JohnStockton wrote:Jeremy used to be a below-average defender IMO. Then he got to somewhere being average defensively. Last year, he seemingly took a solid step forward and became a clear plus-defender. This is based on just the eye test.
That said, I haven't liked Jeremy's defense that much so far. He's been okay at best, but I've seen him get beaten off the dribble badly on a handful of occasions.
While it's important to give credit to JLin for being a very good defender last year, it is also important to note that he played that defense against Shooting Guards. Because of that, I was a bit unsure of how to rate his defense against Point Guards.
At this [too early] point, it seems like Jeremy has gone back to having average defensive impact on the game.
However, I don't think this is some physical/skill reversion or something.
I think it's due to the fact that with the league downsizing, Lin at 6'3--with good contesting instincts and a speed advantage over all Shooting guards--can guard and contest the vast majority of Shooting Guards in the league. The only SGs who gave him trouble were SGs with post games (Joe Johnson/Wade), and very large SGs who could just shoot over him (Klay 6'6). Almost everyone else, he covered well.
However, this year at the PG position, Lin has given up man-on-man penetration quite often, and his defensive impact hasn't been the same. I think this is clearly due to the nature that opposing PGs are just a lot quicker off the dribble than SGs. To be fair, it's pretty much impossible to keep competent PGs out of getting penetration without handchecking, so it's not a huge knock to Lin--but it also means that Lin won't have as much of a defensive impact as he did last year (just through the nature of playing PG).
One of the perks of having Lin is that he has combo-guard ability, but the team can't take advantage of that because they don't have another competent PG to play alongside him if they want to slide him to the 2. Another issue is that if Lin allows penetration, this team doesn't have mobile bigs that can cover up for the penetration and recover to their man in time. The closest thing they have is Booker... and he's the only big capable of doing that. All the other bigs are very laterally slow. This is what is going to kill the team IMO. Even if they play good fundamental defense and give good rotations, their big-men will still rotate too slowly... simply because they're naturally slow footed.
I agree that Lin has looked pretty average on defense so far, but be aware it is preseason so he probably doesn't want to waste tread on his tires for meaningless games when there's 82 games ahead. Also he is gonna play a lot more minutes this season so he will not be able to play as tenacious defense for stamina reasons but also because he can't afford to get in foul trouble as our best player. While he is on the bench, we are going to struggle so when he has a few fouls on him he is going to have to back off slightly as we saw last game. He still played decent defense, IT scored 8 on him while he scored 10 on IT. Still, I don't think he can afford to be the elite defensive player he was last year for the Hornets on this team
You friggin crazy!
