Jeremy Lin. If you don't know who this kid is yet, you'd better learn it. Kobe said he didn't know who Lin was before the Lakers played the Knicks last night, but I guarantee you that he knows who he is now. If you're still in the dark as to who this mystery player is, I'll educate you.
Jeremy Lin is a second year guard out of Harvard, yep the basketball powerhouse that is Harvard university. He went undrafted in the 2010 NBA draft, but did impress in summer league games against eventual #1 pick John Wall. Eventually he signed a 2-year deal with his home town Golden State Warriors. He was sent down to the Warriors D-League affiliate three times throughout his rookie year. He was waived by Golden State on the first day of the 2011 training camp, then claimed by the Rockets, waived by the Rockets, before being claimed by the Knicks. While playing for the Knicks D-League team, Lin notched a triple-double, and was called to the big club three days later. The rest is the thing of New York legend.
But anybody can come out of 'nowhere' and have a hot streak, if that's all there was to this story I wouldn't have felt compelled to write about it. No, the big story is that this is Jeremy Lin...
Yes, Jeremy Lin is an American born to Taiwanese immigrants with roots in mainland China. Now before you get on me like you do Gary whenever he brings up race (you know you do...), hear my point. The 'Lin-sanity' that is sweeping New York right now reminds me a lot of another sports phenomenon, something called 'Fernando-mania'.
Any sports fans in the 80s will be able to tell you about 'Fernandomania', It was the craze surrounding Mexican pitcher Fernando Valenzuela. Not only did it energize Dodger fans, it brought a whole community of people to the team and the sport. Mexicans rallied around Valenzuela and the Dodgers. Supporting him not only because of the exceptional play 'on the field', but because of what he meant to a collective people.
It's almost eerie how much the two situations mirror each other so far. Both were relatively unknowns that broke out and gained national notoriety, but the really interesting part comes when you look at the leagues they played in and the marketing arm of the time.
in the 1980s the Latino push in baseball was hitting its peak. Latinos had been in the league as stars for years, but MLB was starting to embrace the group and understand just how valuable they could be to the future of the league as both players and fans. Looking at the NBA landscape today, China is the frontier...the land that David Stern wants to get into above all others. What better player to help with that vision than Lin?
The NBA enjoyed some success with Yao Ming, but big men aren't exciting in today's NBA. It's hard to make a back to the basket, jump hook shooting big man a 'shoe selling' force. Lin is a guard though, and if his first 3 starts are any indication a flashy one. He can score (Friday night he scored a career high 38 points against the Lakers at MSG) and he can find the open man (averaging 8 assists a game over New York's four game winning streak). Above all else though, he's marketable. He's a young, intelligent, good looking, down to earth kid. He's a great interview who can hold his own with any reporter out there, unlike many athletes.
Even though he's only gained notoriety in just the past four games (his breakout if you will), he's already been embraced by Chinese-Americans and basketball fans in China alike. If you watch any package about Lin on ESPN, you'll see that many of the fans holding Lin signs are Chinese-Americans. And many of these games were road games, so there are fans coming out in cities around the country who may not normally just to see Jeremy Lin play. In China, Lin's Chinese name , æ书豪(Lin Shuhao in Mandarin) ranked second on the seven day trending topics on the Chinese search engine Baidu this week. Think about that, in a country of 1.4 billion people, Jeremy Lin was the second biggest topic this past week.
I understand that all this excitement probably will be for naught. Lin's had four great games, only started three of them, and it's very possible that once teams have seen his game that they'll figure out a way to stop him. But maybe...just maybe...this story will continue to play out the way it has this past week and 'Lin-sanity' will continue. Lin does have the ability to be more than a flash in the pan, and even Kobe had some advice for him. When asked what advice the future hall-of-famer had for the breakout star Bryant responded, "He scored damn near 40 points, what advice to I have to give?"
