I'd still take Lowry over Lin right now, but if Lin keeps playing this consistently with so little talent around him... there might be a shift of opinion later.
He has a smarts-based game, making it easy for him to do well, but hard to make it to all-star level. He's more athletic than your typical high-iq point guards and also has good size. But right now he's benefitting from the fact that other teams don't know his game. The big test for him will be in the next couple of weeks, when teams start game planning around him or putting their defensive specialists on him. It's hard to imagine he could keep his numbers up if he were covered by someone like Tony Allen or Wade. I expect that he will continue to start and be a credible starting PG in the league. To cement his place he will need to develop a very strong 3pt shot and demonstrate that he can be an above-average defender.
I just checked his bb-reference stats, and his D numbers look reasonable, albeit with a small sample size. He's shown a good knack for steals in highlights, at least. Since he's a high-iq player, I think he will probably be ok in team defense, and he is big enough and fast enough to contest most shots in 1v1 situations. He's taken a very low number of 3pt shots for a PG though, and in his highlights it looks like he scores mostly off the dribble-drive or pick and roll. So teams will probably start laying off him. Fortunately, 3pt shooting is one of the easier skills to develop so it's likely he can get up to league-average 3pt shooting with practice in the offseason.
Lin torched the Jazz who suck on the road, The Wizards who suck overall and the Raptors who haven't played defense in a decade. The Wizards don't know what pick and roll defense is. Calderon sucks at defense. The guy will go back to being a bench guy in a month. Flash in the pan. That is all.
It's true his competition hasn't been good, but playing a bad team tends to lead to scoring spikes, rather than assists. It's his passing numbers that are more promising here than his scoring. What he's shown is that he can run the offense without turning the ball over, while also taking good shots. That may not seem like much, but Douglas, Fields, and Shumpert have all failed at it.
Regardless of the mixup , he's not lying about the outcome... Hot today, afterthought tomorrow...This is the life of a NBA journeyman..
He's solid in the pick and roll right now because he plays completely different to Shump, Fields and Douglas. He actually is a true point and is comfortable in the pick and roll against bad defenses. I would wait until he plays some good teams that have some time to prepare for him until I judge if he can actually start in the NBA.
Not happening. Lin is probably better than a healthy BD at this point (and who knows how long he can stay healthy). He's actually got game, Shumpert is not the answer, and he's a fan favorite. He's starting for a while.
Let's see at least a month of consistent production before we start crowning this kid a top 5 point guard in the league. There are tons of player that have had stretches like this that still ended up journeymen. TWill for one.
we need another 15-20 games before we can have some clue what will this guy do. For now he looks like a starter bound and maybe a shot at MIP if he continues. I doubt the Asian votes will push him into all stars voting, Yi didn't get in, even tho he's actually from China and 1.3 Billion people didn't push him in there. But then David Stern might just do some stuff behind the curtain and drag him to gain more attention...you never know. It's good for him to beat out BDiddy and start on such a big stage, but his career is relatively young, he'll run into problems with tougher defence; the opponent team will pay much more attention now that he's done it 3 times in a row, and maybe even the spotlight and pressure in MSG.
Exactly. It looks like the easy adjustment to him is to generally give him the screened jump shot or spot-up 3. I've followed some of his college career, and his college 3-shooting was ok but nothing special (career 33%). So he's got a hole in his game that other teams should be able to exploit. Mainly, he's a good fit for NY. He doesn't need to do much other than maintain a high A/TO ratio there.
