http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/basketball/nba/02/16/jeremy.lin.knicks/index.html
Despite Lin's remarkable success over the past two weeks, though, Lin's game is not without its holes. There are still concerns over jumping to wild conclusions about his true ability after such a small sample of games. It's easy to forget that Lin has played just 34 more minutes in 2012 than he did as a rookie in 2011, when he posted an unimpressive 14.8 PER and minus-1.1 regularized plus/minus. Nate Silver wrote a great piece in The New York Times about the confidence we can have in Lin's true ability, despite the small sample, because of the magnitude of his accomplishments. This is true to a degree, but some wariness is still in order for an undrafted player who entered 2011-12 with a career shooting mark of 38.9 percent.
It's also fair to point out Lin's propensity for turnovers. This season, 21.8 percent of Lin's individual possessions have ended with him committing a turnover, 16th most among guards with at least 159 minutes. Lin's turnovers tend to come in bunches, too. He already has two eight-turnover games, to go with three more games in which he turned the ball over six times.
This isn't a huge problem for a top point guard; Nash's turnover rate is 23.8 percent, the fifth consecutive season he's been above 21 percent. But Lin's effective rate of assists to turnovers, as shown by John Hollinger's Pure Point Rating (used to measure a player's passing and ball-handling), tells us that his floor game isn't really on the same level as a point guard like Nash. This season, Nash's pure point rating is 11.0, third in the league behind Toronto's Jose Calderon (11.5) and the Clippers' Chris Paul (11.2), and he's been above 9.3 every season since joining the Suns in 2004-05. Lin's pure point rating, on the other hand, is 2.8, which ranks 44th in the NBA. For Lin to truly join the ranks of the elite point guards, he'll have to improve his decision-making with the ball and keep the giveaways to a minimum.
Then there's the matter of Lin's jump shot, a source of worry ever since he entered the draft in 2010. Lin is not the purest shooter in the world; much has been made of his unorthodox mechanics, which are made apparent with his career 75.3 free-throw percentage and 24 percent mark from three-point range, both below average for guards. Even in college, where Lin shot an impressive 48 percent from the floor -- including better than 50 percent in his final two seasons -- his career three-point shooting was 33.3 percent (from the short NCAA distance) and his free-throw shooting was 73.3 percent, both consistent with the numbers he's posted in the pros. During this magical season, Lin is knocking down an unsustainable 59.1 percent of mid-range jumpers, but that is a rate that will inevitably regress to the mean, given the rest of his shooting résumé (he made just 29 percent of the same shots a year ago).
But a natural regression does not mean the "Linsanity" has to end. For now, New York has no reason to give the point-guard keys to anyone except Lin, especially in light of the abysmal offensive performances from Shumpert, Douglas and Bibby this season. And it's hard to envision a rusty, 32-year-old Baron Davis seriously challenging for point-guard minutes when he returns from injury, even if Lin's skill level isn't as high as his most recent seven-game sample would have us believe.
If the magic of Lin's run has taught us anything, it's that he is a legitimate NBA player with strong playmaking skills and the ability to create his own shot. His stats probably won't stay in LeBron's and Kobe's territory forever, but point guards who fit that profile tend to have productive careers in the league.
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