http://www.82games.com/1213/12HOU6.HTM (James Harden) Maybe Douglas should start over Harden since...
Im talking about after he came back from his illness. When he came back, dragic remained the starter since kevin martin was still out i believe. From what i saw, dragic was primary ball handler and lowry played more of a sg role next to him.
I would agree with Sen89 other than a few qualifiers - You'd want the 6th season Lowry's 3pt - Lowry has the vocal, but not the leadership - I think Lin is on par with Lowry in terms of creating offense for himself (because he doesn't need to be a spot-up 3pt shooter) and for his teammates - You'd want the pre-sixth season Lowry for non-ball-dominance. It was always Dragic or Brooks playing the 2 when playing with Lowry (before Lowry got injured). - You'd also want the pre-starter Lowry for defense, and I'm not sure you can say Lowry is great in terms of heady plays. Maybe better than Lin, not a big difference. Lin has more TOs though, for sure. - Overall toughness - Lowry's got it when things go his way. When things don't ... was he tough about taking a back-seat to Dragic (or Calderon), or being reined in by McHale? I could care less about outward toughness appearance. I don't want to sound like I'm bashing Lowry. Was one of my favorite players, and still a better player than Lin now. But he's got too many issues (ego, probably want more than $8M in another year, coach/teammate chemistry etc), and many here have selective memory of him. If Lowry wasn't going to take a back-seat to Dragic (after a long injury and the Rockets heavily in the play-off hunt with limited games to go, not wanting to ruin chemistry) and all but said 'coach or me', would he be happy playing under McHale again + playing without the ball in his hands? Do people realize we want the post 6th season Lowry's 3-pt shooting prowess and offense + his pre-6th season defense and passion/will-do-anything for the team attitude? Pity they didn't exist together.
Okay. Because skimming through it, I probably agree with you more than I disagree with you. But just to make it clear, the sequence was something like this(would be clearer with quote-in-quote feature for the board). LOF: PGs have crappy games against Lin. He's so awesome on defense! My response: *showing 82games stats* Opposing PGs have played pretty well when matching up against Lin. So the idea that Jeremy Lin always shut down opposing PGs is simply wrong. You(mike_lu): criticize me for putting Douglas' defensive shortcomings on Lin. My response: 82games does separate opponent scoring by player. Hence when I used the opposing PG stats on Lin, that was actually the stats on Lin, and not Douglas. I put those two player pages out there to differentiate the numbers. And then you somehow went off for whatever reason. I've already understood that making long, deep arguments regarding any sort of shortcomings for Lin results in LOFs ignoring most of the post and instead take little pieces out of context to interpret that as hating. So I've stopped trying to make grandeur points and stick to very simple ones. Guess that doesn't work either.
Thats your opinion. My opinion is when he defers to his teammates too much, he looks like a scrub. His best games and our best chance to win comes when he takes more shots and scores. As for stealing, thats completely irrelevant to the topic. I also never said or implied that Lin is a horrible player .
Lowry isn't perfect, and like many energy guys who enter the league as defensive standouts, his defense has slipped as his offensive game developed. But one thing I need to point out is that Lowry is one of the least ball-dominant PGs in the NBA. Dragic was far more last year, and Lin is (naturally) as well. Lowry knows to get rid of the ball or get the play running very early in the shot clock (if he's not attacking himself) - he's a very decisive player. He doesn't over-dribble nearly as much as most PGs of his caliber. And that alone makes him a fantastic fit with Harden. Lin and Dragic (when given freedom) like to test defenses once or twice after being stopped, leading to quite a few dead-end possessions. Granted the 2nd/3rd attacks are occasionally successful so it pays off at times. Dragic learned from Nash.
Harden ain't getting injured again. You won't see a ball dominate first option Lin in a long time. Probably ain't happening for 3 years.
That's what I'm saying. Lin, Dragic and most NBA PGs are ball-dominant in their most natural state. Lowry is not as much. The Rockets PG situation is one in which the PG can't be ball-dominant, with our best player being Harden. So if our PG can't produce at a high-level while not handling the ball much, there's a bit of a problem. Lin hasn't been successful thus far, but he may grow into the role in the future. All I'm saying is that it isn't a natural fit in such a role - whereas Lowry would be a more natural fit next to Harden.
Though I agree that Lin plays better when he is just looking to score, ala Spurs, 4th quarter against Dallas, etc, but I often wonder what would happen to players like Parsons, Asik, and Patterson. We all know that Lin and Harden are unselfish players, but they are both ball dominant guards who are scorers and have that scorers instinct, one of which is top 5 scorer and the other is trying to defer too much; so the problem becomes, yet again, what is the balance that Lin, the PG, must find to keep EVERYONE involved in the scoring. A lot of people question the balance of ball handling and scoring between Harden and Lin, but what about the rest of the team. Right now, Harden is averaging about 26 PPG, Parsons at 14, Jlin at 13, Patterson 11, and Asik at 10; and then you have the bench scoring their share of the points. I know that each game is different, but generally speaking, how should the PPG be distributed? To me, it looks like Parsons is the 2nd option in scoring.
If we can reduce the usage of LOFs/LOHs, this website will become a much better place. When you use "LOF", how do you know he is a "LOF" instead of someone who is just having a fun play here? As far as I know, there are some Lin fans here, but most of the LOFs have moved out of here. They have their own websites.
This is a nice post. I'd like to put it on the level of some great posts by torocan and durvasa. It is this kind of great posts that distingushes ClutchFans from the others. Thanks a lot.
Lin has said himself that he, as the pg, is the LAST option when it comes to scoring. His role, according to himself, is to get other going first and get himself going after every one else. that's why so many times you see him deferring early on in game. however, i think that may have changed since that interview a few weeks ago.... i think he's starting to realize that in order for the team to not fall behind early on, he needs to carry some scoring burden as well and thus we've seen him scoring early on. i think it'll be a season long struggle for him to find that balance between getting his teammates going and in rhythm vs. getting himself going.
interesting post given that you compare the PER of players playing with ball-dominating SG, may I create a fanpost on dreamshake and repost this there?
Once someone resorts to namecalling (lets get real here, that is what those 3 letter acronyms represent) then you know their position is on shaky ground.
I understand, and I apologize. I just wanted to make a point that it is difficult to compare Lin's PER against the league PG PER, because Lin is only a quasi-PG here. A PG without the ball in his hands, and not shooting many shots, is unlikely to have a high PER. Because PER isn't strictly related to offense, and contains elements that a defender cannot control - eg defensive rebounds, or to a great extent assists, it is not a good parameter for assessing defense, in the first place. And because PER has a high correlation with usage, we already know Lin is giving a headstart to most (if not all) starting PGs in the league. It's like handicapping in horse racing. The only reasonably good data to measure Lin's defensive performance is his Synergy defensive stats (which isn't a perfect measure either), plus what is scored against him in direct match-ups, taking out things like intentional fouls with shot clock down, fouls to prevent breakaway lay-up/dunks etc etc too many to name. Personally I think Lin has been torched a few times, but has also had quite a few great defensive performances. On the whole, he is a plus defender for sure (as his synergy defensive stats would attest). What he isn't appreciated for, is his help defense. The help D doesn't get credited ... so when he goes in to strip a ball in the post, or make the post player give up the ball when otherwise he'd be in position to score, or make the post player put up a more difficult shot than necessary, none of this is credit to Lin. If you look up on youtube "jeremy lin hightlights vs Utah Jazz, by someone callled 'coffee time' " ... you'll understand. We rarely recognize the help defense (unless it is an athletic block that swats the ball into the stands), but we remember open 3s made when players help and can't recover in time. But just look at that highlight clip and focus on Lin on D. If Lin gives up an extra 2.5 3-pt attempts per night helping, and on average the 3ptFG% goes from 35% to 55% (yes, even on a more open shot, I don't think on average over a large sample size you'll get much higher than this), you're only giving up an extra 1.5 points per game. Look at that clip and tell me Lin's help D isn't at least worth 1.5 points per game. So I'm off tangent again. The point here is PER isn't in any way a good measure of defense, and in Lin's case hardly a good overall comparison as he's already handicapped being only a quasi-PG, and the best data on Lin's defense other than going through the game logs game-by-game and seeing how much/little Lin was scored on and how many shots it took (taking out things not related to Lin's defense such as intentional fouling with the clock winding down etc), is synergy defense data where Lin is above average in for PG. And I think Lin is even better than the synergy defense data because of his help defense work that doesn't get captured.
Here is the problem many people, including me, has, should Lin be turned into Fisher/current Nash and Harden into Kobe? Considering what Lin could do with the ball in his hands, would it not be such a great waste of talent if he played the Fisher role?
Well, I wouldn't call him a great talent, but yes. At the same time, the Lakers looked to find a good fit with Kobe for a reason - because Kobe was more important than anyone playing the PG. So instead of forcing a square peg (regardless of caliber) into the circular hole, the Lakers found the right fit in Fisher and benefited by moving forward. Although I'd say Kobe is probably the toughest to play with of any star SG, Harden is also a superstar 2 and he has his own specific needs from a backcourt mate. We should look to satisfy those, and probably upgrade elsewhere. If Lin can't adequately fulfill the role, we shouldn't let him rot, and find value for him in the trade market.
Sen89 made a great point! Is it better for the Rockets to get a better fit at PG? That's what the respective GMs got for Kobe, MJ and Lebron, right? And spot-up shooting PGs are probably cheaper than those that penetrate, pass the ball well, and has the ability to run an offense. The questions are: 1) Will Harden ever develop into a MJ/Kobe/Lebron put everything on shoulders including scoring, running a team etc player? 2) Will Lin develop a consistent enough 3pt spot-up shot? My take is that given so many people DO NOT WANT the likes of Josh Smith, Paul Millsap, Al Jefferson, and ONLY want either Aldridge or Love ... because we're YOUNG, we've got cap space for only one more max contract, and Harden is under contract for another five years ... we can afford to wait for the right max contract player. If we can afford to wait a year or even two on the 2nd max contract player for the above reason ... unless we can get a clear upgrade to Lin at similar contract, or a superstar like Chris Paul (pipe dream) to replace Lin irregardless of contract ... ... then we might as well wait to find out about 1) and 2), and in the mean time keep working to develop the Lin-Harden backcourt. As well as develop our other core of Asik offensively, and Parsons even more all-rounded than now. Why so much rush to find a replacement for Lin, but be so patient on a superstar or other positions? Lin is a good 3 pointer away from being a very very good and well-rounded 2-way PG. That in itself is already far from a dime a dozen. And especially not for a guy like Lowry with obvious issues ranging from attitude health, and likely to command $10-12M/yr in the 2014-15 season.
