Actually CP3 is playing the smallest minutes of his career because the Clippers are so deep with guys like Bledsoe & Jamal & Lamar coming off the bench. Tony Paker is also much older than Lin. Spurs fans have been upset because when Parker sits the offense goes to hell (manu has been unhealthy) but Pop won't ride Tony to the grave. To be honest Lin should be averaging more than 33 mpg considering how young he is, what our back up pg position is like, & considering that Lin is conditioned to play heavy minutes. I don't agree with much of the nonsense steal&deal says but I do agree with this.
It was late at night and I may have made an assumption but what about you? You took PG's who are 18th and 19th in minutes played for your example. Actually Lin is tied for 19th in minutes played for PG's. I'm not talking about averages though - I'm talking about specific games where Lin sat for no good reason. Some of them we lost loke the Dec 8 Dallas game and the Portland game wehere he sat the whole OT.
His rebuilding team is on pace to make the playoffs despite being the youngest team in the league with the smallest payroll....just sayin...
Wait, let me get this straight. Jeremy Lin, who played huge minutes for the first time in his career, got season-ending injury 25 games since getting big minutes, and barely ready for this season due to that injury, started off the season somewhat injured... This is the guy you believe the Rockets need to give heavy minutes to, and think he's conditioned for it? And you really a Jeremy Lin fan?
He's healthy now, 23 years old and playing less than average minutes for a starting PG. So yeah he should be playing more. The team needs him in there because we really don't have very strong backups at the PG position.
Who cares? The team is winning...I know that's irrelevant to some fans, but I wouldn't care if Lin was only playing 2 minutes a game if the Rockets were winning.
Uh what? Maybe Del Negro hates Paul, but that's because Paul's a douchebag and seems to be a coach killer. There's no way in hell Pops hates Parker though, those guys have been through hell and back the past decade or so together, and Parker took a massive paycut to stay in SA and compete. Any poster accusing Mchale of hating on Lin because he was cut is just dumb, the reason Lin was cut was already documented, it has nothing to do with race and more to do with us needing Dalembert and Lin being the only one with an unguaranteed contract. He's playing less because he can't shoot 3's effectively, and there are a lot of times he just defers to Harden on the court. If you think about it Lin only came back from season ending injury, so he's definitely 50% of what he was pre-Linsanity. Maybe another training camp of shooting and strength conditioning will get him back to what he was but right now I don't think he deserves heavy mins at the pg spot.
We just lost a game against Denver where Lin and Asik's sat a lot in the 3rd & 4th Q. Sitting Asik too long in the 4th hurt more as Denver killed us inside. This is also why Smith has fallen out of the rotation. Besides McHale misused both Lin and Harden for half the season by playing Harden at PG and Lin as SG. When he finally started playing Lin as the primary ball handler we've won 6 of 8.
Lin had 31 minutes in that game....that's starters minutes. The reason we lost that game is because Asik had 7 turnovers and the team was just shooting cold as ice. You miss 11 FT's and 19 3's, you lose most of the time.
Who ya gonna play at PG then? Harden already plays more than anyone in the NBA, TD is really a SG and Beverley is inexperienced. Lin has proven this year he is at least an average PG and deserves to play at least avg minutes. Right now he's playing below avg minutes.
Sounds like a good reason to get a PG some experience....Lin isn't a star, he doesn't "deserve" anything more than starters minutes, he's always been getting those so just drop it. Try being a fan of the team rather than just a fan of one specific player for a while. It's fun I promise.
If I looked up the stats I'd see that he is averaging 32.8 minutes per game, tied for 19th in the NBA among PG's.....refresh my memory, how many starting PG's are there in the NBA?
So 31 minutes would put him where? Probably last among starting PG's. You're just proving my point - he's being underutilized.
Read what I just wrote.....32.8 minutes is what he is getting, 19th in the league. That's not under-utilizing a player who has conditioning problems.
Let me try to explain this better even though I have no idea what you are confused about. Lin had a season ending injury in NY because he wasn't conditioned to be a starter because he never started. He didn't use his off season to work on that because he was a bench warmer. Lin got a 25 million dollar contract last summer & was pretty much told that he would be the starting PG. So I would assume that he spent last summer conditioning himself to be the starting PG & playing big minutes because he isn't an idiot & that would be the smart thing to do. Lin himself said that he lost weight & added muscle & worked on his leg strength to last a season. McHale himself said that Lin came into training camp in great shape. So yes Lin is conditioned for heavy minutes. Hopefully that makes you less confused.
*Look up Lin's stats. Sees 32.8mpg, ranked 18th among PGs in a league where there are 30 PGs* I don't know what's worse. That you don't know math, or that you count Monte Ellis and Brandon Jennings as both PGs. I
