P08 SAC @ LAL Post Game
Photo credit: http://www.nba.com/lakers/gallery/lakers-vs.-kings-10/24/14
| MIN | FGM-A | 3PM-A | FTM-A | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | PF | +/- | PTS |
| 32 | 6-12 | 2-6 | 5-6 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 19 |
*Note that one of the 3 pt attempts was a 35-ft desperation shot because his teammate passed him the ball with 1 second left.
I genuinely was not happy at all when Price had his two knee collisions. 1) Price is a good guy, I have no ill wishes towards him. 2) I wanted to see how Scott genuinely played Lin, not because he had to. 3) I didn’t want to see Lin play 40 mins in preseason and risk injury (which he almost did when Rudy Gay fell onto his ankle).
Scoring: A. Lin did his usual thing. Blowing by defenders, splitting 2 defenders and scoring on Cousins. In Q2 9:00, Lin wound down the shot clock and calmly drove in for the score like an alpha dog. Lin scored 9 pts in his first 12 mins in the game. Lin did one of his circle drives, but left handed this time, finishing with a 10 foot fadeaway jumper. In Q4, he had a killer crossover on McCallum.
Passing: A-. Lin had a Nash-like pass where he dropped it off behind his back no look to Davis (but Davis was fouled on the dunk). He should have had 3 more gimme assists, but Davis missed a couple dunks or got fouled. Lin did have a couple turnovers from bad passes/miscommunication.
Defense: B. Collison didn’t do anything against Lin. He rarely attempted to drive on Lin. Mostly just passed the ball. Sessions was more aggressive and did drive a couple times on Lin. I noticed that no one attempted to pick Lin when he was bringing the ball up. That’s a sign that they respect Lin’s ballhandling and are afraid that he’ll blow past them if they try to go for a steal.
IQ: A. Lin always knew the shot clock. There were several times where you gasped at Lin’s shot selection, then realized that he got the ball with a second left and had to take a shot. The announcers praised Lin all throughout the game. They called him confident and under control.
Overall: A-. Jeremy saved his best preseason game for last. There is no question who is the best PG on this team. Lin by far. Final preseason stats:
| Player | GP | MIN | PTS/36 | AST/36 | REB/36 | STL/36 | AST/TO | FG% | 3P% | eFG% | FT% | TS% | PPS |
| Jeremy Lin | 5 | 129.6 | 17.2 | 8.6 | 4.2 | 1.1 | 2.8 | 0.500 | 0.400 | 0.556 | 0.759 | 0.636 | 1.7 |
| Ronnie Price | 7 | 179.3 | 9.8 | 6.6 | 2.4 | 2.2 | 1.9 | 0.400 | 0.200 | 0.433 | 0.714 | 0.479 | 1.1 |
P.S. The starting lineup for this game was: Price, Ellington, Sacre, Davis, Wes Johnson. That tells me that the preseason starting lineups don’t mean jack because most of those guys are second unit.
Brent’s take
@realdsb basically said it all, I will just add a few more.
- Lin’s handle is great, it comes with the added support from the team and his hard work in the summer. Very happy to see, no fancy moves, just percision and get the job done. Still it will be shaky from time to time, just like shooting. But I believe he stepped up a lot in this regard.
- Cohesion is still not there, But it takes time. Right now, able to make jumpers actually covered a lot of problems for them as a team. 3 Asts Lin got were from Sacre where I would not count on him to knock down those in the real game.
- Wes and Clarkson seems able to knock down 3s when needed, I guess it is a good thing for LAL.
- Need to repeat this, I really really hate to see Price’s injury. But I guess we can still wait and see what Scott will do after he comes back. Lin needs a capable back up and I think Price is good enough.
- Lin is a big guard, I hope he get some post play too…..
I will give him an A-. I think in those 4 preseason games, he performed pretty equally in terms of impact and that is the only thing important.
