Salt Lin City? A Proposed Free Agent Target

Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images

It’s hard to exaggerate how woeful the Jazz point guard play was last year.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that even with such poor production at PG, the Jazz by the end of 2014-15 were a playoff-caliber team in the loaded West. Improvement at point guard — even to just league average — could be the key move that propels this young and improving team forward.

However, I’m skeptical that the next good Jazz point guard is currently on the Jazz roster. While I’d acknowledge that it would be absurd to dismiss Dante Exum after just one season, it’s basically impossible to find a successful NBA player who started out his career with such minimal production. (See this list of all guards who played at least 500 minutes as rookies but had a PER of 7 or under.) I’d love it if Exum broke that mold, but that may not be realistic.

Smart analysts have already identified intriguing potential trade targets at PG for the Jazz. If those don’t pan out, what about free agency? Free agent PG rankings (see HoopsHype and Basketball Insiders) start with several restricted free agents most likely to stay with their current rosters (Brandon Knight and Patrick Beverley), a coveted unrestricted free agent likely to choose Miami over anywhere else (Goren Dragic) and a few guys who the Jazz hopefully have no interest in (Rajon Rondo and Reggie Jackson).

But there, at #6, a name jumps out. What if I told you that a 26-year-old point guard with an above average career PER — despite playing on some highly dysfunctional teams — is available? A guy with decent shooting and assist numbers and the ability to create shots for himself and teammates? A guy who can likely be had on a good contract for not too much money or for too many years?

Credit: ESPN The Magazine. Photographer: Joe Pugliese

I think the Jazz should think long and hard about making a free agency offer to Jeremy Lin.

I’m going to delve into some pluses and minuses about the Jazz acquiring Lin below, but before I do, I’d urge everyone to read Pablo Torre’s amazing ESPN The Magazine’s profile of Lin from this past March. It’s a terrific story and puts Lin’s recent production into an important context.

The Positive

Lin exploded on to the scene with seven excellent weeks of NBA basketball (Linsanity!) before a knee injury in March 2012 cut his Cinderella Knicks season short. It was brief, but it was fantastic:

Two up-and-down seasons with the Rockets followed, before last year’s frustrating run with the Lakers.

What’s interesting, though, is that while my perception of Lin is that he didn’t play very well in either Houston or Los Angeles, his numbers are actually pretty solid. Last year with the Lakers was widely characterized as disastrous — Kobe mocked him! Bryron Scott benched him! — but let’s compare a few of his key numbers to the Jazz PG production:

Those offensive numbers for Lin aren’t elite, but they’re solid. He remains an average PG on offense, even in a tumultuous season. Here’s a bit more detail:

• Lin’s three-point shooting has steadily improved each of the past four years, from 32 percent to 37 percent.
• Lin continues to draw fouls at a high rate, though these numbers declined some with the Lakers. He averaged 5.1 FTA per 36 minutes last year. Of the 100 guards who played at least 1,000 minutes, Lin ranked 14th in the league in FT rate. (Not surprisingly, Exum ranked dead last.)
• Lin remains a solid distributor of the ball. His 6.4 assists per 36 minutes rank him 24th of the same 100 guards who played 1,000 minutes.

The Negative

Some key numbers for Lin are trending in the wrong direction. During that celebrated Knicks season, Lin’s game had a little Harden to it. He took mostly shots at the rim and from 3 and gave out a ton of assists. A few of those Moneyball ratios have shifted, unfavorably:

• With the Knicks, 57 percent of Lin’s shots came within 10 feet of the rim — by last year, only 42 percent did. And Lin shot most poorly from mid-range, shots which he took more of last year. Very poorly. On long 2s, he shot just 32 percent, for example.
• The shift in Lin’s game away from the rim towards the mid-range has led to a declining 2FG%. It was 47-49 percent with the Knicks and Rockets before declining to 44 percent last year.
• Lin’s assists per-36-minutes have dropped from 8.3 to 6.4. That’s the difference between being an elite assist man — think Jeff Teague this year — to average at the position.

Now, while those trends are worrisome, it’s important to remember the widespread sense that the 2014-15 Lakers under Byron Scott weren’t well coached. The team famously shunned the 3-pointer, in an era when nearly every NBA team, including the Jazz, are taking more and more.

It’s reasonable to expect that with better coaching, Lin would take more shots at the rim and from 3, boosting his efficiency and production.

A couple other areas of concern for Lin:

• His turnover numbers, while improving, continue to be high. Even during his Knicks run, Lin turned the ball over frequently during his daring dashes to the rim. The good news is that those numbers have steadily improved during each of the past four years, but his turnover ratio remains high: Last year, he turned the ball over on 13 percent of possessions, leaving him 64th out of 74 NBA point guards.
• Reviews of Lin’s defense are mixed. He’s good size for a point guard, at 6’ 3’’, but isn’t considered particularly quick. He hasn’t played for terribly good defensive teams. The deepest dive on his defense was a post last summer from Fern Rea on Raining3s.com which concluded Lin is better than popular sentiment would believe, calling him “a tireless worker who makes up what he lacks in quickness and lateral movement with effort, size and smarts.”

Conclusion

Clearly, a trade for a young talent like Jrue Holiday would represent a stronger upgrade at point guard than signing Jeremy Lin. But if the Jazz strike out on the trade market, I believe that Lin at the right price would be a worthwhile gamble.

Lin’s value is low right now. What if the Jazz could get him for two years, $10 million? Signing Lin at such a modest price wouldn’t mean the Jazz were giving up on Dante Exum. Rather, Lin could step into the role that Trey Burke played late last year: coming off the bench to anchor the second unit offense. And on nights when the Jazz need more offense than Exum can offer, Lin could play more minutes and even close games. Lin is unlikely to play defense as well as Exum did by the end of his rookie season, but would be an upgrade over Burke.

The most likely scenario for Lin is that he never returns to his burst of success as Knick. However, even the Lin of the past three years would be a significant upgrade from the Jazz PG play the past few years.

Watching highlights of Lin also reminded me that he has a particular flair for passes to bigs — lobs and clever entry passes. Imagine Gobert and Favors on the receiving end of a few of those each night. Imagine a ball handling guard to take the pressure off Hayward on a few nights.

I also think it’s possible that Lin improves. I’m not one to put too much stock into intangibles, but after a rough season in the spotlight in Los Angeles, might mellow Salt Lake City and an improving Jazz team be a great environment to get back on track.