During the 1st three games, I often see Lin bringing the ball up and pass to Harden and then camp out at the three? I mean he is no Novak.. What is this madness?
No I just see him being very passive, just standing there. He is a pg and should be involved in the play with the ball in hand. I understand he doesn't have to be the ballhandler with harden on board but this set doesn't seem to play to his strength as a playmaker..
ermm.... most playmakers follow the gamebook? if lin was assigned to do something else, he cant just immediately get his teammates to run certain play
Can someone with more basketball know how explain to me what kind of offense McHale is trying b to run. It seems to me that this type of set is the reason Lin has been less aggressive this year.
a lot of horn. it worked very well for the heat, mike brown ran that a lot last season for the lakers
People complaining about Lin being to passive need to give it a rest. This is something that Harden & Lin will need to figure out together. Even tony parker still struggles with this to this day trying to balance when to score & be aggressive & when to pass & defer. Expecting Lin to have figured it out after his 30th start is banana's.
It's because of where Harden starts his plays. IF he starts his approach at the high elbow, then you want bigger players to his immediate left or right to be available to set a pick. And because Lin is the alternate ball handler, you generally want him on the opposite side of the floor otherwise defenses load up on one side since Lin and Harden are the only 2 true offensive threats. So, looking at the court... 1 5 2 4 3 If Harden starts at the 2 spot, you want Lin at the 4 or 5 spot, and bigs at the 1 or 3 spot. However, if Harden starts at the 3 spot, there's nowhere for Lin to go but the 1 or 5 spot, with bigs at the 2 and 4 spot. So, when Harden starts at the high elbow (2 or 4), you'll see Lin on the opposite high elbow (4 or 2). This gives the bigs to his immediate left/right a short distance to set a pick. In the FIRST game, you'll notice that Lin would set up directly beside Harden... Harden would be in the 3, and Lin would set up at the 2 or 4. They did this because McHale had not introduced the PnR sets for the players yet. As a result, Lin and Harden were forced to set picks for eachother. This is non-ideal, as setting Picks is not only physically punishing, but is less effective if you do NOT have a big man rolling to the basket. They ONLY did that because none of the other bigs knew how to set a Pick reliably, or had enough experience with the PnR. In Chicago Asik was primarily a backup C, and was not used offensively much at all (the usual go to position for a PnR). In the 2nd game, you'll notice that Lin ran more PnR with Asik. We didn't see that nearly as often in tonight's game. This was more a function of Harden taking possession of the ball more often than Lin being unwilling to run the PnR. I suspect part of this was Harden attempting to run some sets that had been recently integrated -- somewhat imperfectly I might add as I saw numerous errors on the parts of picks.
Thank you all for the explanation. I guess I was confused because I was so used to seeing JLIN as the primary ball handler last year. Now with harden often as the pg, he needs to set his spacing differently...
