Agreed, Dragic should've taken the outside shot. Lin always makes the best basketball play for the team, doesn't play for stats, just plays for the win. He looked upset after the loss despite his teammates' congrats for his individual play and while others were smiling. Lin is a winner, and he will eventually end up on one.
My first NBA game was in Houston in 1980 with Moses Malone (and my first MLB game an Astros fan), and I've been a Houston and Rockets fan ever since, through Ralph Sampson, Hakeem and Drexler (including Phi Slamma Jamma), Yao. Hate ballhogs and like team players (though admittedly Moses and early Akeem weren't always the greatest passers).
I hated to see Ish go. I would hate to see Lin go. If there's no room for him on the roster, can we farm him down to RGV?
sad that i'd take both over Flynn right now. even sadder that ish and lin combined made like 1/50 of what flynn has made in the nba doing nothing. nba should have restructured rookie salary to 1 yr and team options for the rest.
Ish is faster and probably a better passer. But Lin has the size and is a better all-around player. I think Lin has a higher ceiling.
I hate it when people automatically stereotype Lin supporters as LOF or YOF. Did they even watch the preseason game? Flynn dribbled the clock and bricked shots while Lin almost won the game for us. I know it's just one game. But you can't say people want Lin to stay because they are Chinese or they are YOF. I can't believe people are still so racially-biased here.
Haven't seen too much of Lin to say how far he will go. But this much is sure -- I'd rather have 10 assists with 6 points than for me to see 12-15 points from Lin with no assists. Ish gets steals, so he plays defense. He just doesn't rebound much, or clog up lanes because of his lack of size. And Lowry is already the best rebounder for his position, so Lin's skill set is just redundant at this point. The only thing that I might look forward to for Lin is his high efficiency in scoring. Whether or not Lin will continue that is still not there... But then he might as well play SF or SG. But yeah, he can't compete with them, can he?
Lin is a capable passer. In his limited minutes at Golden State last year he averaged 5.9 AST/40 and had a 2.33 AST/TO ratio. However, his best skill last year was his defense. Obviously steals don't tell the whole story, but he averaged an insane 4.6 STL/40. He does a lot of things defensively that don't show up on the stat sheet, like being able to stay in front of his man and being a defensive pest in general. I recall during a game against OKC last year the Warriors lost the ball in transition to Kevin Durant and Lin was the only one to run back to defend him. He managed to strip the ball out of Durant's hands as he was driving to the hoop and prevent an otherwise easy layup. Lin's scoring ability last year was honestly his greatest weakness but from the game 2 nights ago, he's already looking a lot better and hopefully he'll have more opportunities to showcase his improvements in that area.
Great post. Agree, Lin is actually a better passer than scorer and always looks to set up his teammates first. If you watched the second Spurs preseason game, you'll notice that he was often playing the 2 or sometimes even 3 (with Dragic and Flynn in the game), so Lin was asked to score more. At Golden State and Reno, he got played at the 2 alot. He will get plenty of assists when he plays the 1, which is still his natural position. Lin's defense has been stellar since day one at GS, better than either of their star starting guards (Ellis or Curry).
