Jeremy Lin makes sense off bench
When the Houston Rockets visit the New York Knicks on Monday night, it will mark the first time that the Knickerbockers' point guard sensation from last season comes back to Madison Square Garden. That's right, the moment every New Yorker has been waiting for:
The return of Toney Douglas.
Oh, Jeremy Lin's playing, too?
In all seriousness, Lin's underwhelming play this season has made Linsanity seem like decades ago, prompting many Knicks fans to rejoice that their front office wiped its hands clean of Lin in the offseason. Rather than matching the Rockets' three-year, $25.1 million poison pill contract offer that would have forced the Knicks to pay a whopping $14.8 million in 2014-15, the Knicks let Lin and his fairy-tale story try to muster up some magic elsewhere.
And so far, it seems like a wise choice. After Houston's loss on Sunday to the Toronto Raptors in which Lin registered more turnovers than assists, the 24-year-old is now averaging a lukewarm 10.8 points and 6.0 assists and shooting just 39.5 percent from the floor. This after scoring 14.6 points per game last season with 44.6 percent shooting.
Obviously, Lin has gotten much worse, right?
Not so fast.
They say that context is everything and, in the case of Lin, this couldn't be more true. Despite the charming "Beardsanity" marketing blitz, the dirty little secret is that playing next to James Harden has sapped almost all of Lin's talent. Watching the film and digging into the numbers, it has become painfully obvious that the Lin and Harden partnership is not worth the sum of its parts.
Lin has played about 85 percent of his minutes next to Harden, so it's clear that the Rockets are desperately trying to let this duo figure things out on the court. In Sunday's embarrassing loss to arguably the NBA's worst team (right, Bargs?), Lin played all 33 of his minutes next to Harden, and the Rockets were minus-7 with the tandem on the court, which coincidentally turned out to be the final deficit.
This insistence to play them together is a problem once you take a whiff of Lin's putrid numbers while playing next to the Beard. On a per-36-minute basis, Lin has averaged 10.7 points, 6.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds with a ghastly 46.5 true shooting percentage (TS%) to go along with a 12.1 player efficiency rating, according to the NBA.com's StatsCube tool. You know who else has a 46.5 percent TS%? B.J. Mullens.
But look what happens to Lin's numbers in the 106 minutes he has played when Harden hits the bench: 19.7 points, 7.5 assists, 5.1 rebounds with an above-average 55.4 TS% and a 17.7 PER.
That's pretty darn good. If those numbers look familiar, there's a reason for it. Check out Lin's per-36 minute stat line in New York last season: 19.6 points, 8.3 assists and 4.1 rebounds. 55.2 TS% and a 19.9 PER.
What we're seeing here is when Lin plays without Harden, his shooting percentages and scoring rates are almost identical to his numbers from last season. In other words, he has shown he can still be the player that took the world by storm last season. But when he plays next to the ball-dominant shooting guard, everything changes. Context, as you can see, is incredibly important.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why Lin hasn't been a perfect complement next to Harden. They're both masters of the pick-and-roll, but the problem is that they can't run a pick-and-roll at the same time. Because Harden is the better player of the two, Lin usually plays off the ball and lets Harden go to work. But if Lin had a reliable spot-up jump shot, this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, Lin ranks 79th among 121 players in catch-and-shoot efficiency this season, according to SynergySports (minimum 50 such shots). Ray Allen, he is not.
Here's the most alarming trend when Lin co-pilots with Harden: Lin is taking more 3-pointers than free throw attempts. That's astonishing once you consider that Lin used to frequent the charity stripe practically every time down the floor during the height of Linsanity. Again, beware of the Harden effect. Next to Harden this season, Lin averages 2.1 free throw attempts and 2.9 3-point attempts per 36 minutes. That's not healthy for Lin.
But without Harden on the court? Lin visits the free throw line more than three times as often (6.5 attempts per 36 minutes) while his attempts from beyond the arc essentially doesn't change (3.1 attempts). Lin's averages last season: 7.0 free throw attempts and 2.9 attempts from deep. Mirror images.
Not to beat a dead horse, but the numbers tell us that the only difference between the current Lin and Linsanity appears to be Harden's presence. Now what can the Rockets do about it?
It's really quite simple: It's time for Kevin McHale to bring Lin off the bench, a la OKC Harden.
Really, the solution to Houston's Lin-Harden problem may be turning Lin into Harden. But "benching" Lin right after handing him a $25 million contract might seem like a PR nightmare, especially once you consider that Lin might actually start the All-Star Game (he's currently third in the Western Conference backcourt voting).
But look around the league and you'll see the common denominator for the top-five offenses: a score-first wing anchoring the second-unit. Ray Allen in Miami. Jamal Crawford in Los Angeles. Manu Ginobili in San Antonio. Kevin Martin in Oklahoma City. J.R. Smith in New York. The average 2012-13 salary of those players: $7.5 million, just a Harden hair below Lin's $8.3 million price tag. There are precedents here.
The Rockets aren't close to being in the same conversation as those elite offenses yet and the calendar still reads "December," so worrying about Lin and Harden's chemistry might be a bit premature. But if the Rockets want Linsanity, they should at least attempt to recreate a Linsanity environment.
What's most frustrating is that Lin scored 38 points sans-Harden last Monday against the San Antonio Spurs -- arguably the best team in the league -- and yet a week later, McHale still refuses to stagger Lin's and Harden's minutes. If Harden continues to play 38.9 minutes per game, Lin should be featured as the No. 1 option for those 10 minutes that Harden sits.
Though it might make Madison Square Garden shake from all the laughter in the stands, starting a rejuvenated Toney Douglas as a "3-and-D" specialist over Lin on Monday makes a ton of basketball sense. The numbers show that a Harden and Douglas pairing leads to an offense that scores 106 points per 100 possessions, which is five points more efficient than the production of a Lin-Harden pairing. That's no small thing.
It bears mentioning that Lin is still just 24 years old and also coming off offseason knee surgery. He still has room to grow as a professional basketball player, considering he has only 87 games under his belt. Since 1995, only one other player has averaged 15 points, 7 assists, 4 rebounds and 2 steals per 36 minutes in their first three seasons in the league. His name: Chris Paul.
Linsanity may be impossible to replicate and Monday's environment in Madison Square Garden may not be the wisest setting to experiment with Lin coming off the bench, but the evidence is clear: Get Lin the ball and he can be an $8 million player. There's no reason why the Rockets shouldn't at least try bringing Lin off the bench, like Harden used to for Oklahoma City.
If nothing else, imagine the dramatic scene if Lin made his entrance by walking to the scorer's table in the middle of Monday's game. Now that is theater fit for Broadway.
the disrespect
