Jeremy Lin: Why Heavy Minutes, Not Pressure, Will Derail Lin's Season

Nobody should be surprised that the Linsanity phenomenon was dealt such a crushing reality check in Miami on Thursday night. You could see that coming a mile away.

If you didn't see it for yourself, you may have heard that Jeremy Lin did not have a good game against the Miami Heat in the New York Knicks' final game before All-Star Weekend.

Numbers rarely tell the whole story, but they do a pretty good job of telling the story in this case. Lin scored just eight points on 1-of-11 shooting, had just three assists and committed eight turnovers.

To their credit, the Knicks kept the game close, but the Heat ultimately ran away with it by the final of 102-88.

The consensus is that the pressure got to Lin, that he just couldn't handle playing on the road against the NBA's best team and the NBA's best player in LeBron James. He had the hoops spotlight all to himself for a while there. But against true stars and against truly dominant players, Lin just couldn't hack it.

I won't argue that point. Lin is still a very good player, but we found out on Thursday night that he's not a superstar yet.

But pressure wasn't the only thing that got to Lin on Thursday night. There was something else going on, and it was just as big a reason for his lousy performance as the increased pressure.

Lin looked gassed, man.

There's no other way I can put it. Lin played without his usual energy. He was sluggish. He was sloppy. He was indecisive. In a word, Lin was just plain "meh."

Maybe this was due to the fact Lin was going up against the most athletic team in the league. But I think Lin deserves a little more credit than that. He's done enough in the past weeks to show that he's way more athletic than people gave him credit for. He runs the floor well, he's agile and he's got hops too. He wasn't supposed to be that kind of player (please note this is a scouting report thing, not a race thing).

Lo and behold, Lin wasn't that kind of player against the Heat. I blame it on fatigue. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Once again, the numbers do a pretty good job of telling the story. Lin played 284 minutes all of last season with the Golden State Warriors. Up until Feb. 3 of this season, Lin had played all of 49 minutes with the Knicks.

You know how many minutes Lin has played since Feb. 3? Exactly 457.

With respect to the fact that Lin is a professional athlete who is in tip-top shape, that's a lot of work for a guy who previously had, well, no work at all, really. Lin can be totally forgiven if he is gassed at this point, and you can rest assured that the condensed nature of this season is not helping.

Instead of resting during All-Star Weekend, Lin will be in Orlando taking part in the festivities. There's no rest for the weary, and there's even less rest for mega-important NBA players.

When the All-Star nonsense is in the books, Lin will come back and lead the Knicks through a stretch of games that includes contests at Boston, at Dallas, at San Antonio, at Philadelphia and at Chicago. The Knicks have a brutal schedule right out of the gate after the All-Star break, and it will require Lin to log serious minutes against some pretty tough point guards.

It's not like Mike D'Antoni has a choice other than to play Lin as much as he possibly can. He knows that Lin is the best point guard he has, and he knows that his team has rallied around Lin. Like D'Antoni said, he's going to "ride him like Secretariat."

None of us should kid ourselves. Lin is already showing signs of fatigue, and he will continue to break down.

This is not a question of whether or not Lin is a good player; he is.

This is a question of whether or not Lin is superhuman; he's not. On the contrary, he's a human being who is working harder than he's ever had to work before. He'll meet any and all challenges head on, but it's just a matter of time before he hits a wall.

This is, of course, assuming Lin hasn't hit that wall already.

Whenever Lin reaches this wall, that's when reality checks like the one we saw in South Beach on Thursday night will become more commonplace. Not routine, mind you, but definitely consistent.

At that point, I'll advise everyone to remember the good times.