Inexperience - barely started a full season's worth of games. Inconsistent usage on offense - rarely gets to play his style of pg (pnrs featuring him); instead, having to do lots of hand-offs, spot up shooting and playing off the ball; also gets benched a lot rather than be allowed to play through mistakes. Streaky shot has really hurt his overall game. Rockets wings don't move very well without the ball - leaving him few options when his drives are thwarted. Lacks the one-on-one ability of elite pgs, made worse by the absence of a mid-range game. Quality of competition - full season in the WC is much tougher than his relatively soft schedule in NY last season. Misperception of bad defense - there's not one pg in the NBA who can regularly stop other good pgs - overreaction to each time a Westbrook, Parker or Lillard scoring on Lin unfounded. That said, he does overhelp way too much. Most importantly: inconsistent expectations - Linsanity set the bar so high that when he fails to get 20 and 8, people are disappointed. Dude is what he is right now - a serviceable pg with flashes of upside.
because he's YOUNG and only has one season of non-garbage time games under his belt. and btw, he's doing better than or on par with steve nash, rajon rondo, jason kidd, and tony parker at this point in their careers.
The coaches only allow him to play the point for 7 minutes during the first quarter (which is already better than none compared to first half of the season). For the remaining time in a game the point is shared among 3 perimeter players. This actually is good for his development of a more complete skill set, but bad for the team since Jeremy is natural in directing traffic on the court.
THIS. he's been very consistent in getting 10-14pt/game, and 5-7 assists per game. sometimes it take a whole game to get those numbers, and sometimes it take 1 quarter with the rest 3 quarters being very quiet. but game to game, very consistent with big scoring games here and there. and 2 steals per game. i think when people say why he's been inconsistent, they really meant why couldn't he score 28 pts every game...
Maybe you mean stamina? Even then I don't really agree. In terms of athleticism, Lin is well above average even in terms of NBA PG's. There's test results out there that prove it.
Because coach has limited Lin's role to be a Mario Chalmers type off the ball PG .... how consistent are his ppg and assist #'s compared to Mario Chalmers?
Lin's got a lot of similarities with a young Tony Parker with his ability to get to the rim and his pretty ordinary 3point shooting. But Parker could always rely on his ability to finish when he got close and had a great midrange shot that he could turn to when his outside shooting wasn't going in. Lin's 3 point shooting will get better like it does when most players get older, but the real question is whether he can make his teardrop go in more consistently and finish when he's close to the rim. He's already better than Rafer in his ability to pass and run the offense, but his inconsistent floater is what probably reminds people of Rafer. When both his 3s and floater are falling, he looks like Linsanity.
Good post. I also think that Tony Parker is a good comp if Lin reaches his full potential. There are similarities in what they try to do with their styles. Parker himself even made comments about it. Maybe Jeremy should seek out Tony in the offseason and try to learn/workout with him.
Honestly, I think Lin is being set up to fail. Explain to me how Lin is outplaying Rubio in every statistical category, yet Minny puts the ball in Rubio's hands, while Lin gets to stand in the corner. Does that make any sense to you guys???
My take: 1) Stamina - In back to back games it really shows. 2) Shooting - Not a good shooter yet which effects his overall game. 3) Still learning - first full season as a starter
Right on. You haven't even mentioned the times Lin got prematurely benched. How can any one improve his numbers on the bench? Has any one actually looked at his playing minutes when his numbers were low? Wouldn't this be the reason why Lin has been inconsistent as the OP said? That should be on McHale.
Learning a teardrop/floater would help Lin tremendously as well. Most of the time he has to take it right next to the basket which leads to getting blocked or taking a lot of physical punishment.
Isn't it obvious that McHale doesn't want Lin to score a lot of points (he was very specific about the 29 points that Lin scored in the Thunder game, just two days before he made that statement after the Nets game)? He even came up with a delusional number (9) in turnovers to make it sound like a legitimate reason why he doesn't want Lin to score a lot. It was totally unfair and demoralizing to Lin when McHale said "Jeremy we are trying to win games" right after Lin helped win two big games. Are we all assuming that Lin doesn't know that if he takes more shots his PTS would go way up even with his current FG% of 43.3% and 3P% of 31.8? These percentages actually have been improving month by month this season. Lin has a very high BBIQ. He has been sacrificing himself so his teammates could get better shots, and thus contributing to team wins. This may be a different perspective than that of McHale and many of our fans here. All debates about Lin's inconsistency would be meaningless if we don't look into the environmental restrictions that Lin has been under. For any performance to happen, you need to be able to do it, willing to do it and allowed to do it. Are we really giving Lin enough benefit of the doubt that he might not have been allowed to do some of things we fans want him to do?
