Trail Blazing

A closer look at the Human Amoebas, who seemed to have some holes heading into the season, but now is looking like a well balanced winning machine. Sure they're "only" 1-1 but their first loss was a very close one, and they've played the fewest games in the league so far. Let's take a look at the secrets to the Amoeba's early success.

PTS, REB, AST: The Amoebas currently rank 5th in PTS, 4th in REB, and 10th in AST. This isn't bad right? Most weeks they'll have better than a 60% chance to take PTS and/or REB. What seemed to be a scoring deficiency in the pre-season is now a strength, mainly behind the surprising Zach Randoph (27 ppg) and the even more surprising Quentin Richardson (18.5 ppg). This is being accomplished without the full services of Rip Hamilton and to an extent, Nowitzski -- neither of which have hit their peaks yet. And look out for Amare and Raja, two slow starting Suns who could heat up soon. They Amoebas can clean the glass too, with Randolph, Dirk, Kidd, Stoudemire, and once again, Q Richardson leading the way. Their passing numbers are a bit low, since outside of great AST men Jason Kidd (9 per) and Jarrett Jack (6.6 per) they rest of the team is composed of veritable black holes.

STL, BLK, 3PT: Speaking of Jarrett Jack, that man is a thief, to the tune of 2.6 STL per game. That picks up the slack for the rest of the team, especially for Ben Wallace and Jason Kidd, who have both been somewhat disappointing with their steals numbers. No matter, the Amoebas are still ranked 6th in STL. Surprisingly, they are only 9th in BLK. Big Ben, Dirk, and Amare should be enough to clean this category but all three are rejecting rates at a sub-par level. We look for that to change in the upcoming weeks. Another hypothetical strong point, outside shooting, is also lagging for the Amoebas in the early going. Distance shooters Raja Bell, Q, and Dirk should hit enough threes to elevate the team to more than 9th in 3PT; so far, Dirk hasn't been living up to his end of the bargain -- hitting only one per game. But again, he should pick up as the season progresses.

TO, FG%, FT%: Here's where the Amoebas will take a lot of their wins. They rank 2nd in TO and FG%, and first in FT%. That's three almost automatic category wins each week. Throw in their above average-ness in the other six areas and they should be able to win a whole lot of games; especially if Q and Zach can keep this up.

Bench: It's all young, old, and injured here. Andrea Bargani is clearly at least a year away. Michael Finley and Marko Jaric are okay, but doubtful to crack the lineup. Chris Duhon can add something to the mix, but he's wildly inconsistent. And young Marvin Williams is just looking to get off the injured list and onto the floor.

With a team of single minded (accurate) shooters and excellent specialists, the Amoebas are looking like a contender. It's hard to compete with their strength in the three "forgotten" categories; plus they have major upside in 3PT and BLK, not to mention the possible return to form by Amare to look forward too. All this and franchise player Dirk Nowitzski hasn't exploded yet. How far would a Zach-Dirk combo carry this team? I guess we'll find out sooner rather than later.