Knicks Will Evaluate Lin Further Later This Week at LinesMaker

Knicks Will Evaluate Lin Further Later This Week

MIAMI (NBA/Newsfeed) – The New York Knicks sound hope­ful that Jeremy Lin’s return to the lineup may come sooner than later.

Lin did some on-court work in Miami for the fourth con­sec­u­tive day, before the Knicks played the Miami Heat on Mon­day night in Game 2 of an East­ern Con­fer­ence first-round play­off series.

Game 3 isn’t until Thurs­day in New York. The Knicks plan to prac­tice on Tues­day and Wednes­day, and that could give them time to get a bet­ter feel for how Lin’s recov­ery from surgery to repair torn car­ti­lage in his left knee is going.

“We haven’t run up and down in terms of being able to scrim­mage or any­thing like that,” Knicks coach Mike Wood­son said. “And that’s where the test is going to come. When he’s got to cut and guard peo­ple and push and do things of that nature, that’s the big test. And we don’t have time to prac­tice like that. We really don’t. So basi­cally all he’s done is drills and he’s shot the ball a lot here as of late, but only time will tell.”

Lin was inac­tive for Game 2 against the Heat. The Knicks made one change to their start­ing lineup, with Landry Fields listed among the first five after guard Iman Shumpert was lost for six to eight months with a torn lig­a­ment in his left knee after a non-contact injury in Saturday’s series opener.

Tyson Chan­dler was also in the lineup for the Knicks after bat­tling flu-like symp­toms for sev­eral days, along with Amare Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Baron Davis, who has been deal­ing with back sore­ness all sea­son. With Davis hurt­ing and Shumpert gone, Lin – if healthy – would fig­ure to be a boost to the New York backcourt.

Miami’s listed starters for Game 2 were unchanged: LeBron James and Udo­nis Haslem at for­ward, Chris Bosh at cen­ter, Mario Chalmers and Dwyane Wade at guard. Eddy Curry and Ter­rel Har­ris were inactive.

Lin said Sun­day that he did not want to com­mit to a timetable for return­ing, not­ing that he’s still been unable to do some of things he would need to in game sit­u­a­tions. Mon­day marked four weeks since his surgery, and the team orig­i­nally expected his recov­ery to be a six-week process.

Lin aver­aged 14.2 points and 6.2 assists in 35 regular-season appear­ances with the Knicks. He started 25 of those games, aver­ag­ing 18.2 points and 7.7 assists in those con­tests – includ­ing a bril­liant run in Feb­ru­ary when Lin, shortly after being inserted into the lineup, scored 114 points in his first four starts and 163 in his first six, mak­ing the for­mer Har­vard guard an NBA phe­nom­e­non almost overnight.

The Knicks were 15–10 with Lin as a starter in the reg­u­lar sea­son, 21–20 when he was either com­ing off the bench or not in the lineup.

“He shot (Mon­day), went through some half­court offen­sive sets that we had put in,” Wood­son said. “So he’s mov­ing around. When he decides to play, I don’t really know at this point. We’ll prob­a­bly have a bet­ter feel once we get back to New York.”

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NBA news see: Knicks will eval­u­ate Lin fur­ther later this week.

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