I agree with you completely but I think the reason a lot of Lin fans feel cheated is because his brand of basketball was so much fun to watch. Everyone knows that a team with Lin as the #1 ball handler is unlikely to ever contend unless he were to get a whole lot better, but how many teams truly contend? 3 maybe 4 per season have a > 10% chance of winning the title probably. I do think there's a dozen teams that would be a lot of fun to watch with Lin running the show and making his scrub teammates better, and when Lin signed with Houston they looked to be one of them. Things did a 180 almost instantly though with the Harden trade and then everyone who was high on linsanity (which may have been a top 5 NBA story ever) just wanted to see him get a chance to try again. That never happened and that fan base got understandably annoyed, especially with all the boring teams that could use that kind of excitement.
Fair enough. Do you think Lin's passing is as good as Goran's based on assists per 48 min considering he is not the team's primary ball handler? Lin 6.9 Goran 8.4
I wouldnt necessarily say that a high assist number makes you a good passer nor a smaller assist number a bad passer, but as far as accumulating assists goes yeah I would put them on pretty even footing given their roles.
You forgot the Linsanity time? He was the primary guy of Nicks I remember, and he scored freely against top teams.
Kind of agree with you in terms of development as a player. But Lin proved he can be the first option when he was at New York. He also showed his capability in many games with houston. He is just not as consistent as it should be, which I believe is common for many young players at his age. It also has something to do with frequent changes of his role by the coach, and lack of system of the team.
I think you hit the nail on the head, and it's compounded by how likable he is and his unique story. The problem starts when these fans get annoyed to the point of polluting reasonable discussion about the Rockets, as this forum has done for 15 years. I have no problem if people want to watch that brand of basketball, just don't whine and blame others if it doesn't happen because the management wants to win.
Exactly. At least develop your players, including Lin, and let the team gel. I am ok to trade any players, when chance arises. But it is only possible if you build up value of your own players through development.
lol stuff dragic, dont get the constant circlejerking over long gone players, although i guess its probably to is to spite lofs dude went back to the team that traded him away including a first rounder for a crippled Brooks in his post-manured downward spiral his stupid exit video talked about the rockets being home, well apparently home is the place that trades you away, Phoenix was like the ex-gf wanting you back after you're parading your new 10/10 gf (Dragic playing at an allstar level and making Lowry cry) now thats fine he took the player option, I'd do the same for probably a seafood buffet dinner, but this constant yearning for lone gone players is pathetic, people should want Lin to surpass Dragic and Lowry, cause he plays for the Rockets, kinda meant to root for players of the rockets "Oh Morey should've kept him" Umm no he shouldn't have, the same way that he shouldn't have kept Lin the first time we had and then cut him, you make decisions based on evidence you have, and at the time Morey wanted capspace and flexibility for the 2015 Free Agency Orgy, and he wasn't going to sacrifice it with a marginal all-star that wasn't going to take us to the ultimate goal of winning a chip. You wanna really want to nitpick after in what 2 years after the collapse of the Yao/McGrady (he was no longer tmac) era he's managed get HARDEN AND HOWARD, two bonafide superstars? OVER GORAN FREAKING DRAGIC? almost as ludicrous as the poster who was seriously saying "Why did Morey give a player option to Dwight and not Dragic?" Morey is not infallible, he has screwed up ofcourse but for the most part has been able to correct his errors, and he has done an amazing job as GM. If Dragic comes back to the Rockets I'll root for him as hard as any other player, because you know, he'll be playing for the Rockets But until then, i hope he sucks ass so PHX suck ass
come on - tragic is number 1 option on the suns and they run multiple screens for him. No point comparing until they do that for lin. Which means we don't really know who is better.
Hi, sorry for the late reply. Just (hopefully) aced my midterm :grin: Aren't we're comparing the stats for Lin sans Harden with Dragic? (below was your original post, and the main topic we were discussing) And these were the numbers you posted as evidence for your statement I mentioned that a partial reason for Lin's lower per36 numbers could be due to lower FGA per minute, since his TS% is practically the same as Dragic's (and actually after last night, I think it has gone up some more). And you replied .. which is partially true, but as another poster pointed out (and then you later clarified), efficiency scales negatively only after an optimal level of efficiency. So we don't know if Lin's current FGA is below his optimal or not. I would guess that it isn't, and that stats may in fact show him having a higher TS% during games where he has higher FGA's (which I should look at because I am curious about it :grin. Of course, I admit being benched for having poor shooting numbers, and being allowed to attempt more FGA's when he is hot can also skew this data. And as you mentioned, if it is true that on a per minutes basis, he has less USG% or FGA "than Dragic even with Harden off the court, [you're] going to trust that he's passing up bad shots, not good ones." Which is a really really good point. But that comes back to my original suggestion that it's not Lin sans Harden perse, whose numbers we should be comparing, but rather him performing as a starter, with the starting lineup but without Harden (perhaps the one starter whose skill-set is not only superior to Lin's but also makes Lin more redundant) . The possibility is that the other starters' skillsets and Lin's mesh together quite well, and so he performs much better with such a lineup compared to with the bench. The reason I suggested, is that when Lin plays off the bench, he may be less efficient even playing against bench defense, because they can focus on him more when there aren't other good scoring threats on the floor (esp when Casspi, and Dmo have shown some inconsistency). Or, if he's not sacrificing his efficiency, then he is sacrificing his FGA (passing up the bad shot as you say) And the stats I provided (albeit from a small sample size of 6 games) do suggest that Lin performs much much better in games when Harden is injured, because he starts in those games and playing the majority of his minutes with the best lineup (minus Harden). He posts TS% of .67, and per36 of 19 points, which are pretty damn good. Thus I felt the stats that you posted up for Lin for comparison to Dragic's (i.e., his stats produced in all minutes when Harden is off the floor including playing with the bench) may possibly underestimate his potential in terms of scoring production and efficiency. Now obviously, the stats I posted up with the .67 TS is probably way too high as well (since it includes that positive outlier of a game in Philly), but I am suggesting maybe it is somewhere in between. The key thing that I suggested was that this was not unique to Lin, but probably most NBA players would post up slightly lower stats coming off the bench, especially one as inconsistent as ours. I suggested that maybe even Dragic playing with such a lineup would see a dip in either his scoring production or efficiency (or both) And you posted a good rebuttal: However, are the "16.2/5.3/5.2 on .604 TS%" numbers from his per36 coming off the bench, or just his overall numbers for that year? Because (and I don't know this personally from watching those games, because you know I am a basketball ignorant Lin fan but I got these stats from http://fantasynews.cbssports.com/fantasybasketball/players/player/splits/2011/1113164) if I am not mistaken, Kyle Lowry only played 47 games that year. If the per36 numbers you posted are for Dragic's overall 2011-2012 season, then wouldn't it be a little skewed since Dragic probably started in a lot of those games? Your main statement was that "there was never a dip whether Dragic played backup or starter", which was hard to test, because I don't really know how to find individual scores for that season (if anyone knows how, please do tell!). However, I think the following is a good way to compare Dragic's numbers off the bench and starting. I found the two months where Lowry played the most games, January and February of 2012, and then looked up Dragic's numbers from that same time period (which I am assuming would represent his stats off the bench). I then calculated his per36 numbers and TS% (presenting the numbers below in case in case anyone sees a mistake) These are his stats: G MIN FG FGA FG3 FG3A FT FTA REB A STL BLK PTS AVG(pts) January Games 17 367 55 115 11 38 29 35 31 71 13 2 150 8.8 February Games 15 285 39 96 7 25 17 29 29 45 18 2 102 6.8 Total minutes 367+285=652 Total FGA=115+96=211 Total FTA=35+29=64 Total Pnts=150+102=252 per36=total Points/total minutes *36=13.91 TS%=totalpoints/2(total FGA +.44*(total FTA)) 252/478.32=.527 So this shows that for those two months at least, coming off the bench netted him a per36 points stat of 13.91, and TS% of .527, a clear dip in performance. I don't think I need to pull up his stats when he starts, because it's obvious how exceptional he was later on, and his starting numbers are probably nowhere near such low numbers. Of course I don't know if this is an entirely fair assessment, since he also plays I think some min less than Lin does this year (so maybe that might affect his consistency?), but this is the only way I can think of for testing Dragic's off the bench numbers. And keep in mind, Dragic also started in two games those two months, so that may have actually raised his numbers slightly. If these numbers are accurate, then it suggests that even some exceptional players like Dragic may see a drop in scoring production per36 and efficiency if playing heavy minutes with the bench. If, instead, the numbers you posted ("16.2/5.3/5.2 on .604 TS%") are actually representative of his per36 off the bench stats and not the whole season (which means I just wasted another couple minutes of my life typing useless stats ) then never mind Although I would be curious how my findings have such a huge discrepancy. Also, if that's the case, can you show me how you got the numbers? I haven't figured out how to get stats like that for seasons that long ago. Huh? When did I ever say McHale sucks? PS: I totally agree about the TO's, I believe that is the biggest weakness for Lin, and it's place where there is the biggest discrepancy between him and Dragic. So yes, I do NOT think Lin is as good as Dragic. I am simply saying scoring wise, the numbers do not paint as clear a picture.
Yes, I did use Lin's numbers without Harden, because that's what the discussion was about. It's the same numbers that you quoted in a previous post, but then changed (without explaining that it had been changed) to his overall numbers to make a point. The problem is that depending on which numbers you use changes the validity of your point. The more relevant numbers are the ones without Harden, since that's what the discussion was about. Your making these absurd and erroneous conclusions. I don't believe that "Harden is making Lin sucking". And no I don't believe Lin will reach "optimal level of efficiency and usage when Harden's not on the court". There are a lot of other factors such as the system being run and the other players on the court and being healthy and being human and etc. Players aren't machines where you can run a diagnostic test to find the optimal performance settings. And being a smart basketball player has more to do with doing what's going to help the team win as opposed to increasing his usage to increase his stats. And usage isn't affected only by which shots you take or don't take. I don't know how your coming to these absurd conclusions from what I wrote. No, If I'm correct then TS% does not always go down with an increase in usage. Usage is not affected only by which shots you take. It is also affected by how often your in the position to take the "good" shots. So your usage can increase while taking the same types of shots when your usage was lower thereby not having a drop in TS%.
This Dragic vs Lin comparison is getting crazy. The two play in two different teams with different team-styles in very different roles. Both are fun to watch though.
Can someone explain to me why AS/TO is a significant stat to look at? They seem to be pretty different and fairly unrelated stats to put together.
I rather it be a "I Finally Surpassed Dragic" since Lin himself personally compared their similar styles as players when Linsanity broke out. Lin respects Dragic much and in his own words, they are both not freakishly athletic but know how to move the ball and play the game.
What's the point of all this Dragic vs Lin comparisons? Completely different roles on their respective teams running completely different offenses. Dragic is in his 6th season, has played 394 games and has 9300 NBA minutes. Jeremy is in his 4th season, has played 186 games and has 5100 NBA minutes. Huge gap in experience. If comparisons are to be made they should be compared at the same point in their respective careers. Goran is currently entering his prime, Lin has probably 2 seasons or more til he hits his.
