You can't measure defense by statistics alone because there is a difference between someone who play great D and keep his feet in front of the ball handler and someone who get beat and cause chaos and need help from teammates. Lin's defense against pick n roll cause chaos for his teammates to scramble. Beverley is better at one on one defense and pick n roll as well. Lin maybe better at one on one but horrible when it comes to pick n roll. He is way too slow to fight off pick n roll and his recovery rate is low. Granted anybody can be beat off the pick n roll but at least Beverley can still recover and close out and even can block some shots which Lin can ONLY dream of doing that. Of course if you start Beverley, you lose some offensive fire power.
They are both not the starting PG on a championship team. Unless that team has Lebron and Wade. A normal championship team or even a contender relaying on the PG position for actual playmaking, can't have either one of these dudes as a starter. Just sayin'
From NBA.com: http://stats.nba.com/glossary.html * * * Lars -- We have no way to know how Beverley would have done in the Clippers game against a Chris Paul that came into the game with like a 37.5 PER rating that led the league at the time. We can only speculate. However, given the Clippers' #1 league ORTG and given Paul's dominance at the time of the game, I would venture to say that Beverley's DRTG is likely going up in that game. As it did for the rest of the players on the team, I believe. But, the good thing with the game by game DRTG stats is we don't have to speculate. We can compare the performances of players who played in the same games. Right now we have two data points for full games played that had both Lin and Beverley in them. And in both cases, Lin's DRTG was better. Will that continue? I don't know, we will see. I do know that based upon xRAPM data, Lin has previously been a Plus Defender in the league (his year in New York). So, he's obviously capable of being in that category. As Durvusa ably pointed out in another thread, we don't really have a full read on Beverley's defensive status (Plus Defender, etc) based upon xRAPM because of the "penalty" placed upon rookies in calculating that data. Beverley was a Minus Defender in that metric last year (as was Lin), but may have been a Plus Defender were it not for the rookie downgrade that the calculation includes.
P&R defense In addition to what's commonly accepted in terms of energy levels and being a nuisance, Beverley's also a much better P&R defender. Lin really struggles in P&R defense, he struggles fighting through and sticking close. Pay attention to how often opposing PGs run the P&R when Lin is on them (like Nash Thursday, Kemba & Sessions when we played Charlotte, etc). They get wide open after every pick and it requires huge help from Howard/Asik. When Beverley's on opposing PGs, Howard/Asik can give much less help and stay on their man, because Beverley sticks to them like Tony Allen and doesn't leave them open after the pick.
I like Lin quite a bit. I think he has a terrific first step and I am glad he is on the team. His scoring is needed and I think he has had a couple really nice games. I think he is being unfairly scapegoated by the team and IS not responsible for our struggles so far. I hate his fans. By watching him. He doesn't have the quickness to recover over screens and he seems to not understand the predictive element of where the ball is going to end up and how to make it difficult for the ball handler. Does he stay in front of his man? Sure. Does he disrupt opposing offenses in the slightest like a Battier, Hayes or Beverley? No.
That is not what I saw in last night game. Nash consistently got open via pick with PB guarding him. To defend pnr, you either go under or fight through screen. I saw more experienced guards anticipate and position themselves better as well. But either way it takes whole team, especially the bigs, to stop it. If it is so easy to fight through screen, why so many teams run pnr like crazy? Last season, especially the 2nd half, Asik did a good job until our guards recovered. This season, both he and DH was not good. BTW, we run a lot of pnr between JH and Lin last season. It usually worked quite well for us and JH ended up with a smaller guy. Strangely I have not yet seen one this season. I guess that chemistry was disrupted with the new role Lin is supposed to play this season.
I see Lin fighting through the screens fine in those games. He played walker and Nash better than Beverly did.
Individual defense is somewhat overrated. I've noticed through the first six games that Lin for example can blow by any defender and whenever he chooses--except for Chris Paul (whom Lin really didn't test). Sometimes it doesn't matter who the defender is if the guard he's guarding is a superstar. Likewise...no one can guard Harden.
Does it really matter when the team continues to give away freebies point to the opponent in the first quarter? Defense is a team game, and whoever responsible, be it McHale or Sampson, better gets his head out of his ass soon and starts implementing actual team defense.
Jeremy Lin's defense does look better than last season. He really is having a great start to the season. I don't see what all the fuss is about.
Actually, if you are being objective, Lin is not only the better offensive player but he's been the better defender over Beverley so far. With both at their best I would take Beverley's D though. Speaking of objectivity, why are we talking about the D of the PG position when our superstar SG is a revolving door? What's the point of scoring 35 points when you give up just as many?
I think i remember that. If that was Lin the coaches would have yelled at him instead of discussing anything.
