Asking the Tough Questions: The Jeremy Lin Edition

This weekly post will delve into the most important NBA questions I have asked myself in the past week. They may be irrelevant and ridiculous, but hopefully they will be entertaining.  This week I focus on the only NBA story that matters: Jeremy Lin.

Is he for real?

I believe Lin is for real, but I definitely have some doubts.

Thus far Lin has played five very good games against the Nets, Jazz, Wizards, Lakers, and Timberwolves.  That means the point guards he has faced include Deron Williams, Devin Harris, John Wall, Derek Fisher, and Ricky Rubio.  None of these players have ever been confused with the best defensive guards in the league and most of them are considered to be well-below average defenders.  Now taking a look at his upcoming opponents, you'll find the Raptors, Kings, and Hornets, all of which feature more below-average defensive players.  I'm not trying to take anything away from Lin because he's done a great job of exploiting the teams he has played, but there is just no denying that he hasn't played the best competition in the league thus far.

With that being said, I have been very impressed with Lin's play thus far.  He has done a great job in the half-court, which is somewhat surprising because of the offense he is playing.  In Mike D'Antoni's system other point guards have been successful for short periods of time including guys like Chris Duhon and Goran Dragic, but when the success of these other point guards has come in transition.  Both Duhon and Dragic inflated their stats through the fast break and D'Antoni's "Six Seconds or Less Offense".  This has not been the case with Lin.  Lin has done most of his damage in the pick and roll action the Knicks have gotten in the half-court, which is an indication that Lin can do more than just make a variety of simple passes on 3-on-2 fast breaks.

Upon originally watching Lin, I wondered how he would do once teams were able to scout him.  In the NBA, when playing a point guard they've never really seen before most teams will just go over the top of a ball screen and try to pressure the ballhandler.  Lin is very adept at this and I would assume that after seeing him play the last few games, more teams will go under ball screens and force Lin to shoot the ball from the outside much like the Lakers did in the first quarter on Friday night.  I think this is the best way to play Lin.  The Lakers abandoned this strategy after Lin started off the game hot, but in the long run this may be the best defensive strategy considering Lin is shooting around 17% from the three point line in his NBA career.

Another thing you'll notice about Lin is his reliance on his right hand.  He loves going right.  He takes his first dribble on drives almost exclusively with his right hand.  Though he finishes very well with both his right and left hand, he doesn't penetrate very well with his left hand.  The only move he has featured to his left at this point has been a spin move that allows him to immediately switch back to his right hand.  This will be something to watch going forward as well because Lin may actually have strong moves with his left hand, but no NBA team has forced him to show off any of those moves.

Is this just another instance of East Coast bias from ESPN?

Anytime a story based out of New York City or Boston is featured heavily on ESPN people immediately complain about East Coast Bias.  This is a very simple problem to see while living in the Midwest and at times, especially when the Red Sox and Yankees are playing, I've even subscribed to it, but I don't believe East Coast Bias has anything to do with this story.

This story would just simply not mean as much if it wasn't occurring in New York City.  Whether you like it or not, the Knicks are one of the most storied NBA franchises of all-time.  They play in the most important basketball venue in the world, Madison Square Garden, and New York City cares more about basketball than just about any other city on Earth.  No one fantasizes about playing in Bankers Life Fieldhouse or the Bradley Center.  This simply just doesn't matter as much if it isn't in New York.  The Knicks were struggling to figure out how to win basketball games, Mike D'Antoni was getting awfully close to losing his job, and the Knicks playoff chances were looking awfully bleak until Jeremy Lin came around.  He has likely saved D'Antoni's job and quite possibly made the Knicks into a contender in the Eastern Conference.

How did this take so long?

This is the question I really have no answer for.  I understand that Jeremy Lin is not a big name and had never been overly successful in the NBA before he came to New York, but before playing Jeremy Lin the Knicks were getting absolutely nothing out of the point guard position. 

Toney Douglas was the first player to attempt playing point guard for the Knicks.  He failed miserably.  He was not much of a creator and started to shoot a bad percentage from the three point line which is really the only elite skill Douglas had.  Then the Knicks decided to try Mike Bibby's corpse for a game.  Believe it or not, Bibby didn't play well.  The Knicks then turned to Iman Shumpert and Carmelo Anthony.  Neither of them played very well out of position.  After all of these experiments, the Knicks finally turned to Jeremy Lin.

How did it take D'Antoni so long to put Jeremy Lin on the floor?  I know he isn't a big name or anything, but why not at least try it?  There was really nothing to lose.  It's not like the Knicks really had much going for them at the time, so why not try someone that was a little off-the-wall?

Was it necessary for him to sleep on couches for the last month?

This is a hotly contested question in my group of friends.  I contend that it was completely necessary while some of my roommates believe that he could have easily bought himself a place to live.

I believe it was necessary for him to sleep on couches because of his lack of job security.  Though Lin played the entire season with the Warriors last year, he was cut by the Rockets earlier this year and was signed by the Knicks on December 27th.  In my mind, it would have been pretty presumptious of a career backup to buy himself an apartment or loft in one of the most expensive cities on Earth.  He could have been cut by the Knicks very easily in the last few weeks.  Just looking at Marc Stein's Twitter feed (@ESPNSteinLine) from the last few days proves this point.  The Knicks were strongly leaning toward releasing Lin before he broke out against the Nets.  The man that the whole world is seemingly watching now was almost dropped just a week ago!  I also argued that with the ridiculous NBA schedule this season Lin would have had no time to check out any apartments because of an utter lack of free time.  To this point, the Knicks have had 19 days without a game.  Taking a look at the schedule I would assume roughly ten of those days were travel days, which would leave roughly nine days for Lin to look for a place to live.

The argument against led by my roommate and friend Oliver Wiseman goes a little something like this.  Jeremy Lin was an NBA player for an entire season.  In his season with the Golden State Warriors, Lin made $500,000 and signed a three-year contract with Nike.  He believes that with this money he could have easily bought himself an apartment.  As an NBA player, there is no reason for you to live on a couch at any point in your life because you make more money than just about any else on Earth even as a reserve.  Also, he argued that when you make as much money as an NBA player, there is no reason to need to look at the place you are going to live.  You can simply have your agent take care of it and get the job done.

Even with this argument, I believe it would have been fiscally irresponsible for Lin to purchase an apartment in New York, but I'll leave it up for you to decide.

Asking the Tough Questions

This weekly post will delve into the most important NBA questions I have asked myself in the past week. They may be irrelevant and ridiculous, but hopefully they will be entertaining.

Is David Kahn actually a genius?

The Timberwolves have turned into one of the most entertaining teams in the league this season.  They are one of the few teams in the league that you can watch any night and find a team playing great basketball.  All of this is due to the team David Kahn put together.

While in Minnesota, every move made by David Kahn has been scrutinized and for very good reason.  He has made some really, really dumb moves.  Bill Simmons covered earlier this week in his column, but here's a quick recap: Johnny Flynn over Stephen Curry, trading Ty Lawson, drafting Wes Johnson, and overpaying a lot of really bad players including Darko Milicic.  While in Minnesota, he hit one home run and it might be a 600 foot bomb: RUBIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Rubio is breathtaking on the floor.  And excuse me while I hop on the Cliche Train, but he sees the game steps ahead of other players, threads the needle on passes consistently, and is the definition of floor general.  I can't think of a player in the league that wouldn't want to play with him.  He makes the game fun and gets each of his teammates involved which is truly the sign of a great point guard.  Sorry for the gushing.  I probably just sounded like a middle school girl describing the cute boy in class, but I really do love watching Rubio play.  I watched every second of the first five Timberwolves games this season just to watch him play.

Even with the wizardry of Rubio, I still think David Kahn is an awful GM.  He proved this in his most recent move.

Last week, the Timberwolves signed Kevin Love to a 4 year contract with a player option after the third year.  Love wanted to sign a 5 year maximum contract.  Love wanted to become the face of the franchise.  Kahn decided against signing him to the maximum contract.

Let's take a closer look at this.  Minnesota is very cold.  Minnesota is a miniscule market.  Kevin Love actually wanted to sign the maximum contract and Kahn decided not to keep him in Minnesota.  Why would you not want to keep one of the 15 best players in the league on your team for five years?  I have no idea.

The only conceivable reason to do this is to save the designated player contract for Ricky Rubio.  This is a moronic idea.  Obviously, Kahn did a great job drafting and believing in Rubio, but he may not be able to look at the situation unbiasedly.  Rubio was not happy about being drafted by Minnesota.  He attempted to force his way into a larger city before finally relenting and coming to Minnesota.  Does David Kahn really think he can convince Rubio to stay in Minnesota?  If he has struggled this much to get a supporting cast in the three years before Rubio's arrival, what would make him think he could get the job done now?

Does the NBA need to institute the Lew Alcindor rule?

The Lew Alcindor Rule was the rule established by the NCAA that banned dunking from 1967 to 1976. 

Yup.  I just said the NBA should ban dunking.  Why?

In the last week, two of the most amazing dunks I have ever seen have occurred.  Lebron James jumped over another player to grab a one-handed alley oop and Blake Griffin dunked over Kendrick Perkins.  I described it with as little excitement as possible because apparently that's how dunks are treated now.

Michael Wilbon, Jalen Rose, and Magic Johnson all agreed that Lebron's dunk wasn't in his top 800.  They agreed that Lebron had three other dunks in that game that were better.  Look at this dunk.



He jumped completely over another human being to dunk the basketball.  I don't care if that man was John Lucas III and he's not even six feet tall.  Lebron jumped over another player in game action.  That is insane.  How can someone say this isn't in his Top 800 dunks?  Are people just immune to his amazing athletic feats?  Are they just numb to the ridiculous plays Lebron makes?

After watching the Blake Griffin dunk I proceeded to retweet every relevant tweet about it for about 15 minutes and then I saw this tweet from my radio show's co-host Cody Steger: "On the Griffin dunk: it was a solid dunk, but i've seen better..."



What kind of world do we live in where people can't get excited about either of those dunks?  If I would have shown those two plays to Dr. James Naismath, I'm pretty sure his head would have exploded on the spot because he simply would not have been able to comprehend what had just happened in the game he invented.  Or maybe he would have reacted like Father Pat in Semi-Pro.

How good is your "best shooter" when he plays for five seconds the entire game?

While watching the end of the Knicks-Celtics game last night, I couldn't have been more surprised that Steve Novak missed the game winner.  It's crazy that a guy that hasn't played the entire game can't hit a game winner.  I mean there is not a better warmup than sitting on the bench for 47 minutes and 50 seconds.

What are coaches thinking when they do this?  Using the guy as a decoy is one thing, but actually giving him the shot is another.  I'm not sure that Mike D'Antoni know this, but Carmelo Anthony plays for the Knicks and he just happens to be one of the best in the entire league at finishing games.  Just awful.

How will I manage to bring up the Super Bowl in an NBA column?

Whoops.  I don't think I have really in-depth thoughts about the actual game, but I do have some in-depth thoughts regarding the hatred I have for this game.  On one hand, you have the Patriots who I can just not stand.  I respect Brady, but just hate Belichek.  On the other hand, you have Eli Manning who I have very little respect for.  I will be sick to my stomach if somehow after this game, people see Eli as the better Manning.  So, for me, this game is a lose-lose.  I'll take the Patriots for the win though.  New England 27, New York 23.