Lin has been fine, improving even until this last few crucial stretches of game. He has definitely regressed and that is concerning to me.
And I don't disagree with that. It's the 'projecting' someone with 15min/game to be (again, not referring to your post) the hands down starter or 'always better than Lin' that is, in my humble opinion, not reasonable nor logical. And it's not 10points on avg per 15min, it's 5pt on avg per 15min. So it works out to something around 12pts per 36min, not 20+. What the numbers say is that he's only scored more than 10 in 4 games, and hasn't been consistent (ie many games in between his 10 point games), and that when he scored well he hasn't been passing the ball well (ie not played a complete game). But Lin has a lot of faults too. So to extrapolate someone with 15min per game, without consistency in either scoring, or passing, let alone putting a complete game together other than the game against Orlando, to project him as a 'clear-cut' starter as many posters seem to believe in, I think that's ridiculous.
Eh.... can the knee injury still be used as an excuse though? It's close to the end of the season already.
Just FYI ... you can interpret this however you want Toney Douglas (on the Rockets) has a higher FGA per minute than Lin, and Beverley is the 3rd on the list amongst PGs. And Beverley plays a closer role to TD, and as a percentage of his minutes plays more when Harden is sitting than Lin does. You can interpret either as the role is different between TD and Beverley, or as in they have different strengths (TD is a scorer, Beverley not). Just like the role for Lin is different, playing next to Harden, then he would with a SG that isn't ball-dominant and needs shots created for him (say a Kevin Martin or a Rip Hamilton of screens). The role of Lin, even as a starter, is a lot closer to Beverley than most other teams' starting PG's roles. So perhaps when you look at Lin's output, you can look at it through the favorable lens you look at Beverley through.
Not gonna read through the previous 11 pages, as I'm sure the posts are mainly about Lin. But I am a fan of Beverly and have been surprised by his decent play. I don't think he'll ever be a starter simply due to his size, but he's a great backup PG. And when he's hitting his shots, I am OK with giving him more playing time than usual. And I just noticed that he's on NBA2k13 now. He's a 73 overall, only 2 worse than Lin. Nice young PG rotation for the video game version of the Rockets.
He's generally been playing better lately than he was earlier. Knee injuries don't generally get back to near 100% that quickly for athletes as they put a lot of abuse on them. On another person's comment about McHale determining who plays at end of games, he also determines who starts. I should have mentioned that guys that end games are generally the starters unless they have a backup that is almost as good as them. I expect Lin is going to be great next season when he is 100% and works on shot. I am looking forward to watching those games. I can already see all the "I told you so" comments next season which will be inappropriate because he just has not been that great this season as a whole. He has had moments when he is amazing this season, but it is not consistent. A lot blame Harden, but I think it is mostly them learning to work together, Lin not being in top form, and his shot being inconsistent.
I don't think Beverley is playing better than Lin. Nevertheless, I hope Beverley is playing well behind Lin. I think he had done a good job so far supporting Lin as a backup. We need more wins to get to the playoff.
Wake me up when Lin shows some kind of consistency. Maybe even show that he is worth the starting position.
Please Michael, show me where i said Machado was better than Lin. Stop making stuff up just to make your point. I said Machado could possibly be as good as Lin in the future. How many times did Lin get traded before he got lucky? How easily we forget.
Or Lin fans crying about Lin not being on the floor in the 4th. LOF's don't care about winning. They only care about Lin.
well he's been a pretty consistent 12/6 guy in 2013 so far. that's his average and more often than not, that's gonna be his numbers every game, even if he's having a bad shooting night like in the suns game last week. i'm not sure what people are expecting or what they mean by "consistency". are you expecting him to be 28/7, or 21/9 consistently, like 70% of the time? that would make him a superstar. right now he's a consistent 12/6 guy. that's what you'll most likely get from him night in and night out. once in a while he'll have a stinker of 9/3 or something like that. and once in a while he'll have amazing games like 38pts, 28/7, 12/9, etc... mchale mentioned that lin has had a lot of good games this year. but they'll need him to sustain that high level for the rest of the season. that's a pretty tall order.
then you can make the argument that he's consistently a less than 40% guy. he's been consistently average this season, with great games here and there that shows his potential. people harp on his inconsistency, but i don't really think it's inconsistency that they're harping on, but rather his inability to sustain the high end of his potential. no one goes through a whole season scoring at a consistent percentage. heck, harden was shooting awful for a good stretch just now, while still getting his 20 pts/game. the difference is, even if he's shooting awful, he finds other ways to get his points, and lin is starting to learn that.
Lin's FG% for the season after 64 games is 43.6%. Since he has to score a lot higher than 43.6% in the other 37 games to get the season average to 43.6%, can we say he is a consistent 46.2%+ shooter, just to follow your logic? Surely 37 games is a bigger sample size than 27.
