Day 1: Easing off the Chicago Bulls panic button

(A soaring Derrick Rose. Illustration courtesy of Roger Huang)

You don't have to be an NBA fan to know that the Miami Heat are a nearly-unstoppable juggernaut. They had the best record in the league last year, they have the best player in the league (or, maybe, ever), and they've won back-to-back championships. Oh, and their stars are all under 30 years old. Now if I fed that information to the most basketball-illiterate person in your neighborhood, even if that person was a bucktoothed hobo wearing a tinfoil hat, they could very quickly, and reasonably, come to the conclusion that the Heat should be the prohibitive favorites to win the title again this season.

AND YET...

Imagine my surprise to see a few prominent writers, most notably Marc Stein, J.A. Adande and Bill Simmons, propagate the idea that the Pacers or Bulls could have a better season than the Heat -- a team that won 66 games last year. This is what a psychologist might term a desperate cry for help. It's ludicrous. Could the Pacers or Bulls pull off an upset, beating Miami in double-overtime of a Game 7? Maybe. (Am I contradicting myself? Only slightly.) We live in a world where Duke Nukem Forever is available for purchase, so I'm not going to be an absolutist and suggest that these teams are categorically incapable of beating Miami. It could happen... but... come on.

Only someone in complete denial could look at the Miami Heat and come away thinking, "I think this other team, Team X, is the team to beat." Yeah, you may think the Bulls are built to beat the Heat in the postseason, the same way you may think Transformers 4 will be an artistic tour de force of subtlety and symbolism. But you still have to acknowledge the clear-as-day facts in front of you that point to the contrary, and if you were looking at these teams objectively, there'd really be no reason to elevate Chicago or Indiana above Miami. Again, yeah they could beat the Heat. But by no means have they earned so much collateral that they deserve to be favored OVER the team that just beat them, who happens to be the defending champion and who happens to have the best player in the NBA.

Now, had I written that like a day ago, I'd probably look a lot smarter than I do now, since the Heat absolutely smashed the Bulls on opening night, which makes second-guessing any Heat-hating or Bulls-loving kind of easy. (You'll just have to trust me that I felt this way a day ago!) Of course, the irony is that even though this game seems to support my thinking that Miami is the clear-cut favorite in the East, I honestly take no stock in the outcome whatsoever, and neither should anyone else. The NBA season is a long, long trudge through the sand with barely enough water to go around. What happens in one measly game is more or less irrelevant in an 82-game season, especially when that one game is the first game of the year, and even more especially when one of the teams' superstars is playing his first game in 18 months and has some rust to shake off.

When we skip ahead six months, the Bulls and Heat will be completely different teams. Derrick Rose will be in better shape. A new injury will be plaguing someone. There'll be new components, new players via a trade or free-agency. Hell, maybe Greg Oden will actually be healthy enough to get in the game by then. Basically, what I'm saying is that when it gets to April, and these two teams again play each other, we're going to look back at yesterday's game as inadmissible evidence as to how good these teams really are.

And of course, there's the distinct possibility that six months from now, even when Rose is at his peak, the Heat could just as easily dispatch with the Bulls as they did on Tuesday. Or Chicago could turn the tables and kick them in their teeth. The point is: we don't know. After all, last year's Knicks beat Miami by a combined 40 points in their first two meetings, and that Knicks team flamed out in the postseason before they even had the chance to play Miami. So these results are to be taken with a grain of salt. Obviously, you gotta feel pretty good if you're a Miami Heat fan, and you're certainly not thrilled at the outcome if you're a Bulls fan. But hey: the NBA season goes on for-frickin-ever, so they have lots and lots of time to recoup from this loss.

Okay, so now comes the point in the article where I awkwardly transition from something that has very little to do with fantasy basketball, to fantasy basketball. Weird, but you know what? That's what The Dailies are all about, and this is only Day 1. I can't afford to dilly-dally without trivial issues, like that the top and bottom halves of the article have little to do with each other. If I spent my time worrying about such sillyness, I'd never be able to get through all 170-ish days of the NBA season.

Anyway, without further ado, here's some random fantasy notes from last night:

• Andrew Nicholson scored 18 points off the bench in the first half, only to barely play at all in the second half and finish with those same 18 points. Magic coach Jacque Vaughn elected to start Jason Maxiell at power forward, and Maxiell played 26 minutes, which is astounding considering he's old and not very good -- which are two rather undesirable attributes for a professional basketball player. It's a mystery why he's even starting, let alone why he's playing half the game in front of a talented big like Nicholson. The takeaway is that unless Vaughn is being blackmailed by Maxiell or is certifiably insane, Nicholson is bound to usurp Maxiell on the depth chart. However, Glen Davis gets the starting power forward role whenever the hell he gets healthy, so there's likely a ceiling to how much Nicholson can produce. If you're in a deep league, he's worth a speculative add. Otherwise, there's not enough of a sample size for me to be giddy about him.
• Victor Oladipo had a decent first game, coming away with 12 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists. I'm curious to see how he'll do against a weaker defense.
• Roy Hibbert went bonkers against Orlando, collecting 8 points, 16 rebounds and 7 blocks. Your humble writer here has never been the biggest Hibbert fan, just because he's kind of inconsistent and he doesn't hit even half of his shots, which is quite the oddity for a 7-footer. But this effort is worth paying attention to, considering he was tremendous in the playoffs last year and since he put up these numbers in only 27 minutes. Granted, Orlando is a pretty horrible team and this is just one game, but hey, it's looking pretty good to be a Hibbert owner right now.
• Derrick Rose came away with 12 points and 4 assists on 4-15 shooting. He looked fine physically, and there's no reason to second-guess owning him, but it looks like he might need a few weeks to get back to his pre-injury peak of a few years ago.
• LeBron James finished with 17 points, 8 assists and 6 rebounds, which is considered a subpar night for him, as weird as that may be. By the way, if you want an indicator as to how cohesive the Miami Heat are, the nine players for Miami who got in the game against Chicago all scored between 6 and 17 points, with seven of the nine getting at least 11. That's balance, yo.
• Pau Gasol had 15 points, 13 rebounds and 4 assists. He's primed to have a monster fantasy season with Kobe's injury status still up in the air.
• Nick Young scored 13 on 3-10 shooting in 21 minutes. Young, the man who never met a shot he didn't like, is starting for L.A. in Kobe's absence and is likely to be a consistent scorer in the Mamba's wake. God knows Young won't do a hell of a lot besides score and hit a three now and then, and his unwillingness to pass the ball is legendary, but hey, he's not a bad waiver wire add at all.
• Xavier Henry was fantastic in his Lakers debut, collecting 22 points, 6 rebounds and 3 three's in 26 minutes off the bench. Truthfully, there was a lot of garbage time in this game (the Lakers bench scored 76 points!), and the moment Kobe returns from an injury is the moment he probably goes back to being forgettable. However... right now, there are a ton of holes in the Lakers lineup; case in point: Shawne Williams is starting at small forward, and Steve Blake is starting at shooting guard. Henry is a much-needed breath of youth for the Lakers, and he certainly has a higher upside than Blake and Williams. I need to see more games from him before I jump on the bandwagon, but the dude is certainly on my watch list.
• Jordan Farmar, after a one-year absence over in Europe, had 16 points, 6 assists, 4 rebounds, a steal and 2 three's off the bench for the Lakers. There are too many guards in L.A. for Farmar to be seriously considered, unless of course he gets the starting point guard role via a Steve Nash injury. Nonetheless, there just aren't a lot of Jews in the NBA, and as one, my heart grows a little any time I see a member of the club do well -- especially when he's been out of the league for a season.
• The same way I stressed patience when gauging how good Miami and Chicago really are, I gotta stress the same thing when it comes to fantasy basketball. I know how easy it is to make sweeping generalizations about everyone who played last night. Just remember: it was only one game. Be patient, young grasshopper. It's a marathon, not a race. Don't be that guy who gives up on a player in the first couple weeks of the year just to chase after an unproven guy like Xavier Henry, who you might just cut five days later anyway. Slow starts are sometimes hard to ignore, but more often than not, it pays to look at the season and a player's stat ceiling in totality.