The former Harvard standout scored 25 points against the Nets on Saturday night, then followed up his breakout performance with a 28-point game in his first career start.

Lin has massive appeal because he is the first Asian-American basketball player to ever make it to the NBA.

His ethnicity is not the only reason he has received so much attention, and Lin has showed in the last two games that he is a force to be reckoned with.

Here are five reasons why Lin will be in the Knicks‘ starting lineup for years to come.

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Felton has started the year off fairly slowly but we saw last year in New York with the Knicks that he can play really well in an up-tempo offense like the offense coach Nate McMillan is trying to run with the Blazers.

At the beginning of the season, the Blazers were not expected to make much in the Western Conference.

This was due to Brandon Roy retiring, Greg Oden having another setback with his knee and LaMarcus Aldridge announcing he would need a procedure done on his heart.

But Felton and the rest of the Blazers have surprised a lot of people.

Last year, Felton was considered a “snub” from the All-Star game, so this is a redemption year of sorts for the underrated point guard.

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Though he’s averaging 8.6 points a game, Fredette looks unnatural playing point guard in the NBA. According to 82games.com, Fredette turns the ball over 3.5 times per 48 minutes. To make matters worse, as Grantland writer Sebastian Pruiti pointed out last week, Fredette has been terrible in pick-and-roll situations.

Fredette’s defense has also been a problem. He wasn’t a good defender in college, but his offensive game was so fabulous that it didn’t matter how good of a defender he was. In the NBA, there’s no place to hide his defensive inefficiency.

Because of Fredette’s size (6’2″, 195 lbs.), he’s too small to guard most shooting guards in the NBA. This is why the Kings have been playing him at point guard. The problem is Fredette has found it difficult to stay in front of the fast point guards of the NBA.

Fredette is one of the best shooters in college basketball history. In the NBA, however, Fredette’s been below average, shooting just 36 percent from the field. 

Though he’s struggled so far in his NBA career, Fredette has proved that there’s a spot for him in the NBA. One just has to wonder if that spot is on the end of the bench of a sub-.500 team or as a valuable role player on a championship contender.

Here are reasons to believe that Fredette will eventually become a solid NBA player:  

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That gets us thinking about this year’s Slam Dunk Contest and why both guys should be in it, especially James.

It also has James thinking about it as well as he hasn’t closed the door on the possibility entirely.

Of course we’ve heard this from LeBron before. In 2009, James vowed to compete in the 2010 contest, then quietly backed out.

This is likely a bad year for the dunk contest with the compressed season. It takes a lot of planning and preparation to compete these days and it’s doubtful James will get much time to do so.

But he should do it anyway, and here’s a few reasons why.

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The annual brawl on Tobacco Road between the University of North Carolina and Duke University is set to being on February 8, in Chapel Hill.

Both teams have similar records, Duke at 18-3 and UNC, having played one more game, at 19-3. They both have suffered a devastating lost to a similar opponent, Florida State. UNC got blow out by 30 and Duke lost on a last second three point shot.

Both teams have loads of talent that are NBA ready. UNC is returning three stars in Harrison Barnes, Tyler Zeller and John Henson. On the flip side, Duke is powered by the freshmen Austin River, the tall brothers down low, Mason and Miles Plumlee, and the three-point shooter Andre Dawkins.

It seems this year Duke has just a slightly better team and here are a few reasons why.

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Reason 1: Overall Betting Trends

Kentucky’s 69-44 demolition of Tennessee on Tuesday night as a 15.5-point home favorite raised its record to 22-1 straight-up on the year, but it was the just the third time in 14 games this season that the Wildcats covered a spread at home. Overall, they are 7-14-1 against the spread  and 3-10-1 ATS at home.

These trends have reversed themselves as of late with a 4-1 record ATS in their past five games, but the overall body of work still makes Kentucky less than attractive in a bettor’s eye. The Wildcats do remain a solid play on the total line with seven of their last 10 and 14 of 21 games overall staying ‘under’ the total.

Reason 2: Top-Ranked Teams ATS Records

Kentucky is not alone in its dismal performance ATS. The overall record ATS for some of the other top teams in the nation is also less than stellar. The No. 7 Duke Blue Devils are 18-3 SU, but just 8-13 ATS. No. 6 Baylor is 19-2 SU, but just 7-7 ATS and No. 8 Kansas is 17-4 SU, but just 10-10 ATS.

There are some exceptions to the rule such as No. 2 Syracuse at 14-8 ATS and No. 3 Ohio State at 11-6 ATS, but top-ranked teams get every other team’s best shot just about every time they step out onto the court and Kentucky is hardly the exception.

Reason 3: Playing in the SEC

While you would not compare the degree of difficulty of playing basketball in the SEC to that of football, competition still remains fierce. Kentucky is currently 8-0 SU in conference play, but 4-4 ATS. The Wildcats just split with the Volunteers ATS and covered against LSU, Georgia, and Arkansas, but they failed to cover against Alabama, Auburn and South Carolina, which are a combined 6-14 SU in conference play.

Looking at Kentucky’s remaining schedule, after a road game against the Gamecocks this Saturday, it still has two games against No. 11 Florida and Vanderbilt sandwiched around a date with Mississippi and No. 19 Mississippi State. All four of these schools are fighting for an invitation to the Big Dance in March and an upset over the Wildcats might just punch their ticket.

Reason 4: High Expectations

The oddsmakers have made life miserable for the Wildcats backers in terms of being saddled with double-digit spreads in 18 of their 22 games with a posted line. The spread was 15 or more points in 14 of those games and 20 or more points in nine games.

They have tempered things as of late as Kentucky plows through the meat of its conference schedule, but the expectation level of the betting public still remains incredibly high for this team, which, in turn, has a way of driving up the spreads.

Reason 5: Kentucky is Too Good

Another reason for the inflated spreads is the simple fact that Kentucky might just be too good. The Wildcats are averaging 77.8 points a game and shooting 48.5 percent from the field, while holding their opponents to an average of 57.9 points a game.

Anthony Davis and Doron Lamb have led the way with a combined 26.8 points and 13.5 rebounds a game, but Kentucky has four other players scoring in double figures. This team is young but deep with seven players averaging at least 13 minutes a game.

Maintaining this level of play game after game is not easy to do at the collegiate level, which, in turn, leads to closer games than expected. The Wildcats are built to go a long way this season and will probably win the remainder of their regular season games SU, just do not bet on them to cover ATS.

Doc Moseman is the owner of Doc’s Sports, and you can follow up with all his college basketball insight here.

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MSNBC did a poll back in 2005 about the most loathed team in basketball and the Blue Devils came out on top with 53 percent. Think about that for a second. There are 342 schools playing Division I roundball, and for a single school to garner more than half the votes is downright astonishing. Fidel Castro used to win Cuban “elections” by smaller margins. 

But it makes sense. Duke is like the Darth Vader, or more accurately, the Citigroup, of the NCAA. Unless you went to or are affiliated with Duke, you don’t like Duke. It’s as simple as that. 

There are so many reasons to despise the Blue Devils, you could fill a book. And we* have done just that. Duke Sucks: A Completely Even-Handed, Unbiased Investigation Into the Most Evil Team on Planet Earth is available now, and it builds a pretty damning case against those guys in Durham, if we do say so ourselves.

The bottom line is that people hate Duke because Duke deserves to be hated; from the flopping, to the obnoxious fans, to the players underperforming in the NBA. It’s all in there, along with other fascinating stuff, like stats proving Duke big men (the most worthless thing this side of a male nipple) actually get worse playing for the school, and a hard-hitting investigation into whether Coach K dyes his hair. 

But the really wonderful thing about being a Duke hater is, it’s the hobby that keeps on giving. Most schools could only manage to do something truly awful once every other season, tops. We’re talking something that makes you cover your face with your hands and mutter, “God, these a-holes,” under your breath. Duke does something every week. Every. Single. Week. 

I mean, have you seen this video? 

We’ll let its terribleness speak for itself, except to say that it was commissioned and paid for by the university. Duke: the only school that has to produce its own fan-made videos. Someone put that on a bumper sticker. 

The point is, even without reaching into the past and bringing up Wojo or “The Stomp” or Coach K’s penchant for threatening to jump to the pros when he wants a raise, or all that other really awful stuff, there are still reasons to hate Duke right this second. Many, many reasons. In the interest of brevity, here are six.

*Tucker co-authored the book with Andy Bagwell. Tucker is a staff features writer at the New York Post. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Bagwell is a former member of Selected Hilarity, one of the top college comedy acts in the nation. He lives in Cary, North Carolina. The two host the “Tar Heel Bred, Tar Heel Dead” podcast, an obsessive, occasionally humorous look at UNC basketball.

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Multiple sources have indicated that the Lakers are leaning toward signing amnestied guard Gilbert Arenas.

But Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times contradicts those reports by saying that the Lakers haven’t invited Arenas for a workout and are leaning against signing the guard.

For their own sake, the Lakers should be avoiding Arenas like the plague.

Here’s five reasons why.

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After starting the season ranked No. 1 in the nation and favored to bring home the national title, UNC fell to upstart UNLV early in the year and has already accumulated three losses—including the stunning 33-point shellacking they took from Florida State two weeks ago.

For all its problems, though, Roy Williams’ team is still ranked No. 8 in the country as the schedule heads into its final month. Even more important, yesterday’s victory over Georgia Tech leaves the Tar Heels tied for first place in the ACC with 10 games yet to play.

Herein, a look at eight reasons why North Carolina will be able to use those 10 games to take over sole possession of the conference lead and win its fifth regular-season ACC crown in the last six years.

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First comes forward Antawn Jamison.  Jamison is enjoying a solid year, putting up averages of 15.3 points and 5.4 rebounds with a player efficiency rating of 16.46.

Nice, but not All-Star worthy.

Rookie Kyrie Irving is also putting together a strong Rookie of the Year campaign with 17.6 points, 3.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists a game.  Good enough numbers to make an All-Star team?  Maybe, but with the plethora of talented guards in the Eastern Conference, Irving won’t make it this year.

This leaves Anderson Varejao for the Cavs, the 29-year-old, seven-year NBA veteran who has never made the team before.  For the year he doesn’t even average double digits in scoring.  Those who haven’t watched his game recently would say he’s only a flopper, and nothing more.

I’m here to say Anderson Varejao deserves to be an NBA All-Star, and here are five reasons why.

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