Jeremy Lin and Beverley, who fits better with the team and James Harden

Recent rotation of our starting PG has all based on fit, and people kept talking about Beverley, as a good PG too, simply fits better with James, therefore, we should start Beverley.

So, I spend some time and looking into last season's data, and trying to see how fit Beverley is with the team and with Harden, and how unfit Jeremy is. Here is what I found.

(All data came from NBA.com, and I just rearranged them into excel sheet for the sake of easy viewing, and some simple calculation with percent shot distribution etc, no weighting, or fancy calculation involved.)

Who fits better with the team:

Okay, first, I looked at the whole team performance with the split of Beverley on/off court and with Jeremy on/off court.



Obviously Jeremy has a bigger sample size compare to Beverley, so I used per 36 min numbers to balance the difference.

So when we compare the numbers of Jeremy on court vs. Beverley on court, we can see that the whole team had a little better FG% and 3FG% with Jeremy on court. And per 36 min, the team got slightly more points. When Beverley is on court, though 3pt shoot 3FG% is lower, a significant higher 3pt attempt is seen. Other noticable increase is Offensive rebound, which I would say is singlehandedly contributed by Beverley himself. Not surprisingly, a increase of personal foul is also seen when Beverley in on court. :grin: Also an impressive +/- number, though I'm not completely sure why. Could not get that from the offensive side, must be the infamous defensive contribution from Beverley then.

Now look at the shot distribution and FG% when Jeremy or Beverley on court.



They are comparable, when Jeremy on court, 10% more of the total shots were from the restricted area, though not shown here, that's the highest eFG% consider all the shots, thus it better that way than shots them behind the arc.

Okay, for the whole team, Jeremy on court works better, however, as Morey said multiple times, there is not much drop off when Beverley on court either.

Who fits better with James Harden

Look at how James performance when he is playing with Beverley and Lin. OMG!!!



If I'm a Lin hater, I will show this and stop here. Acturally that's a lot of sports writer did, and well received by most Rox fans here too.

However, let's look at it a little bit deeper, and let's breakdown on James stats.



I was totally shocked to see that James had a almost 10% drop in his FG% and a good 7% drop in 3-pt shots when he share the court with Beverley compare to when he was playing together with Jeremy. On the other hand, his FGA, 3FGA, FTA, and personal foul drawed were all significantly increased! Basically a good 30% increase in FGA and a good 75% increase in FTA when he is playing with Beverley vs. when he is sharing court with Jeremy.

What that means? It means James is working extremely hard when he is sharing court with Beverley with a much lower efficiency.



And if we break down the James Harden's shot distribution and shot percentage, and list that side by side with Beverley and Jeremy on court with James. It is even more striking.

Harden shot a good 10% drop of FG% in the restricted area when he is playing with Beverley, but still, that is the highest eFG% shot compare to 3pt shots. But, when James playing together with Beverley, he shot much less in the restrict area, but way more taken behind the arc, so basically he is taking more low percentage shots with lower percentage compare to when he is playing with Lin!

Then why James get more points when he is playing with Beverley than when he is playing with Lin? Because he is taking more shots! per 36, James has almost 20 FGA compare to when he is playing with Lin, which is only 15, of course he would get almost 6pts extra with 5 extra attempts. (6pts with 5 FGA, and I'm not counting increased FTA there yet, talking about efficiency.)

Okay, since I'm a Lin fan, I'm not going to stop just here, let's look even deeper.

Beverley "fit" more with Harden at the cost of the team.

So when we look at James' field goal percentage side by side with the team's percentage, and split by share court with Beverley or share court with Jeremy, this is what we get.



So when James is sharing court with Jeremy, his FG% in pretty much all the categories is similar if not better than the whole team, and rightfully he was taking totally 25% of the whole team's shot when he is playing with Jeremy. He has higher above the break 3 FG% than the team, and he took more percentage of the team's shot there too.

However, when James is playing together with Beverley, his FG% is significantly lower than the team, especially in the restricted area and in the paint, and yet, he is taking more shots, 31% of the whole team's shots there.

So, based on these numbers, can we still say Beverley fits Harden better than Jeremy? I'd say Beverley fits better with Harden's ego, since obviously, when playing with Beverley, Harden got way more ball in his hand, even he has lower efficiency, he got to shot more and gain much better stats. Whereas play with Jeremy, though Jeremy would set his up, and he would get points easier, but he would have overall lower numbers on the board, since the shots also goes to other teammates on the floor.

Those people who says James and Jeremy don't fit should know that last season, for both games James got more than 40pts, Jeremy have more than 20 there too. Both of them could played well together.

So did Jeremy play better without sharing the court with James? Yes, Jeremy's FG%, 3FG%, FGA were all dropped when sharing court with James, and thus pts/36 dropped around 4pts too. But to optimize Jeremy's capability, staggering Jeremy and James playing time could totally reach the goal.

Plus, even with 84% playing time overlap with James Harden, and with unhealthy start of last season, Jeremy still finished with solid number of 13+6 last season, with improved 3pt shooting and completely healthy, Lin could for sure keep that stat line if not improve it.

So, why are we talking about benching Lin and start Beverley here? Should we try to improve Lin's efficiency at cost of James and the teams' efficiency?