Understanding How Well Lin & Beverley Are Playing In 2013 Preseason

The guards will be Lin, Beverley, Harden, and Garcia. If Lin and Beverley combine for 60 mpg, that means Harden and Garcia will split up the remaining 36 minutes at SG between them.

 

Yeah, but that would pretty much work out to 36 minutes for Harden and 0 for Garcia.

Extra minutes for Garcia at SG will be coming from Lin or Beverley's total minutes.

 

But Harden and Garcia will also get minutes at SF, so not necessarily. I posted about it here:

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=8314363#post8314363

 

I did too. :_)

 

So Lin is playing better.

Start him.

 

There is no sample size, Beverley has never really started - outside of the playoffs (in which he played very well in). Then again, there's no sample size for Lin playing with Howard either - this year's roster is very different than last year's, so in a sense, we're starting from ground zero with either PG.

There's only one ball in every lineup, so USG rates are critical in understanding which lineup could feasibly work offensively (when you take into account play-styles, player caliber, and other factors).

Both guys would be complementary pieces in the starting lineup regardless, so it's more about the role than the player's "maximum capability".

I dislike the simplistic notion that because Lin's a better passer, the ball movement will be better in the lineup. The opposite is far more likely to be true - as Beverley is less likely to use a possession and more likely to swing the ball, and thus Harden/Dwight (who we'd rather have "using" possessions than either of Lin/Beverley) are going to get more touches.

Lin's style of play will end up in one of two ways if he starts - either he continues using possessions and takes touches away from Harden/Dwight, or he doesn't get as many opportunities to create as he should, and is not fully utilized. We've seen that he's at his best when he leads an offense, and gets to "use" more possessions - and he'd get that chance off the bench.

Beverley's style of play (low-usage) is bound to end up the same way in any lineup. He gets the ball to the go-to guy(s), hustles, rebounds, defends, hits some open threes and will occasionally drive. You know what you're getting from Beverley, and it's not dependent on his touches. And that's the type of player that fits perfectly with Harden, Dwight and Parsons.

 

I don't think the stats definitively show such a thing. NBA EFF is but one metric.

 

Yeah, good entry passers are usually "smart" players who make quick decisions and understand spacing and angles. Sometimes the difference between a great entry pass and a turnover is a split second timing and a slight angle deviation.

 

That's because Omri was not throwing an entry pass.

He was just throwing the ball in the general direction of Dwight.

I started to chuckle after the second Hail Mary.

 

My question is what is the sample size of bev & Lin that shows that they are capable of playing well against other NBA starting guards particularly when they are high up on the scouting report and the focus of other teams defensive pressures. Just because we added DH12 to the team doesn't mean you disregard the entire fact that one guy started for every game last year & played well (82 games) whereas another guy started for 5 games and played well. Do you get what I mean? We have an 100 game NBA sample of quality starts against quality NBA competition for one player & 5 games of quality starts for another against quality competition. You can't just ignore that and say that we are starting from ground zero because we added DH12 that makes little sense.

 

I watch a few pacers games & I know neither of there guards can throw an effective entry pass to Roy Hibbert.

 

the worst case scenario is if howard/harden use up all of the possessions, then its just going to be iso harden alternating with howard posting. everyone else standing around waiting to chuck a 3. ball movement goes to hell. dont tell me you didnt see a few possessions that looked like this during the preseason. small sample size? of course. a taste of things to come? dont discount it right away. it could happen, especially early on, before everyone develops chemistry...

 

I think we heard this repeated time and again that it is impossible to simulate real game time speed. I don't doubt they practiced this during summer. I am not an expert but from my observation, a great post pass is when the post player gets the ball at the right time and correct angle so that once he has the ball in his hands, he is in a very distinct and dominant position to score. I believe that it will take some time for our post passers to get a better feel on how Dwight fights for positioning and how he wants to get the ball. It might not be as easy as we think it is.

 

The fact that the numbers for Lin and Beverley put them in the top 10 NBA players last year leads me to believe that these numbers are outliers and have little ability to predict future performance. The numbers would have us believe that they are almost on the level of Chris Paul and better than all other PG's in the league. Regardless of how much I am pulling for these two PG's, I must ask the question what real word circumstances combined to create these numbers and will these circumstances occur again. The presence of outliers in a data set usually indicates a calculation error or that the data were under very highly unusual conditions. For example, a significant accident happens during the Indy 500 and many of the best driven cars are crippled and the data of this race is used to indicate how good the drivers that finished are. Just to make my point in Basketball. The Heat Lost to the Wizards last night. Watch the game replay and see what was different in this game when compared to a regular season game between the heat and Wizards. This game IMO is an outlier and has almost no predictive value. I am a great fan of Lin and a fan of Beverley's and I hope I am wrong.

 

gene18, it's a sample size thing. Low sample size means high variance, which means a higher percentage of players will have inflated numbers. Its why after the first week of the season there will invariably be several players with a PER over 25, even though at season's end there's rarely more than 3. Lin's and Beverley's numbers will almost certainly "regress to the mean".

 

With Harden and Howard drawing as much attention as they will, I imagine Lin & Beverley will regress to a bit above the mean.

 

You definitely don't have any disagreement with you there. I guess I was just understating how difficult it is to learn that.

 

Yes, you play your best players. Unless some real problem exists in a players' fit. or something major happens.

The bench unit playing poorly in game 1 because TJones and Bev were trying to make it work with 3 new hires, is not that. That wasn't the Rockets' bench, it wasn't even close. Rockets' bench minus Asik,and minus Garcia. - doesn't even make sense to say that.