Sportscenter is generally wretched regardless, but they had multiple Lin segments last night, including totally unnecessary crap like “What does Blake Griffin think of Lin? What does Shaq think of Lin?” Their half-hour NBA show had an extended segment on Lin, and perfunctory recaps of the rest of the games. Fucking NFL Live had a Lin segment.
What a bunch of unimaginative assholes. They can’t help but ruin every story by driving it into the ground because it’s easier for them to talk about the same subject for half the night than it is to come up with something interesting or informative to say about all the night’s events. Remember the old Sportscenter, when it seemed like they had some silly line to go along with every highlight? That’s because they were paying attention to all the games! Now their halfwit anchors spend most of their time before the broadcast coming up with stupid Lin puns.
Yeah, it’s Tebow Redux for ESPN, which is to say par for the course with them. I guess they needed a second person to add to their ARod-Kobe-Favre-Manning star-salivation rotation. SportsCenter is pretty much the sports equivalent of People Magazine these days.
Update: ESPN is apologizing for running a headline with an ethnic slur, for an online story about Lin’s nine turnovers in a Knick loss last night.
The headline: “Chink In The Armor”. :dubious:
Nice job, ESPN!
I told this to a non-sports fan in my household, explaining about how having nine turnovers is not a good statistic for a basketball player. She asked “Does this mean he’s a flash in the wok?” :smack:
The other side of that coin is that if Lin had been the really good high school and (admittedly lower division) college player he was and been black or even white instead of Asian-American, he’d very likely have gotten better scholarship and draft prospects than he did. He’s a real player (more orthodoxly so than Tebow) in the classic sense.
I was in Taiwan for a few days this week. Lin’s full page newspaper spreads adorned just about every other office cubicle. Jeremy was the favorite taxi driver topic, which is always a bellweather of what’s important. Let’s just say he’s never going to have to work again when his basketball run is over.
Pretty good game today, at some point you have to be concerned about the Turnovers, however (7 today). If he controls ball a little better, the game is over with 3 minutes left.
Impressive win for the Knicks but I agree the turnovers need to be worked on as the put Anthony into the mix, hopefully Lin will pass more as most of his turnovers are while setting up his own shots and not on passes.
I think half is a generous portion of right to be attributing to Mayweather. While, yes, Lin is Asian, Stern has been trying to steer the NBA into a global product in a big way, and he’s picking up a lot of stray casual fans solely because of his asian-ness, I generally believe that most casual fans are more intrigued by his unorthodox underdog story as a Harvard economics major making it in the league rather than his story as an Asian man in the league. I see his ethnicity as being the cherry on top rather than the ice cream (or even fudge) of this hyped up sundae.
He played 46 minutes last night, but he’s averaging just under 40 min per game, at least for the last 5 games. Still, it’s a lot of minutes, up near the top of the league, that’s not going to last. Lin isn’t that big, and he’s playing hard minutes, getting banged around driving to the basket.
I’m waiting for someone to break Wilt’s single season minutes per game record of 48.5.
Lin has been a very effective player but I’m curious as to why it is people think he’s such a great TEAM player. The entire offense runs through him, he scores a huge number of points and takes a lot of shots for a point guard, and the reason he makes so many turnovers is that he wants to be the guy with the ball at all times. He’s no more “team” oriented a player than most guys in the NBA.
If the defense gives him open looks, he has to take them to keep them honest. But he’s had over 10 assists in three of the last 4 games. He’s got guys like Chandler he can dish it to when he drives inside and the D collapses on him.
I would hope he’d get lots of assists, he’s the team’s point guard and they run the entire offense through him. His points-to-assists ratio is actually a bit heavy on the points side, for a point guard.
You don’t hear nearly as much talk about what an amazing team player Chris Paul is, and yet he’s been doing this for years.
That’s D’antoni’s system – pick and roll all day, lots of guard penetration. Why don’t Toney Douglas or Shumpert (when playing the point) get even close to those assist numbers?
Now Steve Nash took a lot of shots under D’antoni too, and no one ever called him selfish. Nash is actually one of the best shooters the league has ever seen, if you think about it. Without his shooting ability (and yes, volume), he doesn’t pile up nearly all of those assists. Don’t forget too, the other shooters Nash had around him as opposed to what Lin has around him now. That’s also going to skew the numbers a little towards more shots rather than assists for Lin.
First of all, Chris Paul does get plenty of credit for being one of the best PGs in the league, period. Any time some overexcited fan calls in to a radio show proclaiming Lin as the best PG in the NBA, he’s quickly told to calm down.
Second of all, anyone who can make an offensive threat out of Jared Jeffries is a good (team) point guard, I don’t care who you are.
Lin is getting credit for being a team player because the offense is working when he is playing point guard in a way that it was not earlier in the season. He’s scoring a lot of points, but they seem to be coming in the flow of the offense. He’s not stopping the ball and the whole team seems to be passing. It’s also true that the team’s top scorer has been out this entire time and the #2 scoring option missed Lin’s first handful of games. Over the longer term his points should go down with Anthony and Stoudemire back. It’s true that even considering this system, he is turning the ball over a lot and he’ll need to get better at that. But this is essentially his rookie season and he’s only been getting regular game action for two weeks.
Chris Paul gets a lot of credit for being one of the best point guard in the league and he’s transformed the Clippers this season. I’ve never heard him criticized for being a selfish player. I also don’t think a lot of unbiased witnesses expect Jeremy Lin to be on Chris Paul’s level.
