[ClutchFans] The numbers are clear: Patrick Beverley deserves to start over Jeremy Lin

I will have to disagree with this opinion. If I didn't love my Rockets so much, I can easily see myself hating Lin like people hate Tebow simply because of his fanbase. The only reason I still like Lin is because he wears the Rockets jersey and I feel like he can still contribute.

 

Doesn't seem like the view of the player is altered in anyway. Clutch's assessment of Lin and Beverley seem fair.

If anything, it seems more like Clutch is taking shots at the Lin fanatics with the article, but nothing against Lin himself.

 

I agree for now and the way Lin and Bev are used, that Lin should come off the bench. Harden relies on Bev and the 2nd unit needs Lin's playmaking abilities.

I know where Clutch was coming from with his article, but I did pick up a certain tone from his write-up. I came away with it as, "see, I told you so!" That's my opinion and this is Clutch's site so he can write whatever he wants. I was just a bit disappointed with the way it was written. It gave me a sense that he just doesn't like Lin as a player for this team and

 

I got cut-off from my last posting, but I do value Clutch's opinion on the team. He knows his stuff.

 

Are you serious? You don't think the current coaching staff has no blames whatsoever in this current situation.

You are not in Lin's shoes. It is easy for you to see "figure it out yourself". As fans, we don't know what is going behind the closed doors. We can only speculate. It is obvious that Lin is unhappy with his current siutation. Tell who can do his job the best when he is not happy. Not to mention Lin is a young player and still developing. Maybe you're right that the most blame shouldn't be placed on McHale. But at least he is not helping, from what we can see as fans.

 

I kind of agree with this - his highs and lows are SO far apart, it's kinda strange. There are times when I wonder if he belongs - and other times where he can take over games and score/assist at will-looks like a borderline allstar - not nearly enough of the highs lately though. Can we think of another player whose highs and lows were so dreastic??

 

I don't think Clutch is taking shots at Lin at all. I do think the annoying fans do grate him enough to make him completely indifferent to him compared to the other players on the Rockets. I don't necessarily blame him though since they are infesting this site and it's frustrating.

 

Lin this , Lin that, LOHs, LOFs, this time Clutch started it.

From the tone of the article, and McHale' post game mentioning of the word "agenda", they are all LOHs for sure.

 

I like how Clutch ended the article:

Even if we were all to disagree with Clutch's opinion, we still got a good amount of games to see if he was completely right.

 

it's his response and retaliation towards LOF's that have attacked him over the past two years. lin is just collateral damage.

it's not a coincidence that the timing of this article came out after the triumphant return of bev. i get the sense that if bev hadn't played well in his first game back and lin had, we probably wouldn't have seen this article, at least not right now. yes, the numbers have always been there, but the timing reinforces his point.

and all this just leads to open season on lin, a player who is as much of a rocket as bev.

 

there is no such thing as LOHs and there's no such thing as Beverly Only fans

These imaginary terms were created by Lin Fans because they could not handle criticism of their favorite player

Did McGrady Fans or Yao Fans resort to calling Rockets fans "haters"?

No. And these guys weren't the sharpest of the bunch especially the mcgrady folk

No Rocket fans hate Lin. He never threw his teammates/team/coaches under the bus or did he force them to trade him because he was not happy

Lin fans use "LOH", the better term is people who hate Lin Only Fans, that pretty much includes everyone on the planet.

Worst things for player only fans on Clutchfans:

Yao Fans: Yao was better than Hakeem
Tracy Fans: Tracy was the reason for 22 game winning streak (even though he never played 22 games) and he would have led them to a championship (not even close)
Lin Fans: creating the term LOH and calling Rocket fans racists even though Yao Ming was beloved by all (Yao is asian too, no there really isn't a difference, I don't give a crap if Lin is from Palo Alto)

 

This is a gross generalization, it does seem to me that he swings back and forth wildly from Linsanity mode to scrub, sometimes within the same game. It's like an on-off switch with nothing in between.

Maybe it is a mental thing, as others have suggested. I hope that he, along with Asik, can just get past whatever is holding them back.

 

yup. agree. well, the last time we saw him perform like this was early last season. and now we came to know that the culprit was him coming back from injury, 'cause he played much, much better later on in the year when his knee wasn't bothering him anymore.

don't know if it's mental this time around or physical, since he was coming back from his knee and back injuries about the same time that bev went down. some also reported him taking shots to his right arm. could be both - coming back in injury, and eager to prove that he should start with bev out. anyway, let's see how he rights this ship now that he's coming off the bench again. still a lot of games left to be played.

 

Hated how Clutch ended the article. It was pretty good right up until:

That single line was good writing, nicely quotable, but crappy analysis. For it to be "just math" you need a lot bigger sample size.

Mind you, I agree with his conclusion; but that is with the caveat that you make decisions during the season-- you don't wait until the end of the season to see "truth" with a 95% confidence interval. That would be good math, but bad basketball.

 

I don't agree with starting Beverley over Lin, but I think it's fair to say that McHale hasn't had enough time with that lineup structure to see if it does in fact work. In November, he had issues with the Asik situation, Dwight Howard had a slow start and Harden was hobbled by injuries so he relied on Lin more to get them through the month (successfully I might add). The stats cited to support Beverley over Lin are flawed in my view because Lin was basically Mr. Everything in November filling in the gaps in the starting lineup and played alongside Beverley for a lot of those minutes. The 10-12 games or so that Beverley played without Lin exposed Bev's limitations, whereas the 18 games that Lin played without Beverley basically supported the notion that Lin has value as a starter. Lin is 12-6 as a starter, and (12-4 I believe if you exclude games that Harden did not play alongside Lin). That's a really good winning percentage. The real test is how does Houston perform when it isn't shooting 50% from the 3 pt line and is shooting more to their average....33-34%. I don't know if Lin will get the minutes to put up the same numbers, but I do think his 3 pt shooting percentage will go up as part of the second unit.

 

A famous math quote

The needs of the Rockets fans outweigh the needs of the Lin Fans.

 

I guess I'm trying to understand where you think Lin's game has fallen off? The Rockets had a winning record with him as PG and he had many notable performances against SA, Memphis, Boston, Washington, New York (1st half before McHale benched him in the second half) and NO. He played a lot of minutes, ran the offense well and got some wins. They lost to Sacramento, OKC twice (both on the 2nd day of back to backs), ATL and Dallas. If you're going to cast blame, why aren't Howard and Harden the focus of it? Why Lin?

 

To me this is the key issue. I don't care who starts - I'm sure the front office has done their numbers and if they think Bev should start then I agree (and I'm definitely a Lin fan but I love the Rockets first and foremost like I think a lot of Lin fans do - there's just distortion bc of some extremists).

I really want to see more stats around the right closing group like has been raised by this post (kudos). Can those with stats familiarity give more insight to this issue? I've always thought Lin has shown evidence of being clutch - he brings it on in the fourth, like harden does. My eyeball view is Bev and Howard do the lifting in the beginning, harden and Lin close out when we need scoring. I also see Bev - Lin similar to Smith - Cassell.

 

Don't use that quote! They reversed it the very next movie.

 

I don't know Clutchi's very intention. We can only speculate. But it looks it indeed leaves the impression for many as you described. Anyway, we all have different oppinions. I respect Clutch's. If what you described was true, I would probably have given Clutch some leeway as he created such a wonderful forum for us to share oppinions. He is a member of human being afterall.

I agree with your last statement that Rockets fans should be as friendly to Lin as to other Rockets players. If you dislike Lin, simply due to some of his crazy fans. I hope you change your mind as Lin is such a winderful young man.

Let's judge a player based on the content of that player instead of his fans :grin:

Rigth now, Lin is sort of in the low stage of his career. As fans, for his sake and Rockets' success, we should instead show him our support. We should cheer for Lin even more during games!!!!