“He’s a guy that I think intrigued a lot of scouts,” said NBA Assistant Director of Scouting Ryan Blake (pictured) [of Jeremy Lin]. “He wasn’t the top scorer, wasn’t the top assists leader, but he did all the right things, and I think that’s a plus, especially when you get into an environment like that.” This is what The Harvard Crimson’s staff writer Dennis Zheng wrote in his article (linked below).
“I talked to the players before the tournament and said this to all of them, ‘Listen, these teams know you can score, they want to know if you can play basketball’—and I think he proved that this week,” Blake added.
“I really like him, I think he has an opportunity, but we also had a lot of strong point guards in this tournament,” Blake said. “Could we see him in the NBA? Yes, absolutely I could see him in the NBA at some point…Will he get drafted? I don’t know…We have so many players that it’s such a fine line between making it and not making it.”
Here are some other viewpoints…
“I thought he got better as the camp went on…it showed that he was able to make adjustments, which speaks to his feel for the game, which is obviously off the charts,” said Jonathan Givony, president of DraftExpress.com.
“Probably the best thing he showed is that he’s just an exceptionally smart player, he’s got great court vision, he’s incredibly unselfish…I thought he had a very strong showing there, and I’m sure he helped himself.”
“For guys like him and 50 other players, there’s just a million different variables, circumstances that need to fall his way in terms of being put in the right situation,” Givony said. “A lot of it has to do with luck…He passed one hurdle, and there’s still a couple more to go. He’s definitely in the picture as far as the NBA is concerned, but he’s not a lock at this point.”
Then there’s the tweet by Ryan Feldman of TheHoopsReport.com…
“I don’t think people how realize how good Jeremy Lin is. If I had to take any PG here for my team, it would probably be Jeremy Lin.”
…followed by the rather contradictory quote as reported by Zheng…
“He’s not going to make the NBA, unfortunately,” Feldman said. “He’ll probably get a shot in the summer league with somebody if he wants to, and after that he’ll go to team workouts…and you never know down the road.”
“Right now, he’s probably going to go play somewhere in Europe or Asia,” Feldman said.
Finally, there’s Brian Bass, NBA agent friend of Peter Robert Casey, http://twitter.com/Peter_R_Casey, who’s one of my favorite basketball tweeters out there (50k followers!)…
“Jeremy Lin [was] poised. Might make it.”
UPDATE: Here’s another quote from an unnamed NBA executive, courtesy of Steve Donahue of the Boston Herald in his article…
“For a kid like him who plays at a lower level, it’s a great way to get acclimated to that (competition),” an NBA executive said. “I thought he more than held his own. I was really impressed with him in terms of what I expected and what I saw.”
Read the whole article at: Lin Aims To Boost Draft Chances | The Harvard Crimson
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