True, also if Knicks hit 30% of their 3s they would have won by 10. If they made 80% of their fts they would have won. If the refs didn't swallowed those whistles on lins drive, they would have won. As much as I hate to say this, Lins the reason they kept it close. No, you didn't watch the game.
obviously, he didnt. he quoted me the stat line of Ayon's game tonight, instead of telling me how great Ayon did. These guys have been waiting for a while for this. Thats cool. There are always outcasts outside mainstream.
I still don't buy Lin as a superstar. I need to see him sustain this level of performance a lot longer. It's pretty cool what he's done, but 318 minutes is a very small sample size. I do buy that he is a starting caliber point guard, and probably a very good one. He was clearly underestimated by many teams including the Knicks until they were forced to play him. Still remains to be seen whether he will be a top 5 PG in the NBA, in the long term. Is it possible, yes, but I wouldn't bank on it right now.
Obviously. Remember 5-6 years ago when Ray Allen went down, and Flip Murry scored like 10-11 straight 20+ points in his absence. It's all about opportunity, and Lin is taking advantage of it. He is showing he belongs in this league. But superstar? or even all-star? way too early to tell. I just feel bad if he does fall down, the media will kill him. They have hyped him up way too much.
You are one of those you who won't go ALL Lin. I won't say you don't have the balls. You are just leaving a back door open if he pans out, or if he fails. You have been diplomatic.
No, I just don't believe in knee-jerking. Guys can have hot stretches, I want to see at least 20 or so games before I really start believing. We all saw how amazing Lowry was after ~15 games, he's still been pretty good but it's easy to see that his play has fallen off some toward his career averages.
It was obvious he was not in Lebron's stratosphere although Lebron is playing efficiently as ever for 25 games or more so far. Lin is hovering around allstar status, star status, came down from his superstar reigning of 6 games.
What Lin needs to do is score first and pass second. And I don't mean turn into a ballhog. Lin has a natural affinity towards passing matched with above average court vision and above average passing skills. Even so he's forcing it too much and trying too hard to be a playmaker. When Lin was more concerned on scoring and less concerned at making plays he played a lot better and committed a lot less turnovers.
Yeah. The dude is no Steve Nash. His court vision is pretty good but he doesn't quite have Steve Nash telepathy lol.
Bummer that Knicks lost but considering how awful Shump/Fields/Novak shot and how well Ariza/Gustavo/Vasquez played, they were due to lose this one. I hope everyone doesn't overreact over this, although I wouldn't mind the hype just dying down a bit so we could just focus about basketball and not all the drama. Lin's TOs were awful but I'm actually relieved because he made adjustments at halftime and only committed one after committing eight in the first half.
His postgame conference. Notice how during the win streak he says 'we' and now the lost, he says 'I'. What a humble man.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1D6pK2iNe-8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> His postgame conference. Notice how during the win streak he says 'we' and now the lost, he says 'I'. What a humble man.
For the first part I said Lin shot bad for a majority of the game and missed three consecutive free throws that could have brought his team back. He finished strong but shooting below forty percent until the last minute of the game, missing free throws that your team needed, and putting your team in a whole with bad turnovers is not a good game for a point guard. He finished string and very impressively but if he had been playing good basketball that never would have been needed. The raptors had to lay an egg in the fourth for them to even have a chance to win and if I recall correctly a fair number of the points they did score were against him. And on a side note there is a double standard for point guards and two guards. They are asked to do two different things so to have the same standard for them makes little sense but even not counting that Kobe played to keep his team in the game while lins performance should have cost his teams As far as penny goes a lot of the same about the Toronto game applies plus penny was taking much better care of the ball, shooting better from the free throw line, and rebounding. Don't get me wrong though over the six game stretch as a whole Lin was playing at a hall of fame level but the Toronto game not so much.
I think a lot of people on this board overestimate the effect of NBA experience on skill development. It is definitely an important component, but it is hard to break things down and work on stuff you're bad at in the middle of an NBA game. You just have to do your best. If you're bad at driving left, you can't just say "okay imma drive left a bunch this game". You'll wind up turning the ball over and hurting your team and get yelled at by your coach. You have to work on that sh** in practice in between games until you're good at it. This is why I always roll my eyes when people complain about Morris being in the D-league. Do you think he's not working on specific things down there in practice? For that matter, don't you think it is a better environment to break things down in since you're not as pressured to win ballgames? NBA games give you two things, they give you extra reps on things you're already capable of doing at an NBA level (so that you can improve your consistency), and they give you experience in high pressure situations so you can keep a cooler head. What I'm getting at with all of this is it DOES make a big difference that Lin is 23. He has had 3 more years of basketball practice than Wall did when Wall had his rookie season. It means his skills are more developed toward his ultimate ceiling. Within the next year or two he will probably be more or less maxed out. Wall, at age 21, still has 3-4 more years to improve before he tops out and stops getting better.
LOL at the lady wanting to be different with the "interesting" question. Why do they let people who obviously don't know anything about basketball in the press conference room? She wasn't even confident in saying "All Star Weekend?" and "Blake Griffin?" as if she it might not be the right term.
