Post#892 » by Vae Victus » Fri Dec 4, 2015 9:14 pm
The biggest shame about all of this is that a lot of people, other than the hardcore ultra Linfanatics, just don't care anymore. Lin had his short burst of fame and he couldn't fully capitalize on it. Despite getting better as a player he's becoming more and more marginalized and its looking like he's going straight to journeyman of the likes of Steve Blake and Ramon Sessions. Good solid long respected careers, but nobodies in the end, not something many thought after the way Lin burst onto the scene.
Whether he plays well or not, it really doesn't matter anymore, he's now a bonifide bench player as that's what he's limited himself to and now meekly accepting. If he had any fire in his belly honestly he woulda shown it last year, the way he's just going through the motions this year as his role keeps trending downward just shows he's not the fighter we thought he was. You know, the scrawny ABC who said FU to all the haters and balled out until he finally blew up, now he's just acting like some random fringe NBA player playing scared as if he'll get cut after any mistake.
He's on a 1 year deal being paid crap, hell Roberts and many other 3rd string guards are getting paid more than him. Lin and his agent stupidly thought he could just "show" what he's worth and "earn" more PT. In all professional leagues its all about getting paid and how much you're getting paid is the level of respect you're gonna get. Kemba can go into career worst mode but he'll still get the lion's share of the PT and EVERY chance to turn it around, cuz he's getting paid 12 mil a year for awhile. A team cant marginalize a long term big money piece on the team without suffering consequences like that player getting butthurt and sulking destroying their trade value (the extreme example is Kobe, and boy oh boy has he wrecked my team with his selfishness). THAT's Kemba's power as he can legitimately threaten the team, but he'll still get paid, and he better get the mins he wants OR ELSE. Now of course Kemba seems to be a high character guy and when Lin came on board he rightly took it in as a threat and managed to MASSIVELY up his game to all his credit, nonetheless even if Kemba didn't up his game the FO/coach still couldn't risk pissing him off for a 1 year scrub paid FA in Lin.
Al Jeff was treated with kid gloves last year for obvious reasons, but this year they don't terribly mind marginalizing him as they realize he's not signed past this season and they already in theory drafted his replacement in Kamisky. See Lin's treatment last year on the Lakers, it was almost sad to say but he was prolly the best player on the team until Clarkson's emergence and Scott rightly tried his best to bench him to not win games for the tank and more importantly not piss off Kobe who doesn't like it when others take his shine. Lin was paid ALOT of money last year to the tune of 15 mil, but they treated him like utter crap benching him for the likes of Ronnie Price of all people using the flimsiest of excuses, honestly the D you see today is pretty much what he was doing last year except he had to guard Kobe's guy too and the bigs were even more useless in helping/protecting the paint.
Honestly sucks to be Lin, hopefully he plays better, but id not surprised if his pansy ass just decides to lie down and be all "team" player and let everyone walk all over him.