rururuland2: That’s really a fantastic piece. Aside from setting up his defender going into the screen, keeping him on his back and allowing passing angles to form, as the story mentioned, he has a very Tony Parker-like quality to finishing, the strength to get into the big’s body and an ability to finish, sometimes with English, at a variety of angles off the glass.

Parker is incredible at that, and I think Lin has shown some skill in that regard that only a few pgs have.

The more you exam the nuances of his skill set, the more you come away thinking that he really can become an elite point guard in this offense.

I’m not all that concerned about his left (see: Rubio), but his slow-release might be the one thing that keeps from the upper-stratosphere of pgs.

That story was a really good read. One thing, tho, it did to mention: a truncated season leaves teams little time to adjust to what they are going to face. Lin isn’t going to have too many teams spending a full day or two preparing for him. That bodes well for his play and for his development, to a certain degree.

“Best quote of today: Carmelo Anthony is not an Elite NBA player, he is an Elite NBA scorer. Just like Kevin Durant and also an Elite NBA rebounder Kevin Love. There so many unidimensional players in the NBA.”

Kevin Love is scoring 25 points per game with a TS% of 58%. And his usage is up to 27.4%. Unidimensional is a strange word in this case….

And to call Melo an Elite NBA scorer kind of gives short thrift to his lack of efficiency. When you are scoring at league average efficiency what’s so elite about that?

jon abbey:
yeah, I did the same thing last time he wrote a piece. when THCJ and I agree on something, you know that both pigs are flying and maybe we’re right.

I remember that, but I don’t think it was the same writer. That was a self-admitted student who was doing game previews for a spell named Steven something.

And I don’t quite understand the controversy swirling around yesterday’s piece. It wasn’t particularly useful, especially with all the other stuff that has been written about Lin this week (both here and abroad), but for me that was it’s worst sin. Not sure why it riled up the party faithful the way it did.

I think we’re on the same page insofar as that criticism is warranted, and we all want to maintain the high quality of writing this site is known for.

Jon, sorry for calling your comment obnoxious – I should’ve said unnecessary. I was getting hot-headed because the person who wrote the article happens to be related to me.

Regardless, I think I’ve forced the conversation away from the Knicks too long for the day, and taken away too much productivity (including my own!) at work. Let’s get back to the x’s and o’s (plays, not kisses and hugs, please).

That’s all well and good. Again, you should feel free to criticize if it’s done constructively. My point was that if THCJ did it already, you shouldn’t have felt the need to post what you did. I found that it was fairly obnoxious (see the ad-hom comment above), and more importantly, it didn’t add to the conversation.

Brian Cronin: For what it’s worth, if you had said something like that, there wouldn’t have been an issue. Like I said before, I don’t care if folks want to criticize articles. Go for it. Your comments, though, while I’m sure you intended them to be constructive, came off as unduly abrasive. Moreover, from the comments that popped up right after your comment, it was clear that we were headed towards a series of angry comments about your comment rather than any discussion of the piece itself, which I did not want (of course, admittedly, it has turned into such a discussion anyways).

Spot-on, Brian. That’s what I was trying to get at with:

The problem is, from what I’ve read, your arguments are normally couched in needlessly combative rhetoric that distracts readers from the point and, more often than not, leads them to reply with off-topic and overly-emotional comments. That has been the trend with replies to a good number of your posts, from my experience.)

What THCJ just wrote was well-written, thoughtful, and free of spiteful/sardonic language, so it’s unlikely it will be followed by any flame wars. It’s the type of comment we need more of.

“Jon, I have no issues with the fact that you didn’t like the article, just with how you went about criticizing it. Again, you have every right to criticize it whatever way you want, but I think it would be more prudent to either a) point out what you don’t like so the author knows what to fix or b) proactively comment on how the author can fix problems in the article. ”

I did that last time, and I put a fair amount of time into doing so. THCJ did that this time, and his post was deleted.

Wow.

“Assets: A feisty, smart leader on the court. A superb passer who excels on the drive-and-dish: has nice moves getting to the hoop and keeps defenses honest with a solid outside shot. Very aware, does a great job poaching steals, and rebounds well for a point-man. Smooth, a deft ball-handler, very quick, and constantly hustling.”
“Flaws: Somewhat limited as a man-to-man defender because of his average reach and less-than-explosive athleticism. Needs to keep refining his decision-making to limit turnovers.”

Honestly, sounds like our guy, except I think his athleticism is off the charts in some ways and his decision making has been near impeccable. Not a huge leaper, but incredibly agile in space and in the air, and few turnovers. He’s also got a Duncan-like touch off the glass on drives.
Small sample size, but TS % of .613 and an eFG% of .536 is pretty impressive and will get better as he gets stronger from the 3.
In college he shot well over 50% from the field.
I honestly think if this guy had played at Rucker park, or attended Duke, he might have been a late first rounder, early second guy because he’s a PG.