Every Sunday, the CC staff will get together to present our plays and players of the week.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Jeremy Lin
4 games (4-0)
27.3 ppg
8.3 apg
4.0 rpg
2.2 spg
Jeremy Lin’s game right now exits at the nexus of ability, effort and underestimation. The underestimation part will go away shortly. Lin has taken the Knicks, without Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, and turned them completely around. How long will it last? I don’t know and I don’t care. This kid’s emergence has been the shot in the arm the NBA has needed. The story is so remarkable, that even Hollywood wouldn’t dare re-write the script.
Phil: I wanted to ignore Jeremy Lin. I heard the arguments that the hype was built to Tebow proportions because he was playing in New York. I bought that argument. Not taking anything away from him, but the competition he was playing against was not very good. And Mike D’Antoni is an offensive genius. If you were a player willing to work the pick and roll and smart enough to read defense you can succeed. I don’t doubt his intelligence… he went to Harvard. Lin was perfect for that system. And needed the opportunity. He has taken advantage of it.
So there I was finishing up the Magic-Hawks game, and you could not ignore him. I was reading tweets from colleagues like Alex Kennedy of HoopsWorld saying the Hawks locker room was buzzing about this kid after a hard-fought overtime win against a division rival. If league players are buzzing about this kid, maybe we should all stop ignoring him and accept that he is a pretty good player. Hopefully the hype doesn’t outpace him.
Trevor: I try really, really hard not to start drooling over any sort of hyped player, especially one that’s being hyped by the New York media, but Lin has been incredible so far. Sure the competition has sucked, but he’s been so entertaining I don’t really care. His game against the Lakers show he’s playing without a care in the world right now and that the Lakers have the worst point guards in the league. Eventually he’ll play a good defensive team and teams will have time to do some homework on him and his production will go down. Until then I’m enjoying Linsanity.
PLAY OF THE WEEK
Chris Paul beats Philly at the last second
I think the guy at the :15 mark says it all, doesn’t he?
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