John Hansen started playing fantasy football in 1987, when he heard about it through a friend an hour before the draft.The league was run by the owner of a local bar in southern New Jersey, and participants had to drop off their rosters on Friday nights, which often turned into an excuse to hang around for a few beers. The bar owner tallied up results on Mondays off the box scores in the newspaper.DirecTV didnt exist yet. Nor did satellite radio. The Internet still sounded like science fiction to most sports fans.Today, fantasy football is Hansens job. He interviews the players he once only wrote about. Over the airwaves and online, the audience multiplies, fantasy owners eager for advice on who to start and sit.I totally knew this was coming, Hansen said, and Im still blown away.Hansen now hosts a Sunday NFL show on DirecTV and a daily window on a SiriusXM channel devoted solely to fantasy sports. His FantasyGuru.com has evolved from a weekly fax and snail-mail newsletter to apps and custom software.Hansen was always the sort who liked to be the first one to notice a promising rookie before he blossomed into a star. His teams in those early leagues scored lots of points, though he didnt win at first thanks to some bad luck that seasoned fantasy players can relate to.When his first child was born on a Monday in September 1992, his wife wasnt pleased that Hansen was poring over a USA Today, trying to figure out whether his team posted a victory.A former rock disc jockey, he got his start as the Fantasy Guru on a local cable show in New Jersey in the early 1990s. Hansen was working in Atlantic City for a trade magazine called Casino Player and writing about Internet gambling, which had him thinking about the business of fantasy sports early on.So in 1995, he launched the newsletter, seeking a little extra income to support his young family. Hed write up his predictions on Sunday nights, then drop the pages off at a friends print shop the next morning on the way into work. On Monday night, the newsletters were dropped at the post office to be mailed Tuesday. His wife handled the faxing.There were never more than 750 subscribers, paying $29.95 each. But the surge in home Internet connections would rapidly change the ease with which people played fantasy sports and the opportunities for Hansen to analyze them.He started writing for ESPNs website in 1996, and by 2000 he was able to quit his day job and cover fantasy sports fulltime.In 2004, he began hosting a show for satellite radio. Steve Cohen, SiriusXMs senior vice-president of sports programming, recalled how the phone calls poured in — far more than any other program on the NFL channel and often thousands per hour. So in 2010, SiriusXM launched its fantasy-only channel.This season, Hansen added the DirecTV gig when it created the 7-hour Fantasy Zone.He got a good chuckle when he recently dug up an old hard-copy newsletter in which his entire analysis of Atlanta Falcons running back Jamal Anderson was: Hell be fine. (Indeed, Anderson was that week, rushing for more than 100 yards and a touchdown.)Now you have to back up arguments, Hansen said. That wasnt exactly the case back then.These days, hes writing about how many times a receiver was targeted the previous week, or the number of snaps a tight end played. He frequently travels, visiting the combine and the draft to build contacts who might later provide inside information to improve his predictions.As teams use more running backs by committee and spread the ball to more skill players, the prognostications have become exponentially more complicated. And while Hansen once wrote everything on Sunday night, nearly a week before the games kicked off, in 2014 hes still tinkering with his picks at 12:57 p.m. for the 1 p.m. matchups.It all sounds so serious, but Cohen believes the former disc jockeys success owes to his ability to keep it a game.You have to be able to entertain, Cohen said. Youve got to have fun with it.___AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com/AP_NFLDiscount Dallas Cowboys Jerseys . The 20-year-old Inoue landed a series of combinations and the bout was stopped 2 minutes, 54 seconds into the sixth round. Inoue, the first Japanese boxer to claim a world title in just his sixth professional fight, improved to 6-0 with five knockouts. 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The trade deadline is Monday, Mar. 2 at 3pm et/Noon pt. TRADES COMPLETED SINCE OCT. 1, 2014: Feb. 15, 2015 Toronto Maple Leafs acquire: F Olli Jokinen, F Brendan Leipsic, 1st Round Pick (2015) Nashville Predators acquire: D Cody Franson, F Mike Santorelli Feb.HOUSTON -- LeBron James was wiped out -- and it showed. Dwight Howard had 22 points and 16 rebounds, James Harden added 21 points and the Houston Rockets held James in check Tuesday night during a 106-103 win over the Miami Heat. James had a chance to tie the game with a desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer, but it was off -- just like most of his second-half shots. The four-time MVP finished with 22 points, one night after setting a club record with a career-high 61 against Charlotte. He acknowledged before Tuesdays game that he was "extremely tired" and that he spent most of the day sleeping. James had 19 points by halftime, but appeared to drag at times in the second half and spent the first half of the fourth quarter on the bench. He was 1 for 7 after the break. "I fought through it in the first half. Second half it just wasnt there for me," James said. "Got out of rhythm." Still, the Heat cut their deficit to three when Michael Beasley hit a 3-pointer with 21.2 seconds left. Harden threw the ball away after that, and Howard accidentally hit James in the face when they both went up to try to grab a long pass. James lay on the court holding his broken nose for a few seconds before getting up and slowly walking to the bench. He has been wearing a protective mask to protect his nose. James remained in the game after a timeout, then missed the desperation 3 with Howard in his face. "I knew I had to put up a heave over top of him," James said. "I felt like I got a good look -- just a little long." The Rockets used the word composed repeatedly after the game to describe their play. "Theres no need for us to get worried," Howard said of the teams mindset after Beasleys 3. "Situations like that, the best thing we can do is stay composed. If we point our finger or put our heads down, it gives the other team confidence. Thats something weve been trying to work on all year." Dwyane Wade had 24 points for the Heat after sitting out Monday night. Beasley also scored 24, a season high. Miami never led, but tied it twice in the fourth quarter. Houston used an 11-2 spurt to take a 104-95 lead with less than 3 minutes remaining. "We were able to push back in the fourth quarter and tie the game up,"; Wade said.dddddddddddd "But we had to exhaust so much energy trying to come back." Houston led by 13 early in the fourth before two separate runs by the Heat tied it at 91 with 7 minutes remaining. The also tied it at 93 before Houston used its late run to close it out. "We did some good stuff," Rockets coach Kevin McHale said. "We made some plays. ... I thought during stretches in this game we played really well." The Heat had made consecutive 3-pointers to cut the lead to seven early in the fourth quarter when Chris Andersen blocked a shot by Donatas Motiejunas. Andersen stood under the basket after the block and taunted Motiejunas, drawing a technical foul. Miami then used an 8-0 run, which included a 3 by Beasley, to cut it to 88-87 with 8 1/2 minutes left. Houston opened the second half with a 9-2 run capped by Chandler Parsons dunk over James. Shane Battier had a basket for Miami after that, but Houston reeled off six straight points to extend the lead to 68-56. An airball on a 3-point attempt by Wade was one of three missed shots by the Heat in that span. The Rockets were up by nine soon after that when Harden launched a long alley-oop to Howard, who barely grabbed it in time to sail over Chris Bosh for the dunk. Howard picked up a foul with about 5 minutes left in the first half when he ran into James as he was driving to the basket, causing him to lose control of the ball, which bounced off James mask. A reverse layup by James and a free throw by Wade in the last 20 seconds of the first half cut Houstons lead to 53-52 at halftime. The Rockets jumped out to a 7-0 lead and were up 39-32 at the end of the first quarter. NOTES: Hall of Fame centre Hakeem Olajuwon, and Houston Texans stars Andre Johnson and Arian Foster attended the game, as did Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson and former Astros pitcher and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens. ... James said the best compliments he received following his big game against Charlotte came from the two most important women in his life. "My mom and my wife saying how proud they were of me and that I never cease to amaze them," he said. "So its always great when your family gives you that type of gratitude and response." 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