On Thursday night, Jeremy Lin faced his first real test as an NBA phenom. Against the defending Eastern Conference champion Heat, it's fair to say it didn't go so well. Lin shot 1 of 11, scored 8 points, dished out just 3 assists, and turned the ball over 8 times. I tuned in for this one closely, figuring the Heat wouldn't be surprised by Lin. Not unexpectedly, Miami threw a game plan at Lin, and he struggled. I figured Miami might try sticking Dwyane Wade on Lin to throw him off his rhythm. Wade is an athletic freak, and one of the league's best man defenders, so him struggling in that case would have been far from unexpected. But the Heat didn't do that.
Instead, Miami kept Mario Chalmers on Lin when he was in the game. Now, Chalmers isn't a bad defender, but he's no DWade. But the key to what the Heat did was to have Chalmers pressure Lin out to a few feet beyond the perimeter. Instead of letting Lin get his head up and initiate the offense (which is one of his big strengths), the Heat put pressure on him high, which clearly unsettled him. The result was 8 turnovers and an easy win for Miami. Of course, it wasn't all the Heat's D-- Lin couldn't get a roll when he got to the hoop, and he was far from the only Knick who struggled from the floor- Amar'e Stoudemire was invisible and Carmelo Anthony barely made a third of his shots. But the Knicks' success lately has revolved around Lin, and his struggles were, I think it's fair to say, a major reason this game was effectively over after 3 quarters.
Pressuring point guards high is, of course, far from a failproof strategy. Try it with Chris Paul, and he'll beat his defender, get into the paint, and, more likely than not, either hit a floater or dish it off to a shooter or a big for an open look. Try it with Steve Nash, and he'll shake the defender and shoot a quick pull-up three, which is a shot he'll hit at a pretty high clip. There are a few reasons it worked so well for the Heat against Lin-- Lin is a good shooter, but he doesn't have Nash's ability to quickly pull up and hit a three off the dribble. He's also not strong enough to drive and dish among the trees the way Chris Paul can. He's more of a pick-and-roll guy who can finish outside the lane and hit the open guy as he comes off a ball screen.
The question, then, is what the Heat's success defending Lin means. Is Linsanity over? Is he going back to the D-League? Of course not. The NBA, like any pro sport, is about adjustments. Lin's got somewhat higher hurdles to face than most. Unlike your typical NBA standout, Lin isn't a physical specimen. He's not strong. He's not very athletic. And he's not explosive. He can't hold a candle to guys like Derrick Rose, Chris Paul and John Wall when it comes to athletic ability. That makes his adjustment harder-- he needs to stand out in other ways. But athleticism is far from an end-all, be-all. Steve Nash became one of the best point guards ever, even though he's an average athlete at best and looks like the pool boy. And Nash is probably the player whose game most resembles Lin's. I think there are two adjustments that can be made to counter aggressive perimeter D like the Heat's. The first is for the Knicks to initiate the pick and roll higher than they have been. Instead of setting the initial screen at the top of the key, they could try initiating the offense at around 28 feet against aggressive defenses. If they can get Melo on board with being the screener, even better. For all the hate that's been thrown his way, Melo can hit an open 23 footer, and he's too strong for just about any 3 not named LeBron to deal with rolling to the hoop. Playing a Lin and Melo two-man game puts pressure on defenses and alleviates pressure on Lin, as he gets the benefit of a screener to clear space and allow him to get his head up.
The other adjustment Lin needs to make is to develop a Nash-type pull up three-point shot. Lin is a good shooter, but he's more of a pick-and-pop guy than an off-the-dribble shooter. If he could develop the ability to hit that three-point pull up, defenses would have to think twice about pressuring him high, as help defenders would have to step out if he beat the high defender off the dribble, which in turn would open up passing lanes for the Knicks' other players. While that's a longer-term project for Lin, I thnk it'd be a huge step in his development.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Weighing in on Jeremy Lin
I'm a little late to the party on the Lin story-- it's been a busy few weeks, but he's definitely the biggest story in sports right now, so I feel like a take is in order. First, here's what Lin isn't: he's not Tim Tebow. People are quick to draw the comparison because both are unique (Tebow for his in-your-face brand of Christianity and Lin for his ethnicity, though Lin is also apparently a rather observant Christian) stories whose bumps in playing time have coincided with turnarounds for their respective teams. But there are big differences both in expectations and in performance: Tebow was a first-round pick who won a Heisman in college: everyone and their mom knew who he was. NFL types certainly suggested that he was picked too high, but he didn't exactly come out of nowhere. Lin, on the other hand, definitely did. Those that follow basketball knew about him over the last few years. He was the best player in the Ivy League last year (averaging something like 16 points and 5 assists a game), and was a minor story in the sports blogs even then because he's Asian. But most of us that knew about him figured he'd go by the wayside: he'd get a look in the D-League, maybe be a decent player there, and probably ship off to Europe after a year or two if he decided to play ball again. And we'd never hear about him again. Frankly, I would have been a little surprised had he been drafted. For a year and a half, that's more or less the path his career took: he bounced between the D-League and the end of the Warriors' bench last year, and came to New York this year, presumably to fill out the roster. Then he got into a game and... the history's still being written there.
The biggest reason Lin isn't Tebow, though, is on the court. Because, while Tebow is a mediocre at best (and even that's generous) quarterback who happened to preside over a winning team, Lin is a good basketball player. He's not a fluke. He won't go back to being a guy who sits at the end of the bench, and he'll possibly be an impact player for a long time.
Now, about a week and a half or so ago, just as Lin had put in his fifth or so straight good game, my friend Steve texted me and asked how many guys I thought had better MVP odds than Lin. Since it was 7:30 in the morning and the text woke me up, I grumpily responde, "half the league, he's only played 5 games; if he keeps it up maybe 5 or 6", rolled over, and went back to sleep. In true Steve fashion, he calculated how many guys were in the league, and posted on hi Facebook that I thought there were 225 guys with better MVP odds than Lin. Thanks, Steve. But then I actually thought about it, and I realized it was a question to really think about.
Now, there's no doubt that Lin has been the pivotal piece in the Knicks' turnaround. He's averaged well over 20 points a night (way more than he averaged 2 years ago in the Ivy League!), gotten the stagnant Knicks moving the ball on offense, and keyed a huge resurgence. They've gone from a losing team to one that looks like it could make the playoffs. Of course, how Lin will coexist with Carmelo Anthony is still an open question. The Knicks' biggest problem pre-Lin was their stagnant offense: they had no facilitator at the point, Melo dominated the ball (and jacked up a ton of shots, and Amar'e Stoudemire looked not only out of sync rhythm-wise, but also like he'd lost some explosiveness. Now, there's not much Lin can do if every time the ball goes in to Melo, it doesn't come out. But if Melo can become a more efficient piece who maximizes what he does with his touches instead of dominating the ball, this could be a legitimate team.
As for Lin himself, well, while I definitely don't think he's a fluke, I doubt we'll see him put up 25 and 10 every night. I think he'll level off into a Mike Conley type of point who can give you 16-18 points and 7 or so assists a night. His second time through, other points will stop treating Jeremy Lin night as a joke and pick up on his tendencies. But that doesn't mean he won't still be a very useful player. I think my biggest gripe about his game is his D. Even with a top-notch rim protector in Tyson Chandler behind him, Lin is a big minus on that end. Lost in the Linsanity is that the guys across from him have been putting up numbers almost as big as his. Last game, Lin had 21 and 9... but Deron Williams went for 38 points and the Knicks lost. Now, Deron Williams is a fantastic point, but that's still not a good performance. Two games before that, against New Orleans, Lin went for 26... but Greivis Vasquez went for 15 and 11 and the Knicks lost. And, as much as I love what Vasquez did for Maryland in college, he's not an NBA starting point, and that's a bad stat line to be giving up to him. Those kinds of lines are ugly... and I don't necessarily see them improving.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Lin isn't very much a plus player-- the closest comparison I see for him in the league is Steve Nash-- they're both adept at running the pick and roll, can put the ball in the hoop, and make guys around them better (though Nash dominates the ball more). And, like Lin, Nash is a major liability on D. That definitely keeps him outside of the elite point guard conversation for me... but it doesn't mean that he's not an unexpectedly valuable piece on what could be a decent team.
The biggest reason Lin isn't Tebow, though, is on the court. Because, while Tebow is a mediocre at best (and even that's generous) quarterback who happened to preside over a winning team, Lin is a good basketball player. He's not a fluke. He won't go back to being a guy who sits at the end of the bench, and he'll possibly be an impact player for a long time.
Now, about a week and a half or so ago, just as Lin had put in his fifth or so straight good game, my friend Steve texted me and asked how many guys I thought had better MVP odds than Lin. Since it was 7:30 in the morning and the text woke me up, I grumpily responde, "half the league, he's only played 5 games; if he keeps it up maybe 5 or 6", rolled over, and went back to sleep. In true Steve fashion, he calculated how many guys were in the league, and posted on hi Facebook that I thought there were 225 guys with better MVP odds than Lin. Thanks, Steve. But then I actually thought about it, and I realized it was a question to really think about.
Now, there's no doubt that Lin has been the pivotal piece in the Knicks' turnaround. He's averaged well over 20 points a night (way more than he averaged 2 years ago in the Ivy League!), gotten the stagnant Knicks moving the ball on offense, and keyed a huge resurgence. They've gone from a losing team to one that looks like it could make the playoffs. Of course, how Lin will coexist with Carmelo Anthony is still an open question. The Knicks' biggest problem pre-Lin was their stagnant offense: they had no facilitator at the point, Melo dominated the ball (and jacked up a ton of shots, and Amar'e Stoudemire looked not only out of sync rhythm-wise, but also like he'd lost some explosiveness. Now, there's not much Lin can do if every time the ball goes in to Melo, it doesn't come out. But if Melo can become a more efficient piece who maximizes what he does with his touches instead of dominating the ball, this could be a legitimate team.
As for Lin himself, well, while I definitely don't think he's a fluke, I doubt we'll see him put up 25 and 10 every night. I think he'll level off into a Mike Conley type of point who can give you 16-18 points and 7 or so assists a night. His second time through, other points will stop treating Jeremy Lin night as a joke and pick up on his tendencies. But that doesn't mean he won't still be a very useful player. I think my biggest gripe about his game is his D. Even with a top-notch rim protector in Tyson Chandler behind him, Lin is a big minus on that end. Lost in the Linsanity is that the guys across from him have been putting up numbers almost as big as his. Last game, Lin had 21 and 9... but Deron Williams went for 38 points and the Knicks lost. Now, Deron Williams is a fantastic point, but that's still not a good performance. Two games before that, against New Orleans, Lin went for 26... but Greivis Vasquez went for 15 and 11 and the Knicks lost. And, as much as I love what Vasquez did for Maryland in college, he's not an NBA starting point, and that's a bad stat line to be giving up to him. Those kinds of lines are ugly... and I don't necessarily see them improving.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Lin isn't very much a plus player-- the closest comparison I see for him in the league is Steve Nash-- they're both adept at running the pick and roll, can put the ball in the hoop, and make guys around them better (though Nash dominates the ball more). And, like Lin, Nash is a major liability on D. That definitely keeps him outside of the elite point guard conversation for me... but it doesn't mean that he's not an unexpectedly valuable piece on what could be a decent team.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Larry Summers Explains Policymaking
Last night I went to see Larry Summers give a talk at the 92nd Street Y. Summers is an incredibly gifted person and economist-- he won a Clark Medal (more prestigious than the Nobel in the profession, I think), served as Chief Economist at the World Bank, Treasury Secretary under Clinton, NEC head under Obama, president of Harvard... the resume goes on, but the point is, the guy's incredibly accomplished.
Most of what he said last night was substantively identical to the things economists of similar stature have said on the major issues. Summers is, on the details, to the right of Paul Krugman, but his interpretation of the issues was more or less the same-- the evidence that we have inadequate demand in the economy is overwhelming, there's no better time to repair infrastructure than when construction unemployment is at 20% and the government borrows at a negative interest rate for 10 years, the idea of expansionary austerity is oxymoronic (and, in Summers's terms, "you can drop the prefix"), the gold standard is the "creationism of economics", etc. None of that is surprising. He also mentioned the famous scene from the Facebook movie where he dismissed the Winklevoss twins, who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg "stole their property" while he was creating Facebook ("None of the lines in that movie were actually said. But if you're asking about the tone, that's exactly what happened."). I would say he stopped short of calling the Winklevoss twins arrogant assholes, but he didn't stop short at all.
But what really struck me was an offhand remark he had about the economic policymaking of the Republican Party. Summers, while he's certainly a Democrat, is far from a leftist, and also far from an ideologue. Among economists, if Paul Krugman is on the center-left (which, in the profession, he is), then Summers is very much in the very middle. People forget that he served in Reagan's Treasury Department when he was a younger (but still already tenured at Harvard) economist. Summers suggested that today's Republican Party has canned solutions that it appropriates to "solve" any problem, and this is something that rings a bell because it's, well, true. He talked specifically about capital gains taxes ("No matter what the problem, their solution is to cut the capital gains rate. If the economy is slow, cut cap gains taxes for demand-side reasons. If the economy is fine, we can improve it even more by cutting cap gains taxes for supply-side reasons."). But I think it's a tic that's present in every aspect of the party's public platform, and extends far beyond economics. If there's a problem in an industry, the solution must be to deregulate it. If something's wrong, government is the problem. If there's a solution, the solution is less government and a tax cut.
It's a tic that allows them to ignore evidence and fit the problem to the solution. That attitude has come starkly into focus in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The crisis was an obvious failure-- it's been almost 3.5 years since Lehman Brothers collapsed, and unemployment is still well over 8%. Those who looked at the data saw that the crisis was a very obvious market failure-- regulations in place were insufficient, and regulators charged with overseeing the markets were asleep at the wheel, or were ideologically opposed to any market regulation (Alan Greenspan being the prime example). Nevertheless, in a case of either mass cognitive dissonance or outright dishonesty, there's been a massive effort to recast the market failure as a result of too much government and too much regulation rather than too little. Fannie and Freddie must have been the problem, they assert, ignoring the fact that mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie substantially outperformed private label mortgages. Barring that, the Community Reinvestment Act must have been at fault (ignoring the absurdity of blaming a housing bubble that began inflating in the early 2000s on a statute passed a quarter century earlier that didn't cover the vast majority of institutions churning out messy mortgages). Point out those problems, and you'll hear a diatribe about how awful government is. That's not to say that Fannie and Freddie were blameless, upstanding institutions-- their very existence in the form they took was a disaster, and they certainly will need to be re-examined and refocused in a significant way going forward. But there's nothing inconsistent about acknowledging both that Fannie and Freddie were poorly constructed institutions prone to crony politics and poor incentives, and acknowledging the simple truth that their existence was neither necessary nor sufficient for the financial crisis.
That's not to say that more government is unabashedly good, or that it's the solution to every problem, or even most problems. Rather, government is one of many tools for solving various problems. There are cases where it's useful for government to play a direct role-- in putting together a military, building roads, and providing education and law enforcement. There are cases where government can play a valuable supporting role-- in making markets more efficient by demanding disclosure of financial information for public companies, ensuring transparency in financial markets, and protecting parties from being taken advantage of by those with more information, and pricing externalities such as pollution and gridlock on roads through targeted minor interventions. There are also cases where government has certainly overreached-- deregulating the airlines in the 1970s has contributed to cheaper air travel by a factor of about 3; New Deal financial regulation likely went too far in a number of key areas; and the welfare system had become ineffective and lacked focus by the 1990s.
The point, I think, is that finding solutions requires an honest assessment of problems. That can mean action by government, it can mean government taking a different approach than it had been taking, or it could mean acknowledging that government involvement is counterproductive. For a time, government was likely too involved in the economy and needed to step back. Over the last thirty years, the trend has gone too far the other way-- the knee-jerk reaction is that government must be the problem and less government must be the solution. I think today's problem is the belief, without regard to evidence, that every problem must involve too much government, and every solution must involve deregulation and less government.
Most of what he said last night was substantively identical to the things economists of similar stature have said on the major issues. Summers is, on the details, to the right of Paul Krugman, but his interpretation of the issues was more or less the same-- the evidence that we have inadequate demand in the economy is overwhelming, there's no better time to repair infrastructure than when construction unemployment is at 20% and the government borrows at a negative interest rate for 10 years, the idea of expansionary austerity is oxymoronic (and, in Summers's terms, "you can drop the prefix"), the gold standard is the "creationism of economics", etc. None of that is surprising. He also mentioned the famous scene from the Facebook movie where he dismissed the Winklevoss twins, who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg "stole their property" while he was creating Facebook ("None of the lines in that movie were actually said. But if you're asking about the tone, that's exactly what happened."). I would say he stopped short of calling the Winklevoss twins arrogant assholes, but he didn't stop short at all.
But what really struck me was an offhand remark he had about the economic policymaking of the Republican Party. Summers, while he's certainly a Democrat, is far from a leftist, and also far from an ideologue. Among economists, if Paul Krugman is on the center-left (which, in the profession, he is), then Summers is very much in the very middle. People forget that he served in Reagan's Treasury Department when he was a younger (but still already tenured at Harvard) economist. Summers suggested that today's Republican Party has canned solutions that it appropriates to "solve" any problem, and this is something that rings a bell because it's, well, true. He talked specifically about capital gains taxes ("No matter what the problem, their solution is to cut the capital gains rate. If the economy is slow, cut cap gains taxes for demand-side reasons. If the economy is fine, we can improve it even more by cutting cap gains taxes for supply-side reasons."). But I think it's a tic that's present in every aspect of the party's public platform, and extends far beyond economics. If there's a problem in an industry, the solution must be to deregulate it. If something's wrong, government is the problem. If there's a solution, the solution is less government and a tax cut.
It's a tic that allows them to ignore evidence and fit the problem to the solution. That attitude has come starkly into focus in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The crisis was an obvious failure-- it's been almost 3.5 years since Lehman Brothers collapsed, and unemployment is still well over 8%. Those who looked at the data saw that the crisis was a very obvious market failure-- regulations in place were insufficient, and regulators charged with overseeing the markets were asleep at the wheel, or were ideologically opposed to any market regulation (Alan Greenspan being the prime example). Nevertheless, in a case of either mass cognitive dissonance or outright dishonesty, there's been a massive effort to recast the market failure as a result of too much government and too much regulation rather than too little. Fannie and Freddie must have been the problem, they assert, ignoring the fact that mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie substantially outperformed private label mortgages. Barring that, the Community Reinvestment Act must have been at fault (ignoring the absurdity of blaming a housing bubble that began inflating in the early 2000s on a statute passed a quarter century earlier that didn't cover the vast majority of institutions churning out messy mortgages). Point out those problems, and you'll hear a diatribe about how awful government is. That's not to say that Fannie and Freddie were blameless, upstanding institutions-- their very existence in the form they took was a disaster, and they certainly will need to be re-examined and refocused in a significant way going forward. But there's nothing inconsistent about acknowledging both that Fannie and Freddie were poorly constructed institutions prone to crony politics and poor incentives, and acknowledging the simple truth that their existence was neither necessary nor sufficient for the financial crisis.
That's not to say that more government is unabashedly good, or that it's the solution to every problem, or even most problems. Rather, government is one of many tools for solving various problems. There are cases where it's useful for government to play a direct role-- in putting together a military, building roads, and providing education and law enforcement. There are cases where government can play a valuable supporting role-- in making markets more efficient by demanding disclosure of financial information for public companies, ensuring transparency in financial markets, and protecting parties from being taken advantage of by those with more information, and pricing externalities such as pollution and gridlock on roads through targeted minor interventions. There are also cases where government has certainly overreached-- deregulating the airlines in the 1970s has contributed to cheaper air travel by a factor of about 3; New Deal financial regulation likely went too far in a number of key areas; and the welfare system had become ineffective and lacked focus by the 1990s.
The point, I think, is that finding solutions requires an honest assessment of problems. That can mean action by government, it can mean government taking a different approach than it had been taking, or it could mean acknowledging that government involvement is counterproductive. For a time, government was likely too involved in the economy and needed to step back. Over the last thirty years, the trend has gone too far the other way-- the knee-jerk reaction is that government must be the problem and less government must be the solution. I think today's problem is the belief, without regard to evidence, that every problem must involve too much government, and every solution must involve deregulation and less government.
That's kinda an off the cuff reaction, but it's what I took from Summers's talk, and I think it's become pretty true.
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