How Common is Jeremy Lin?

The Knicks just finished their seventh consecutive win, their sixth with Jeremy Lin playing as a starter. The hype surrounding this run has reached epic proportions, so epic that even recreational bloggers are trying to shoehorn a Jeremy Lin column onto the Internet, desperately trying to gain traffic. What a sad group that must be.

Anyways, the only challenging thing about hopping on the Lin bandwagon is weighing the sizzle versus the substance of the story. Is this story a truly rare feat, or does it happen somewhat often in the NBA? There are two parts to that question.

Part 1: Amazing Stats from a Player That Few Saw Coming

In the NFL, there are a ton of players that exemply out-of-nowhere success. Victor Cruz, Tom Brady, Wes Welker, just to name a few. The NBA is not a league like that. Take this year's All-Star selections. Over half (13) were top 5 draft picks, and a very small number (4 out of 24) were drafted outside the lottery. Generally, these things don't happen. So, have any recent players fit the bill of a Lin-type breakout. Here's the two key criteria for qualifiers:

• not a 1st round draft pick
• traded/cut by at least 1 NBA team

Recent history actually provided two such examples: Jordan Crawford, a 2nd round Hawks pick traded to the Wizards, and Marcus Thornton, a 2nd round Hornets pick traded to the Kings. So, how does Jeremy Lin's 1st 6 games as a starter stack up?

As far as individual stats go, Lin's numbers don't seem quite as mind-blowing. Lin's shooting efficiency bolsters his scoring average, but the high turnover numbers yield similar assist-to-turnover ratios to Crawford and Thornton, and none are true PG-type numbers (all below 2:1). It's also important to note that as both Crawford and Thornton accumulated more starts, their scoring numbers dipped as their shooting efficiency regressed. However, the difference in wins (6 versus 1 each) is significant. But how significant?

Part 2: The Significance of a 6 Game Winning Streak in the NBA

The NBA season is an 82 game marathon (usually), and all kinds of odd things can happen. Looking back at the last 3 seasons, in total there were 89 separate winning streaks of 6+ games during those regular seasons. That doesn't seem that rare, does it? Well, take a look at the teams who won 6+ games in those seasons:

2010-2011: Celtics, Lakers, Trailblazers, Mavericks, Nuggets, Hawks, Hornets, Thunder, Heat, Spurs, Knicks, Magic, Bulls, Jazz

2009-2010: Celtics, Lakers, Trailblazers, Cavaliers, Mavericks, Nuggets, Hawks, Hornets, Thunder, Magic, Suns, Bucks, Jazz, Bobcats

2008-2009: Celtics, Lakers, Trailblazers, Cavaliers, Nuggets, Hawks, Hornets, Spurs, Magic, Suns, Raptors, Jazz, Bobcats, 76ers, Pistons, Rockets

Of the 44 teams that have mustered streaks like the Knicks are on, only 5 missed the playoffs. Translation: bad teams rarely do this. In contrast, the Carmelo-Stoudemire Knicks were 14-14 last season, and 8-15 this season before Lin started playing major minutes. That's generally not considered playoff quality. Factoring in the absence of both Anthony and Stoudemire for most of this 6 game run, and it's hard to deny the impact of Lin on the Knicks as a whole. Truly bad teams just don't win this many games in a row in the NBA, and the Knicks have a lottery-bound roster without their two max players. But they haven't played like it the last two weeks, and only one thing's really changed in that time.

All in all, there's definitely some substance behind the runaway Lin hype machine. In a sport where key players rarely come out of left field, Lin has become one for the Knicks. His numbers will regress, the team will lose some games, and the hype will (hopefully) die down a little. But that doesn't change the fact that the last two weeks have changed the course of the Knicks organization and Jeremy Lin's professional basketball career. And we're all interested in how it plays out now.