"I just want you all to know that it's not me, people. It's the stats. And the stats this season have been positively manic depressive. It's numerical bedlam. The streams have been crossed and we haven't even met Sigourney Weaver yet.

Games are being played at a reckless, feckless tempo, one that we're not used to. Feel that? Another tenth of the season just dripped away. We're a month in and are already almost one-third of the way through our schedule.

I made the decision back in December to make my columns less interpretive than I would in a regularly scheduled season. Why? NBA stats are padded-wall crazy enough without anyone trying to force an extreme point of view upon them.

Take the case of Blake Griffin, the most electrifying player in the NBA. Watching him play has the neurological impact of drinking a 96-ounce Red Bull. He's the reason I bought a Kia.

But Griffin is, according to the Player Rater, currently the 123rd-best player in fantasy.

Why, in a nutshell? Because he's eighth in the NBA in free throw attempts (111) and 144th in free throw percentage (.514) and doesn't do enough in blocks to overcome this huge deficiency.

Here's another way of looking at it: If Griffin were merely an average (75 percent) free throw shooter, he'd jump 82 spots on the Player Rater. If he were averaging an extra block per game (not too much to ask considering his size and athleticism), he'd jump 58 spots. What if he did both of those things at the same time? According to this year's stats, he'd be a top-10 fantasy player, a "super-elite." "