The writer said trading Lin to the Lakers has lost the Rockets a role player who has the ability to fill in the boxscore sheet in limited playing time. He said that Lin’s competitiveness and ability to make everybody better around him made the Rockets team more complete before than it is now.
Baldwin explained that heart is not always easy to quantify in professional sports but team officials should know when they have one in their roster. He said that Morey had it in Lin but he never seemed to care. Instead, the Rockets discounted, dissed, and eventually discarded one of the NBA’s most unique talents.
Lin was nowhere near the player he was when he played for the New York Knicks playing for the Rockets and the Lakers but he is now flourishing as a role player with the Charlotte Hornets. In fact, the Lakers are now last in the Western Conference, while the Rockets are hanging on to 9th spot. The Hornets, on the other hand, are starting to make their climb to the top half of the playoff picture in the Eastern Conference.
The rest of the season would either prove Baldwin’s assessment of Jeremy Lin and Daryl Morey. But if he falls short of his opinions, then it would only become obvious that he is a die-hard fan of the 27-year-old Harvard graduate.