Wizards on Sunday, handing Washington its first road win, by 15 points in a game that lacked tension - Washington built up a 22 point lead at the half, and the margin never narrowed into single digits in the second half.

Congrats to team yobo for carding the top best ball score (-54) in GuruGolf for the AT&T Pebble Beach tournament. Worst ball honors went to Pool Sharks with a +52. Tournament winner D.A. Points not only had the best total score, but also the most under par holes (25), which included two eagles and several birdies on very difficult holes. As a consequence, his $230 price gain for the weekend was much better than anyone else’s. For a complete comparative chart of hole-by-hole results, check this out.

Football Pickoff prize notifications were emailed on Sunday. If your registered email address was out of date or relatively inactive, you might have to hunt for it. (One email has already bounced back as undeliverable.)

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2/10 - Only the Clippers now stand in the way of a streak-busting Sunday showdown between the Cavs and Wizards. Blake Griffin takes his talents to Cleveland on Friday night; if the Clips prevail, then the Wizards@Cavs game on Sunday will break either the Cavs’ 27-game losing streak, or the Wizards’ 25-game road losing streak.

Surprisingly, Griffin had a very pedestrian outing in Madison Square Garden last night. 21 points was not bad, but only 6 rebounds? There were about 80 missed shots in the game – seems like he should have corralled more than a half dozen.

The AT&T Pebble Beach tournament has teed off. This week’s favorite in GuruGolf is Gary Woodland, on roughly 23% of active foursomes. Because the first three rounds of this tournament are played on three different courses, GuruGolf scorecards will be consolidated by course, rather than by round.

I’ll be “out of office” tomorrow, so there will be no blurb on Friday. Enjoy the weekend.

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2/9 - Achieving the Twolves franchise record for double-doubles might seem like a modest accomplishment until you remember that Kevin Garnett played there for twelve years, including nine seasons when he averaged better than 20/10. Then again, Garnett never averaged more than 15 rebounds per game. This season, Love is averaging 21.4/15.6.

Chalk up another monster game from LeBron, with 41 points, 13 rebounds, 8 assists, and 3 steals. Over the last month, and also over the entire season, he’s got the top fantasy point average by a non-negligible margin. Oddly enough, he ranks only #3 in the ESPN player rater, which is based on 8-category averages using roto scoring. Durant ranks on top there, followed by Chris Paul. Durant gets the nod based primarily on his FT percentage, while Paul’s dominance is in steals.

Get your GuruGolf foursomes set for the ATT Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which tees off at 11am ET tomorrow, frost permitting. Since the overnight lows are forecast to be in the mid-40s, this one looks like it will tee off on schedule.

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2/8 - You could have piled up some big stats and fantasy points last night if you looked in the right places. It wasn’t necessarily the usual places, though. How about a lineup of Andre Miller, Kevin Martin, Carmelo Anthony, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Channing Frye? That 5-man starting lineup would have generated 256 FanDuel points, an average of 51 per player. Only two of those five players found their way onto my FanDuel $55K contest roster, but I still put up a total of 273 points, which is almost a 99th percentile output for that contest format. It was also a full 90 points better than what I had managed in my previous daily contest entry.

The Waste Management Phoenix Open finally wound up yesterday. Congrats to shankopotomus9 and SANFORDORS, who posted the top GuruGolf scores in best ball and worst ball, respectively. Although Mark Wilson was the tournament winner, the top GuruGolf price gainers were Tommy Gainey and Gary Woodland, by virtue of their solid performances and their relatively low (mid-$600) opening prices. Slightly over half of all GuruGolf teams managed a net value gain for the weekend.

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2/7 - The game pretty much lived up to the hype. The commercials – not so much.

Kudos to GS: A Family Co., who took care of business, picked the Packers, and claimed his second Football Pickoff title. The Midseason title went to PiMaster, based on the results from week #9 on. The best Playoff score belonged to Eat My Panda, in spite of picking Pittsburgh for the Super Bowl.

Meanwhile, in GuruGolf, the tournament is not quite done, with 28 golfers to complete their 4th round on Monday. Once the tournament ends, I’ll reprice the players and release the field for add/drops for the next tournament. One golfer who is done, however, is Jhonnatan Vegas, who missed the cut. Apparently, high buyer syndrome also works in GuruGolf.

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2/4 - So much for home court advantage in the NBA. Four title contenders met in two nationally televised games last night, and the road team won each game. Orlando lost by four to Miami, in a game where the final score was closer than most of the game. And the Spurs beat the Lakers on a buzzer-beater tip in. Surprisingly, the Lakers are only 19-8 at home this year. They now depart on a 7-game road trip, and 14 of their next 17 games are on the road. Given their difficulty in swallowing home cooking, maybe that doesn’t really matter.

LeBron was a total beast last night, with 51 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists, 68% FG, 82% FT. That’s 80 RSCP, 71 FDP. No one else was even within shouting distance of those numbers. In fact, the second highest fantasy point output was from Luc Mbah a Moute, with 15 points, 19 boards, 5 assists and 2 steals, obviously filling the Bogut hole. Arguably, Kobe Bryant was just one rebound short of a triple double, but shot only 5-18 from the field, with no hustle stats.

Don’t forget to log your pick in Football Pickoff. Green Bay is currently a 53/47 favorite. All picks for the Super Bowl will be frozen at 6:29pm ET Sunday, which is the scheduled kickoff time.

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2/3 - GuruGolf is underway… almost. A frost delay will push back tee times by at least three hours. Meanwhile, Jhonattan Vegas is the dominant GuruGolf favorite, appearing on 46% of all rosters. The next most widely owned golfer, Charles Howell III, appears on only 17%.

Chris Paul gave me a scare last night, being carried off the court with an ankle sprain in the first quarter. He’s on my RIHC team, and although I also have his backup (Jarrett Jack) on my bench, unless Jack turns into the second coming of Darren Collison, that’s not a good tradeoff. But Paul managed to return to play 32 minutes. Now he’s got a couple of games for the swelling to subside. We’ll see.

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2/2 - Time to recharge your inner GuruGolfer! The GuruGolf season starts tomorrow, and all foursomes will be frozen at the 9:50am (ET) tee time. Pick a foursome (or two, or three, or ten) and let’s get this show on the road.

Pau Gasol had a nice game last night, topping the 50 RSCP mark for the first time since early January. My initial thought was that this was due to the DNP by Andrew Bynum – and that probably helped – but on further review, the overtime period was the primary factor, as Gasol generated 9 RSCP overtime.

Somehow, LaMarcus Aldridge completely demolished high-buyer syndrome last night, with a rare double of being the top gainer and the top point producer in the RotoHog salary cap games. Aldridge has really been putting up some nice numbers this year, no doubt benefiting from a raft of injuries to Portland teammates.

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2/1 - The calendar has turned, but if I look out the window at RotoGuru World headquarters, all I see is more snow coming down. Looks like a replay of January. But as long as the power stays on and the snow blower keeps throwing it aside, what do I care? My daily commute is about 20 seconds, none of it outdoors.

Maybe Roy Hibbert will regain some relevance after the departure of Jim O’Brien. 41 RSCP last night in 30 minutes. Of course, it’s only one game, and it was against Toronto, losers of 12 straight.

There are only four games on the NBA docket tonight. For daily contests, that certainly limits the options. I may or may not decide to play tonight, as these limited action nights often produce a 2-on-2 or 3-on-3 matchup, with the majority of players showing up on both sides of the ledger. Then again, if you can get the right 2 or 3 differentiators, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

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2011: January