Jeremy Lin and Beverley, who fits better with the team and James Harden

Now let's look at the team performance with Beverley and Jeremy on/off floor.

Team performance with Player on/off: shooting



Okay, last season we have already seen the trend that with Beverley on the floor, the team shoots worse, and when Jeremy on the floor, the team has better FG%. Well, that trend continued in this season too. Other than FT%, (which has nothing to do with who is on the floor), all FG%, 3FG%, TS%, eFG% shown the same trend, and the difference with/without Jeremy is bigger now.

Team performance: other



Now let's look at team performance other than shooting.

Surprisingly, Beverley's advantage in offensive rebounding disappeared. Last season with Beverley on/off court, the offREB really shown difference, but that did not carry over to this season, yet strangely, the defensive rebounding shown a disadvantage with Beverley on court. Which I had no idea why is that, and I don't see a reason that could relate to Beverley's performance there, thus should not hold that against Beverley at this moment.

It is easy to see that Beverley has an advantage of TOV there, when he is on court, the team has less turnover, and that is not the case when Jeremy is on court, which we all know why. And the same thing, when Beverley on court, the team has more personal fouls. BTW, the numbers were team number per 48min, so it is playing time normalized. Basically Beverley kept his personal foul rate with longer playing time.

Oh, forgot to highlight, when Beverley is on court, the team got higher steals, which is a plus for him worth notice.

Team performance: overall



It is obvious, Beverley's performance dropped significantly and Jeremy's performance improved significantly, and put them together, the difference is day and night.

I'm particular happy to see Jeremy's impact on team's DefRtg, with Jeremy on off the floor, the difference is really big, and that was one of the major defect last season with Jeremy though.

Finally, let's take a look of opponent team performance. Since last time I try this, people were chewing on me not include defensive side of the game which suppose to be Beverley's strength.

Opp team performance:



Last season, Beverley's impact on defense shown clearly on opponent team's FG%, when he on court, opp team shoot worse, thus even when Beverley is on court our team have less offensive point, but the opponent team got even less, thus in +/-, the opp team got more negative.

Unfortunately, that is not see in this season, and somehow the trend got transferred to Jeremy, when Jeremy is on court, the opp team FG% is less than when he is off court. And opp team got positive +/- when Jeremy off court, but is -5.9 when Jeremy is on court. That is not the case with Beverley now.

Summary

At the season start, we discussed whom should start between Beverley and Jeremy, and we could see that though Jeremy help the team offensively, Beverley got an edge on the defensive side. Though it is hard to judge which side we should focus, but none-the-less, the team go with Beverley.

However, at this stage, we could see that in this season, Jeremy improved the offensive side, and kept his advantage on the offensive end impact to the team, yet improved also in the defensive side. We don't see the advantage of Beverley shown in the defensive side in the team at this stage, and yet we see that advantage with Jeremy playing with team in both offensive end and defensive end.

Now to be fair, I like Beverley, he worked hard and I'm sure he improved overall in his game. But, our team changed with personal now, now with DH and Asik on team, the defensive end is better covered with better help, thus Beverley's advantage got shrieked, but his disadvantage side in organize the offense got zoomed in when playing with TT, where the offense got limited as a whole team. (Jeremy play enough time with TT too, thus don't argue with me that Beverley's offense got impact by TT).

That's why the whole "fit" issue worth to be revisited to see the individual performance in the content of the team and line up.

I just don't like people now always talk about Jeremy looks so good come off the bench, and don't talk about the team fit anymore. Come on, if you put a starting caliber player on bench, they will look good anyway. But, then whether the team would benefit with him start or come off bench or not is the main thing, right?

 

However, we should notice it is a small sample size, and also there are all the impact of people are sick, injured, and most importantly, line up difference. I'd like to put a summery now just that I think the TT line up will be changed, thus now is a nice split for the team performance.

Regarding the starting or not, people argue that as long as they are playing their deserved minutes, it should be fine. But there are other impacts, when you are a reserve, you practice with reserve line up, and play more time with reserve line up. We did see that Jeremy play well with Casspi, etc. but we also see plenty of times DH did not anticipate Jeremy's pass, that's all chemistry issues that not addressed during practice.

Compare Beverley and Jeremy, obviously organize offense is Jeremy's strength, thus it is much bigger impact on Jeremy practice less with Dwight and first team. We already wasted the the training camp and preseason with the TT line up, not sure why we would like to waste more for the chemistry building within the team.

Jeremy improved his shooting and defense, so he would get his stats start or come off the bench, so to him personally, it does not matter which way. But to the team, I still see it better with Jeremy starting.

 

This data set is small but balanced, not only these two play similar time, but there is mix of them both start and come off bench.

This results does not reflect the difference of start vs. come off bench, rather just their performance when they are on court. Both of them have fair amount of time playing together with first team and second team.