With Jeremy Lin coming off the bench in a 6th man role, he is likely to be the primary ball handler in a larger portion of his minutes. The narrative all last year was that he is a more effective player with the ball in his hands. It would be interesting to see if that is accurate or not as things play out this year. Usage rate measures the amount of plays the team is using you in. RAPM measures your effectiveness on the court. For Jeremy, theoretically, there should be a positive correlation between these two stats. Indeed, in the past two seasons: USG% 11-12 28.1% 12-13 20.8% RAPM 11-12 +2.2 12-13 +0.4 http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/l/linje01.html http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ Lin was limited in the first half of last season, still recovering from knee surgery. That should be taken into account for the decline in RAPM. But his changing role and decrease in usage likely had an impact as well. As the 6th man this year, I'd like to see his USG% tick up to around 25%, a happy medium between his role next to Harden, and the NY Linsanity. What will be really interesting to keep track of is how this affects his RAPM. __________ Side note: There is a real dearth of effective 6th men in the NBA today. Players who can impact the game off the bench. Guys like Crawford and JR Smith are one dimensional chuckers, as evident by their overall net neutral ratings. In recent years, you had Manu, Harden, and even Odom who were crucial to the successes of contenders and champions. Jeremy may not be as good as those guys, but if he could just give us a fraction of that, it would make the team that much more dangerous.
I thought it was not confirmed he's the 6th man. I truly hope if he's the 6th man, his usage rate can be increased from last year, but as a starter, I don't see why he can't get the same usage by staggering time on court with Harden.
With Harden on the team, Lin is a natural 6th man. His strength is driving (ie ball in hand offense) and 6th man will allow him to operate without Harden for a significant portion of his minutes. Really, this is a win-win. His minutes will not be affected by coming off the bench He will be the primary target for many of his minutes He will provide a legitimate playmaker behind Harden and allow the rockets scoring to be relatively constant through the game
People are worried that him being "demoted" to a reserve role indicates that his minutes and touches will also go down in a major way. One guy even said that Beverley would be dominating the ball when he and Lin are in the backcourt. This is paranoia, masquerading as analysis. Lin will probably play about 30 minutes a game, and his usage should be similar to last year, with an increase during those minutes when he's not playing with Harden (of which we can expect about 5 additional minutes per game or thereabouts). Improvements in shooting, defense, and turnovers will allow him to stay on the floor longer.
Also with Bev facing the first string PG, he will limit their effectiveness through his defence much more than Lin would. Plus Lin and Harden are both gamblers on defense, leading to inconsistent performances Bev needs to be in there with either of those two as much as possible to help our defense and the easiest way to do that is to start him and alternate him with Lin and Harden off the bench
Harden is not playing 43 minutes a game. Lin will likely have a whole quarter(12 minutes) of court time without Harden. That is over a third of his playing time if he averages 30 MPG, compared to last year when he played nearly every minute with Harden in the second half of the season. I would be pretty surprised if his usage rate this year ended up similar to last year.
every single preseason game, with Lin and Beverly together, I've seen Beverly handle the ball. This is all coaching. Beverly is an even worse spot-up shooter than Lin. Beverly reminds me of Tony Allen... I feel sorry for Lin, Beverly and Lin don't play well together either. Atleast with Harden and Lin, either Harden or Lin can effectively run point.
LOL it is spelled BEVERLEY and BEVERLEY is a good spot up shooter. Just as good as Lin, if not slightly better. Quit crying.
An interesting thought, Does Lin's gargantuan fanbase have any bearing on him starting or not? I'd like to say no, but knowing how valuable he is from a marketing perspective I have a suspicion it may play a role. Or am i being cynical?
ehh I dont know. Lin was pretty solid from downtown the last half of 2013. That said, we'll see if Bev is able to shut down many of the elite PG's otherwise there's no other reason for him to start. Lin being the "primary" ball handler kind of overblown I think. He's only the primary ball handler if Harden's off the floor. At 38 minutes a game, that'a s max of 7 minutes of him handling the ball and that's assuming he's always on the floor when Harden's not.
You just made 3 posts in a row in this thread that have nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Whether Jeremy should start or come off the bench is not the topic.
Yes, good point. In preseason, I was struck how easy he generates offense. He seemed to be able to get to the basket quite easy: good first step and good reading of the PnR. He still looks like a confidence/adrenaline player, though. The key is, can he perform with consistency day-in, day-out.
Beverly dribbles the ball up court then hands it off to lin. Same like Lin does with harden. Beverly benefits both harden and lin. Harden and Lin shares the same skill sets and the same defensive liabilities. Beverly complements both. Beverly's main job is to get ball across the court and pass to the playmaker. Of course he will also pick up the tougher guard assignment as well.
All Bev is an all-effort guy with solid 3 point shooting. And that's enough. I don't see his effort going away any time soon.
From what I saw in preseason, Beverly and Lin formed quite a tandem. They did very well together. They are a good "fit."
if Lin comes of the bench, he doesn't need the to be a good 3pt shooter, he just needs to be a good playmaker and be as aggressive as he can be.
"Probably play about 30 minutes"... define about I think Beverley starting makes a lot of sense if Asik starts; his on-ball defense is an important part of what could make that work. If we make it to the finals, Asik is going to be a big reason why, so it all makes sense. But while I think Harden should play fewer minutes to be able to hold up all season, I don't think that will happen. That means Lin has maybe 8 minutes as Harden's sub (the rest taken by Garcia), plus some time as Beverley's sub, plus smallball minutes. But if they need him for smallball to end the game, the minutes won't line up very well if he is also subbing for starters.. which means he'll be doing less subbing for starters, because the smallball minutes are more important. Net result, to my mind, is closer to 25 minutes with Beverley at 35.