But Lin is no longer an underdog. It's not like the Knicks cast them off to the Dleague or overseas. He's a starting point guard. The story now is if Knicks made a good decision or not. Right now, the way they are playing it wasn't a bad decision, really the Knicks' roster only need an average PG, which Lin could have fulfulled, but he cost too much for them. Perhaps if they start playing bad then peope will start to question their decision.
Agree with your assessment. Not sure Lin would want that much publicity again. It will be good for Les and the team to get the exposure though.
What I hate is how knee-jerk the sports media is. We fans live on an emotional roller coaster, but the "experts" should know better, but they will write any old crap (that they know very well is nonsense) to get eyeballs. After the first two games, it was all "most fascinating backcourt EVAR." Harden is GOAT, etc. Then of course Lin starts stinking up the joint, and Harden struggles at times too, but nobody really comments on that because he keeps his box score looking good. Then there are 5,000 posts and articles about how Lin is a scrub, not worth his contract, the Knicks made the right decision, blah blah blah. By the time they're all published, Lin's starting to play pretty well in the last few games. They all just sound ridiculous. Nobody knows what Lin will be in 2-3 years. And the ramifications of the Knicks letting an asset walk for nothing will not be felt immediately, and it has nothing to do with Felton vs. Lin.
The problem is most of the writers in the media aren't anything approaching "experts". They continually get things factually wrong when talking about basketball (and other sports). The problem is most journalists are *Generalists*. They cover multiple sports, and most of them have a specific sport they are knowledgeable about which more often than not is NOT basketball. For example, the number of times in the off season they misstated the actual CBA rules regarding the Asik and Lin offers was laughable. People on the Radio, ESPN, and on the websites would constantly talk about the cap impacts (wrongly), how it affected cap flexibility (wrongly), and the structure of the contracts (wrongly). Many also have a very poor understanding of the actual finer statistics of the game. They talk about PPG, but fail to talk about efficiency, conveniently ignoring FT points, or not distinguishing between normal shooting, 3 point shooting and at the rim dunking. The problem of course is that many of the "average" fans don't know any better. They go off what the writers write, which often are created to garner as many eyeballs as possible, whether factually misleading or not. On top of all that, even the "athlete" commentators are often not that knowledgeable. There are plenty of good players that aren't good all around players. Being a great scorer doesn't mean you know a lick about the finer points of defense. Just as being a good defender doesn't mean you understand how difficult some shots really are. And then there's the statistical ignorance of athletes and some coaches and scouts. It's not an accident that some players are vastly more efficient than others, or that it took years for 3 point shooting to become accepted as a statistically favorable strategy in the NBA. How many times over the years did we hear the "experts" spout about how taking 3 point shots were a bad offensive choice? And how many years did we watch Coaches play their players for long minutes while ignoring rest and minute management? Did coaches even talk about managing minutes and rest 15 years ago? Not really. And lets not talk about the old school and new school analysts. There are still plenty of journalists, "analysts", coaches and scouts that rely heavily on the "eye test". Those are generational issues that won't go away soon. The game evolves as we learn about it, but it is uneven. Unlike Moneyball has had far reaching consequences in Baseball front offices, truly meaningful statistical analysis is in is infancy when it comes to Basketball. Unfortunately, the bulk of the mainstream media is and most likely always will be far, far behind the curve when it comes to understanding the game, let alone writing about it.
The closest would be Synergy's Isolation defense per possession numbers. Jeremy Lin - Points per Possession Allowed Overall - 0.77 (76th in NBA) Isolation - 0.59 (5th in NBA) P&R Ball Handler - 0.70 (31st in NBA) Spot Up Shooters - 0.96 (93rd in NBA) Hope that helps.
So that means he is very good man to man defender when guarding dribblers, OK P&R defender and below average when covering shooters right?
There are 400 players in the NBA. This is among all positions. 200th would be average. 5th is elite. 31st is all star/very good. 93rd is good to very good.
So Lin is shooting 57% in his last 4 games. So now that he's got his shooting taken care of, what's next to criticize him on? 1. Can't finish when going to the rim. 2. He can't dribble the ball 3. He still can't go left 4. He doesn't have a teardrop shot 5. He's still timid out there in the court
Most of those shots are at the rim though. I would like to see more consistency from his jumpshot and I hope he can maintain this level of shooting at the rim.
For Starting point guards he's currently ranked 6th in overall defense. I put a list of general synergy defense rankings in one of these threads covering starting PG's. If you want to know specific to isolation, you're free to extract that data from Synergy, but the absolute worst he could be ranked is 5th given he's 5th in the entire NBA. Most likely he's top 3.
I think there are 400+ players in the NBA so 93 would be above average. I think that might be a Rocket's thing though, all of our perimetre players tend to get sucked in on double teams and this does leave the opposing wings a chance to take long 3s. Lin has been quite visibly burning over-helping in the paint on more than one occasion, yet he continues to gamble in that area. Considering how Sampson's had no problem chewing him out in the past, I think this must be something the coaches are okay with. So with respect to that, if he wasn't doubling as much he would probably have better stats covering shooters also, but for now, they are what they are.
