Linsanity takes over NY

The New York Knicks entered the season beaming with optimism.  Having signed defensive anchor Tyson Chandler in the off-season, the Knicks added the final piece to assembling their own "Big Three," along with Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire.  However, they would soon find their high expectations deflating as the team got off to a troubling 8-15 start.  Stoudemire seemed like a shadow of his former self, while he and Anthony struggled to run a cohesive offense together, despite their individual scoring talents.  The real issue behind their struggles though may have been that the team lacked a point guard capable of running Mike D'Antoni's offense.

Enter Jeremy Lin.

The Harvard graduate has come out of nowhere this month to take the league by storm.  After being planted on the bench for the majority of the season, Lin was finally given a chance to shine in extended minutes in a February 4th match up with the Nets.  Since that time, Lin has joined the starting lineup and averaged 26.8 points and 8.5 assists, while leading the Knicks to a season best 6 game win streak.  He's currently 7th in the league in PER (24.67), ranking him amongst the league's elite players.  The team still hasn't lost a game since Lin became a mainstay in the rotation, which is especially impressive given that this streak has come mostly without the services of Stoudemire and Anthony.

The legend of Lin grew further last night when he led the team to a comeback victory in Toronto, sealed by a game winning three pointer by Lin at the buzzer.  Stoudemire's return to the lineup surely helped, but this was yet another game that clearly belonged to Lin.  Ignoring the fact that his counterpart that he matched up against in the game, Toronto's Jose Calderon, essentially matched his production, Lin was the hero in the end thanks to his game winning shot.  So his magical run continues.

Lin's early success has been met with skepticism - and for good reason.  He was a second round draft pick last year by the Golden State Warriors and played only 29 games in his rookie season, averaging 2.6 points and 1.4 assists in just under 10 minutes per game.  After getting cut by the Warriors, then later by the Rockets as well, Lin eventually found his way onto the Knicks roster this season, where he spent the first quarter of the year on the bench with the expectation that he would soon be cut again.  Nothing that he had done in his short pro career, or even his college career at Harvard, would lead you to believe that his ceiling was any higher than a mediocre back up point guard.  It's fair to say that given his performance the past couple weeks, we can raise that ceiling a bit higher.

Before Knicks fans get too excited, we have to keep in mind that we're still dealing with a very limited sample size.  Calm down with those MVP chants, New York.  Lin is currently on a phenomenal run, but there are several reasons to expect that his performance will regress back to more mortal levels.  As impressive as he has been as a scorer and distributor, he's not without his flaws.  He's still turning the ball over at an alarming rate (31 in his last 6 games!) and struggles with his outside shot.  His current FG% (.489) is 100 points higher than what he shot from the field last season and clearly isn't sustainable.  Despite launching an average of over 3 shots per game from beyond the three point arc, he's only connecting on a miserable 25% of them.  He's been regularly finding ways to get to the free throw line, but he's only an average shooter from the charity strip (75%).  He has quick hands that have helped him pile up a number of steals, but he still has a long way to go before being considered an adequate defender.

You also have to expect that once Melo and STAT are both back in the lineup, he won't get nearly as many shots.  His usage rate since becoming a starter has been off the charts simply because the Knicks had no one else capable of handling the ball (only Kobe Bryant's usage rate is higher than Lin's 30.8).  When their two super stars return to the court, the usage rate will be distributed more evenly.  The team also won't need to lean on Lin as much to be a scorer given that they'll have other options with more reliable track records to handle the heavy lifting for the offense.  This will allow Lin to focus more on running the offense and distributing rather than also attempting to be their go to scorer.  This should help cut down on his turnovers and may help his shooting percentage from falling too drastically.

Coach Mike D'Antoni is considered to be an offensive genius, in part due to his success in Phoenix running a team led by Steve Nash.  His up tempo system is only effective if he has a point guard capable of running it.  Earlier this season, the options the Knicks were using in that role were far from sufficient, which caused the offense to become stagnant and forced them to defer to a lot of isolation plays for Anthony.  When run properly, D'Antoni's offense runs smoothly, while boosting the production of the point guard running the show.  This system took an All-Star talent like Steve Nash and turned him into a two time MVP.  Fringe starters and mediocre back ups like Ray Felton and Chris Duhon have put up big numbers in this system in the past.  So it's only fair to reason that Lin just happens to be in a system that benefits his production.  He certainly still deserves some credit for being capable of running it, as clearly not everyone can, but on another team with a different style it's very unlikely he would be nearly this effective, which helps explain why so many other teams passed over him.

Jeremy Lin has been playing out of his mind lately and it's been a fantastic story that basketball fans find impossible to ignore.  While his production is unlikely to stay at such a high level all season and the Knicks will obviously lose more games along the way, Lin has showed enough over the past couple of weeks to warrant a spot in the starting rotation for the remainder of the season.  They had once placed their hopes in the hands of the unreliable Baron Davis, who's injury history, conditioning and questionable motivation make him a risky option.  They can now feel comfortable with Lin as a capable starter.  Don't expect him to keep playing like an MVP, or even an All-Star, but he may just be the missing piece this Knicks team needed to make them a contender capable of making a decent run in the postseason.  This team still appears to be a long way away from winning a title, but then again you never know.  Jeremy Lin has surprised us before.