I think Jeremy Lin's play has solidified himself as an NBA starting PG. That's the extent of what he's done in this league. He's not an all-star and he doesn't play like one on most nights either. In my opinion, if we were to put PGs into tiers in terms of their current play or what they're capable of doing currently, Tier 1 would be Parker, Paul, Rondo, Rose, Westbrook Tier 2 would be Williams, Nash, Curry, Irving, Wall, Jrue Tier 3 would be Lawson, Conley, Lowry, Dragic, Lin In popularity, Lin is in a tier all by himself.
Dude, do you even watch these players? Check out their stats. John Wall Pts 18.4 Reb 4.0 Ast 7.7 Kyle Lowry Pts 11.7 Reb 4.8 Ast 6.4 Also, John Wall has been beasting lately while Lowry has been meh.
after he came back from his injury wall have been playing quite well. i'll probably add damian lillard to tier 2 list, and the likes of george hill and kemba walker to tier 3 as well.
And how many games has Wall been doing this for? Wall has like a 25 game sample of good play. Everything else he has done before this small sample this season has been mediocre. Lets see Wall mantain those numbers with a good efficiency before we put him in the same tier as Curry, Irving & Deron Williams.
If you make that argument you have to discount good three week samples from everyone. You can't pick and choose stats to compare players. Take Wall's last month and Lin's first month. Same sample size right? Lots more factors to consider other than stats. That being said I think Wall's emergence since his injury is remarkable considering his draft status, "bust" status, then injury. How did this become about Lin vs. Wall anyway?
I am looking at the entirety of games Wall played.Wall started in 41 games this year played in 48. Lin started in every game this season. All I am saying is lets see Wall maintain his production over an entire season before we start saying he is as good as Curry. Because he isn't. And dispite Walls big numbers he still has a below NBA average TS% & efg%.
Even if Lin is an average starting NBA PG, the PG position, as a whole, may now be the highest valued position in the NBA thanks to all the new rules changes. So, even if Jeremy has pretty much peaked and remains a top 12-16 PG for the rest of his career, I think this would put him solidly in the top 40-50 overall players in the NBA. Not bad for an undrafted kid out of Harvard.
Very nice list. Would add Lillard and Vasquez to Tier 3. Honestly the PG position is just too full of talent.
He'll never be a superstar because lets face it in his long career he has never looked like a superstar and he has been given multiple opportunities to do so.
Undrafted Lin being considered as an average PG? He even managed to perform like an All-star some nights. Congratulations Lin!
I would bring up the eye test again on this one. The way Wall plays is silky smooth, speed, quickness and agility are very obvious. Is probably tier 1 in terms of athleticism. But what makes CP3 better? What makes Curry better? Wall is faster, smoother and jumps higher than both. CP3 is a born leader, has a better feel for the game, like when to score or when to get teammates involved, and that leads to more wins. Curry is a way better shooter than either and thinks the game at a higher level, which shows in the way he plays. Lin is not better than Wall in many aspects and he fails the eye test with the way he plays and the way he looks playing. But Lin has proven time and again the leadership qualities and the penchant for improving his teammates' play. Wall, so far, is a stats and eye guy. Wins? Jury is out if he can learn the nuances of being a leader and a real PG. I remember when he had that 26 or 28 point half a few weeks ago and he was interviewed at halftime. His mindset was "I, I, I, I was hot , I was feeling it, etc etc," so there wasn't any concept of team. So if you add the tangible + intagible based on what they have accomplished so far, Wall and Lin are arguably even.
Wall has been seriously chucking it the past few games. Not getting his teammates involved at all. Def cause it's a contract year
When Lin was given full reign to be a superstar during Linsanity, he was record-breakingly good. I'm not saying that Lin is going to be a superstar on the level of a Chris Paul, but Lin is not some high draft pick who's been given every opportunity to be a franchise player. More often than not, Lin's had to embrace the role of a supporting player.
Just give Lin the ball, he doesn't even need shots. But when he holds the ball in his hands he can play very well and help the team consistently.
I posted this in the "Phantom" video thread, but because I was new it didn't show up until the discussion was over. Looks like this thread is having the same discussion, so I figured I would cross-post it here. Hopefully that's not against the rules. -------------------------------------------------------------- First post ever! I did some number crunching in Excel to help with the John Wall vs. Jeremy Lin "debate": Hopefully the image isn't too large - I resized it but any smaller and it got too blurry... Honestly I'm not really sure why anyone would want to compare Jeremy Lin's first 25 starts in the NBA against John Wall's latest 25 starts in a 3-year career, but whatever. From what I can tell, the numbers in this pre-selected sample don't really seem to indicate that one player is significantly better than the other. Statistically speaking, the best indicator for a player's future performance is their entire career, so you can't really cherry-pick either player's stats and expect to be able to predict where they will be. More data is always better. What you should be saying is, based on all of the data available, John Wall projects a P% to have Q production, while Jeremy Lin projects A% to have B production. If you're trying to prove some sort of side-by-side analysis, then you should be doing something like grabbing the first 2,000 minutes of John Wall's NBA career and laying that against the first 2,000 minutes of Jeremy Lin's career. Then, based on how those projects play out for all similar NBA players, you can see where they "should" end up in the future based on the same amount of information. I haven't bothered to look at that info, although I'm pretty sure there are websites that do that sort of thing (behind a paywall). Here's what I am pretty comfortable saying: 1) Let's say you had two players, Player X and Player Y. 2) Both players put up the same production (within a small margin) over a 25-game sample (of equivalent minutes). 3) Player X put up that production in his first 25 starts ever. 4) Player Y put up that production after more than 2 seasons of NBA play, but did not match that production up to that point. Then I would tell you that over the course of their full NBA careers, Player X is probably going to be better than Player Y. Why? Because the fact that Player X did it in his very first 25 starts actually makes it less likely that his performance is a fluke. In other words, he will most likely get better with time (or at least sustain his current level of performance). Nate Silver did a pretty basic analysis of this during the whole Linsanity thing. It's like asking who would win a basketball game after knowing the score in the first quarter. There's no guarantee that the team that's ahead is going to win, but based on past history, the team that's ahead is going to win more often than the team that's behind. Because good teams tend to score more points than their opponents, regardless of whether it's the first 20 minutes or the last 20 minutes. Honestly, I find it kind of disturbing that people are so ready to dismiss Jeremy's Linsanity performance as some kind of fluke, but are less willing to do so for any other player going through a similar stretch of production over a similar 25-game sample. It doesn't even have to be their first 25 games. It could be Kobe Bryant's last 25 games, and if you looked at those numbers, you might think they are crazy but you wouldn't second-guess that they are not indicative of his actual potential talent. You'd just think that the guy was having a good stretch of games. You wouldn't be saying that he was a hack and not "really" that good at basketball. Production proves talent. Talent without production is meaningless (literally - if you define talent as something that can't be linked to production, then I question your definition of what "talent" means). You can't put up the numbers without the talent to back it up, especially not when you're talking about an elite professional league like the NBA. P.S. - I actually think that Jeremy Lin and John Wall have very similar potential. They could both eventually be All-Stars, but they both have a lot more experience and development to get there. Otherwise, they could probably "coast" and have careers as solidly above-average at this point.
I've been on the fence about Jeremy Lin all season long, but the emotions surrounding tonight's game, coupled with his play, may have just swayed me to pick a side.
AHHHHHHHH WHAT A BREATH OF FRESH OBJECTIVE AIR...well done my friend...sad thing is, Lin played better with melo than harden the chucker
