Hmm... I looked into his stats because I don't pay much attention to the Knicks. At any rate I think Jeremy Lin is definitely going to have a good deal of trouble succeeding long term. There are a number of concerns there, but by far the biggest is TOs. In each game he's played, he has had the most TOs of any player. You can coach that away but one of two things will happen, his FGs will go up and his ASSTs will go d…
4 TOs is very low considering his usage rate. The TOs will go down once Melo plays iso.
I'd like to add the Knicks gave serious consideration to cutting him from the roster hours before his first start because his 30-day contract was set to expire in a few days.
Where did you hear this? I follow the Knicks closely and never heard they were considering cutting him.
This is true. RealGM knicks forums had a thread about this.
Just some background for those not familiar with "Lin-sanity": - He was a great college player at Harvard but wasn't drafted. - He was cut by 2 NBA teams before the Knicks picked him up. - He was probably the 4th point guard on the Knicks depth chart. - The Knicks have been terrible this year and are currently without their 2 best players (Amare Stoudamire and Carmello Anthony) - The Knicks have now won 4 straight ga…
That's insane. It's been suggested he was passed over because he's of Chinese decent. You'd think the teams would be climbing over themselves to get a good player with a Chinese name, because that's a way to get tens (or hundreds) of millions of Chinese fans. He's not the next Yao (since he's American born, for starters), but he'd still be worth a lot purely for the fans he'd draw. While "hundreds of millions" is oft…
I highly doubt any team passed over him because of his ethnicity. That's insanely counter-productive and something that doesn't happen in modern sports, especially the NBA. Yao Ming was a #1 draft pick. The NBA knows it's strong position in China.
In response to the turnovers, I want to mention that there are a couple reasons for that. The first is that he's playing PG and has to handle the ball a lot more than anyone else on the team right now. Combined with his minutes, that's generally going to give you more TO's just because of the amount of time with the ball and the probability of a player of his skill level losing it (although this point doesn't account…
Aren't we also talking about a tiny sample size with the Knicks? And one of those games I believe he had 8 turnovers. That could easily be skewing these early numbers. Is there any evidence of turnover concern from his time at Harvard?
Yes - way too small of a sample and given that, some of the hype in this topic is completely unwarranted. Comparing his PER to Lebron? Let's see him hold a PER close to 30 for a full season, or over multiple seasons.
I hope he continues to do well, but some of the comparisons that are being made are without merit.
Just some background for those not familiar with "Lin-sanity": - He was a great college player at Harvard but wasn't drafted. - He was cut by 2 NBA teams before the Knicks picked him up. - He was probably the 4th point guard on the Knicks depth chart. - The Knicks have been terrible this year and are currently without their 2 best players (Amare Stoudamire and Carmello Anthony) - The Knicks have now won 4 straight ga…
Not to mention, he led our basketball team to the state championship in high school, but got little to no recognition from college scouts. I would guess that most state championship winning starting point guards in high school would at least get 1 scholarship offer. Jeremy Lin got none. It just makes his success more shocking/amazing at this point.
This isn't necessarily true (most state championship winning starting point guards getting scholarships). How big was his high school? Upper division programs (large schools) get significantly more attention than smaller schools.
That's insane. It's been suggested he was passed over because he's of Chinese decent. You'd think the teams would be climbing over themselves to get a good player with a Chinese name, because that's a way to get tens (or hundreds) of millions of Chinese fans. He's not the next Yao (since he's American born, for starters), but he'd still be worth a lot purely for the fans he'd draw. While "hundreds of millions" is oft…
I highly doubt any team passed over him because of his ethnicity. That's insanely counter-productive and something that doesn't happen in modern sports, especially the NBA. Yao Ming was a #1 draft pick. The NBA knows it's strong position in China.
Is Yao Ming the best comparison though? He's 7'6", something that sets him apart more than ethnicity would. I wouldn't be surprised if Lin's did play a part, maybe not overtly, just because Asians in the NBA are fairly underrepresented.
That's insane. It's been suggested he was passed over because he's of Chinese decent. You'd think the teams would be climbing over themselves to get a good player with a Chinese name, because that's a way to get tens (or hundreds) of millions of Chinese fans. He's not the next Yao (since he's American born, for starters), but he'd still be worth a lot purely for the fans he'd draw. While "hundreds of millions" is oft…
I highly doubt any team passed over him because of his ethnicity. That's insanely counter-productive and something that doesn't happen in modern sports, especially the NBA. Yao Ming was a #1 draft pick. The NBA knows it's strong position in China.
I don't know. That one Chinese player was highly sought after in the last decade in the NBA does not convince me that unconscious racial bias hasn't played a role here, not that I think malice has either.
It seems obvious that Lin's Chinese descent is at least still a novelty in the NBA
Erm, as I understand it most NBA organizations have significant statistics/economics departments. I don't think the practice of going by looks or things of that nature is dominant any more except for sports pundits trying to rationalize events after they have happened.
Yes, some NBA clubs have started to spend money on quant/stats but I wouldn't say there is a majority cultural buy-in particularly in regards to scouting. Mostly it is in the form of a stat guy assistance coach who will recommend how to play opponents. It is gaining popularity. Boston Celtics are one of the pioneers. The Nets even Bought a sports video/stats startup recently. Time will tell if talent evaluation will…
WHAT!?!?
Name ONE team with a stats department that consists of a SINGLE Assistant Coach.
What you said is not true. Stats is HUGE! Try to get drafted if the stats department gives you a thumbs down.
How is this anywhere the same? In a scam, you don't have any way of making any future correct predictions--it's just random. This analyst has a reasoned system that can be tested against past players and against future prospects. Sure, there's going to be someone out there that picks Jeremy Lin. But the trick is, can you correctly identify players who are already known to be good based on their college stats, make th…
In the scam one person is making loads of predictions knowing that some will pay off. In this story, lots of people are making predictions and again, the chances are some of them will be right. Read the comment I replied to, his point was exactly the same as the scam's logic, which is basically that if enough monkeys spend enough time with typewriters... etc.
There's a very important difference that you're missing. In the scam you're applying you're random machine over all possible results. In the sabermetrician example, the random machine is being applied across methodologies of picking prospects, ie bunch of different "moneyball" hobbyists trying out different stats and weights to rank players. The end result is the possibility of the discovery of a very good methodology that has found stats that traditionally are not important.
In the scam one person is making loads of predictions knowing that some will pay off. In this story, lots of people are making predictions and again, the chances are some of them will be right. Read the comment I replied to, his point was exactly the same as the scam's logic, which is basically that if enough monkeys spend enough time with typewriters... etc.
There's a very important difference that you're missing. In the scam you're applying you're random machine over all possible results. In the sabermetrician example, the random machine is being applied across methodologies of picking prospects, ie bunch of different "moneyball" hobbyists trying out different stats and weights to rank players. The end result is the possibility of the discovery of a very good methodolog…
But it takes more than one result to tell whether the methodology is good or if it was just lucky - otherwise it's just a guy tossing a coin once and saying "see, I predicted heads!"