Rubio did a tremendous job on him. There's no way anyone can say that Rubio is lacking in D without being a total basketball idiot. Rubio is one of the best PG defenders in the league right now. And he's going to get better.
I think they wanted him to go left. They also tried to cut off his lane to the hole quickly. Fatique was a big factor, because he was stil able to get to the cup, just couldnt finish with some english, which requires explosion
He was most definitely fatigued, you could see all these layups he would usually pull fall short because he was tired. Rubio tried his best on Lin the first half and actually did a pretty good job on single coverage, and then fatigue plus a change of game plan by Adelman basically stopped Lin.
He was exhausted. The T-Wolves didn't figure him out at all, Jeremy was penetrating into the paint at will. He just couldn't finish the easy layups.
The Wolves tried forcing Lin to go to his left, but Lin was still effective in the 1st half. They did a better job guarding him in the 2nd half, but i think it was more bc of fatigue. Props to Rubio's defense on Lin, it was pretty good. Barea and Ridnour couldnt guard an exhausted Lin at all. Watching Barea reminded why i hate him so much. He's still doing that flop where he acts like someone shot him in the face.
I can't understand why all of this is not in one thread. Happy for the guy but 100 threads is ridiculous.
Everyone don't forget that Lin was not even a starter a week and a half ago and now he's playing major minutes on back to back. He was running on fume against the Wolves and still managed to be clutch at the end. Count me in as another Linbeliever!
It's clearly fatigue. This isn't the first game he's had a spectacular first half and a rough second half. The first game he started he had 1 TO in the first half, and 7 TO in the second half. His conditioning was not quite ready for how much D'Antoni is riding him. D'Antoni really needs to realize he's using Lin too much right now, but I think his minutes will be eased once Carmelo and Amare get back. At least they should be.
