Felton said Jeremy Lin has a target on his back.. ...

Response

I didn't know their stats were that low. But I did say if Lin gets 12 points and 9 assists, he "deserves" to get paid $8 Mill per year, which meant that he could get paid more. But it does show up that people are expecting too much from Lin.

 

Response

You have a point there. If two players had similar stats, does a player who has more experience get paid more. Also, it is true that Lin played only 25 games, so that there is more risk in comparing him to someone who played several seasons. However, an argument could be made that Lin also has more potential because if a player played several seasons and achieved stats of "only" 12 points and 6 assists per game, then Lin could potentially do a lot better because of his relative inexperience, i.e., there could be upside surprises. I do agree with you that it is not fair for people to think he is getting overpaid IF people think he can average 12 points and 6 assists per game.

 

Response

I guess the Linsanity experience has upped people's expectation (both Lin fans and others) so that people are expecting him to perform at a very high level, but I just hope he can have a long productive career and down the road at least achieve one or two all-star level seasons and win a Championship. I don't see Rockets being able to win Championship even in 4 or 5 years though, although they may get into playoffs.

 

Not necessary, Lin is a Harvard graduate and Chinese-American. I am sure he knew about "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.

故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.

If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.

If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Fi_9hAJkkl4#t=19s

 

It's not just that. People put an undue amount of weight on his Miami game.

Lin is a VERY young PG in NBA terms. He's effectively just starting his 2nd season as a Starter, and 3rd year in the NBA. Given his very low usage at GSW, many argue this year is his Sophomore year.

Young PG's have bad games. And they are notoriously inconsistent. Just for a point of reference...

I ran a search using Basketball-Reference‘s Game Finder tool to find games played by players aged 18-22, as starters, in which the player compiled at least 5 turnovers and shot less than 25% from the field:

In his 42nd career start, Dwayne Wade shot 0/7 and had 5 turnovers.
In his 37th career start, Ray Allen shot 1/9 and had 5 turnovers.
In his 17th career start, Allen Iverson shot 2/17 and had 6 turnovers.
In his 44th career start, Mark Jackson shot 2/13 and had 7 turnovers.
In his 60th career start, Brandon Jennings shot 2/12 and had 6 turnovers.
In his 3rd career start, Chauncey Billups shot 1/5 and had 7 turnovers.
In his 24th career start, Jason Kidd shot 2/10 and had 6 turnovers.

In almost all of these examples, the player in question had even more experience running the show as a starter than Lin has now. These kinds of games happen to young players, especially young guards who are asked to handle the ball a lot (and Lin was 5th in the entire NBA in usage rate at that point).

Believe me this won’t be Lin’s last bad game as a starter. In fact, even well into their careers, it’s not uncommon for young ball handling guards to have a stray bad game:

In his second year as a starter, Stephon Marbury had a 4/17, 8 TO game, and a 0/8, 7 TO game.
In his second year as a starter, Kidd had 4/16, 7 TO game, a 2/12, 7 TO game, and a 4/16, 6 TO game.
In his second year as a starter, Chris Paul had a 2/11, 5 TO game, and a 3/17, 5 TO game.

Should I even mention Russell Westbrook?

Those were regular season games. Pretty much everyone discards pre-season because that's the time people are getting into shooting rhythm and basketball shape, as well as often their first minutes when recovering from surgery, injuries, etc.

Folks are expecting him to 5+ year veteran standards... like they expect him to always play well, and a single bad game is some sort of proof that he's a terrible player.

In the end, NOBODY knows how he'll pan out, but in terms of his development curve, he is doing VERY well.

As for comparisons vs. Dragic, those aren't very fair as well. Dragic was in his 9th (9 years) as a Professional player (turned pro at 17), and 4th year as a NBA pro. And those first 8 seasons were nothing to write home about.

As a point of comparison, Dragic played 28 games as a starter. Lin played 25 games as a starter. Yet somehow Dragic is a potential all star, and Lin is a backup PG.

If Lin was starting his 3rd year as a 2nd round draft pick, coming off his sophomore season would he get anywhere near the level of criticism that he currently gets?

It's an amazing double standard to be honest.

No idea if Lin will be an average starter, all star or decline in the long run. However, discarding his good play as a "small sample size" then using his very few bad games as some sort of proof that he's awful DESPITE the small sample size is either willful ignorance, cognitive dissonance, or the height of hypocrisy.

Let the games speak for themselves.

 

Which is why it's hard to take your condescending "voice of reason" attitude seriously. True voices of reason aren't ignorant of the facts.

"All but three point guards (Lowry, Jarrett Jack and Jordan Farmar) with a PER above league average (15.0) make $8 million or more. "

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/48033/jeremy-lins-contract-in-perspective

Instead of fake voices of reason, how about an actual voice of reason, John Hollinger, the top forecaster last year among 30 ESPN basketball analysts[1]:

Hollinger's 2012-13 Projections
PTS
REB
AST
PER
21.9
4.1
9.1
20.2
Stats are per 40 minutes | Hollinger player card

That's his projections for Lin this year. Notice how a neutral observer who is an expert in statistical methods is apparently "expecting too much" from a "small sample size".

Lin may not score as much as last year, in which case his increase in assists will more than compensate. That will be a choice. Lin's overall production, both defensively--last year he was 2nd among starting point guards in steals-blocks-charges taken/40--and offensively, and his affect on winning, will be as high or higher than last year.

[1] http://blog.pundittracker.com/nba-pundits-2011-12-report-card/

 

* effect on winning

 

Agree with you on the experience angle, hopefully Lin can play through the whole season and push the experience angle out of the discussion

 

Good post.

 

True, well said!!!

 

*See John Wall and the Wizards. Houston isn't the Wizards, but a good or even great PG can only do so much...

 

Great information is great.

 

So if your enemy knows you and themselves, and you know your enemy and yourself, do they both always win or do they both always lose?

 

This is really interesting. I read an interesting article about this & it goes as follows. The best way I think is to do it based on wins. Using a statistic called estimated wins added, developed by ESPN’s John Hollinger, you can chart the performance of the N.B.A.’s top 40 point guards over the past five seasons. Mr. Hollinger’s statistic (as its name implies) estimates the number of additional wins that a player is worth to his team, above a marginal-level player that could be picked up for the minimum salary.

Then I converted this number from wins into dollars based on the salaries of all N.B.A. players. On average, N.B.A. teams are paying about $1.63 million per win, which means that a player good enough to produce 10 extra wins for his team is worth about $16.3 million. This statistic is better because you see guys like David Lee who average 20 & 10 (on bad teams) & have yet to make the playoffs. Winning is what the NBA is all about after all not just empty stats. So Lin is getting paid 25 million dollars over 3 season. That means he needs to contribute to at least 8 wins a year according to Mr. Hollinger’s numbers.

 

Great post. Thank you!

 

Finally a sane voice with facts to back up. Best post of the week! Repped! Thank you for the write up!

 

This is sound and sane reason! The best post of the week.

Torocan for President!

 

Neither, because there will be no battle.

 

Wait how do you get this number 8.
25/1.63=15.3374233129
/3= 5.1
unless you are accounting for the avg player as a 3

In general I think people may have grown accustomed to the value they got in Lowery who outperformed his deal by a large margin. You are still getting value with Lin but not necessarily getting a steal.