NBA NEW YORK -- Before Sunday’s game here at Madison Square Garden, Knicks center Tyson Chandler was speaking with some of his former Mavericks teammates. They had been watching dropped-from-the-heavens point guard Jeremy Lin, who has risen from obscurity to lead New York back to relevance, and gained worldwide prominence in doing so. But the Mavericks had a plan. They told Chandler that they had a read on Lin and what it would take to stop him.
Then Chandler watched Lin hang 28 points on 11-for-20 shooting, with 14 assists, on his old team, pushing the Knicks to a 104-97 win. “They said they had an answer for Lin,” Chandler said with a smile. “I guess they really didn’t.”
We’ve seen Lin shred some league bottom-feeders, teams like Washington and Sacramento. We’ve seen him break the hearts of the Raptors and Timberwolves with last-second, game-winning points. We’ve seen him make Kobe and Co. take notice in a memorable 38-point game against the Lakers. But in Sunday’s win, we saw Lin at his best, taking on a very stiff defensive challenge from the Mavericks, a team that had won six in a row and was beginning to look like the bunch that won the championship last year.
Defensively, the Mavericks put athletic 6-7 forward Shawn Marion, one of the better perimeter defenders in the league, on Lin. They tried to use aggressive traps to capitalize on Lin’s propensity for turnovers—he had nine in a loss to the Hornets on Friday, and Dallas forced him into seven on Sunday.
It should have worked, it should have been enough to allow the Mavericks to contain Lin and get the win, especially with 34 points from Dirk Nowitzki. But it did not matter. Lin kept coming, kept attacking the lane, kept making off-balance shots in the paint, kept finding teammates for open shots.
“We thought that is what they were going to do,” coach Mike D’Antoni said. “They have been putting Shawn on a lot of point guards. They trap a lot. So, we kind of figured that is what they would do. We work on that every day. We work against every kind of defense and try to show him the looks. And he is a fast learner, he picks things up. But the thing you can’t teach is what he has inside his heart. You just can’t teach that.”
Lin would have had some cause to be intimidated. He grew up in the Bay Area, like Mavericks future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd, and looked up to Kidd as he grew up.
“He is a Bay Area legend,” Lin said. “I watched him his whole career, and we were talking throughout the game. He just told me to keep playing hard and keep building with the team. He gave me a lot of good advice, and he is obviously a class act.”
Again, it didn’t matter. Lin was aggressive, even against one of his idols. Kidd was impressed, comparing Lin to Phoenix All-Star Steve Nash. After logging much of his 35 minutes trying to keep Lin under wraps, Marion could only shake his head. He’s seen something similar before—Marion was a teammate of Nash while both were playing for D’Antoni with the Suns, and he knew that the fallback option for D’Antoni is the pick-and-roll. Over and over again, Lin got Marion into pick-and-roll situations, and made good decisions once there.
“Him in this system is amazing,” Marion said. “Him being able to make the pass and being willing to make the pass, it is a great opportunity that opens a lot of things for the team. For his size, he is able to make some passes that some other guards can’t make, and at the same time, it is like he doesn’t care about having a turnover, and that’s very rare. You have to try to take certain things away from him. But he’s a feisty little thing, I give him credit, he plays hard. There were a thousand pick-and-rolls out there, it is a lot of work to guard.”
Another future Hall of Famer was surprised by what he saw, too. “He is tough,” Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki said. “I thought we tried to trap him off the pick-and-roll, but he is crafty. He knows how to get to the basket, he knows how to cut off, spin and still get to his spots. ... I really like him, and he is a great example that if you work hard and get your opportunity you can make the best of it. He is inspirational.”
The Mavericks came into Madison Square Garden thinking they had a formula for stopping Lin. They left, though, as Lin converts, and his most impressed believers yet.
没有评论:
发表评论