Linsanity

There was a night during my sophomore year of college where I was all sorts of banged up. High, hammered, or some combination of the two. It got to the point where my friends left me in a room with a trashcan in front of me so I could yack up my insides, while they partied in another room. On the television in front of me, per my request, was a New York Knicks game. They were up 14-18 points to start the 4th quarter, which was a miracle in itself because this was back in the Marbury, Steve Francis, Jalen Rose, Jamal Crawford, Channing Frye, D Lee, Eddy Curry days. Of course the Knicks blew their big lead and lost the game. Shortly thereafter, as it was later explained to me, my friend Matty K said to my cousin who will not be named, “Somebody turn that Knick game off before he sees it or else he’s going to lose it.” I was in such bad shape that I didn’t even notice, but that’s how big of a Knicks fan I was back then when the team was about as atrocious as I was feeling that night.



So when the Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin took the league by storm a few weeks back many of my friends wondered why I had yet to write about it. I mean, the Jeremy Lin story wasn’t just a basketball story. It transcended sports. Everybody and their mother were talking about it virtually nonstop for a week and a half. Trust me, I know how pervasive the Lin coverage was. I work in sports talk radio.

So why did I wait this long to write about a frenzy involving my favorite professional basketball team? Well for starters I didn’t want to rush to judgment and proclaim Lin to be the greatest point guard in the NBA. I wanted to see how the story played out over time before weighing in. Plus I didn’t want to make a bad pun and lose my job. The Lin puns were running ramped and my brain thinks in bad puns. It’s both a blessing and a curse. I can’t stop my mind from conjuring them up. I swear, if this whole sports talk radio thing doesn’t work out I think I have a future in headline writing.

Alright, so now that I’ve given the story enough time to marinate, what do I think about the Lin story?

It’s an incredible tale of persistence and opportunity. He’s an undrafted Asian-American point guard out of Harvard. I’ll say it again. He’s an undrafted Asian-American point guard out of Harvard. The fact that he even sniffed the NBA is remarkable. He got an opportunity and he made the most of it. There were plenty of ups and downs along the way, but he never quit. Once he was given his chance he took advantage of it.

From the onset I thought that the race factor was hugely significant. Sure Yao Ming was a sensational player and Yi Jianlian has had a decent NBA career (by Chinese standards), but there has never been a noteworthy Asian guard in the history of basketball.

Why does this matter? It’ not like he broke a color barrier. Correct, but he countered the stereotype that says that Asians can’t drive. Seriously though, even at my level of intramural role player Asians players are thought less of. Jeremy Lin had to fight this stereotype every time he stepped on a basketball court and trust me when I tell you that this fight isn’t over. He’ll never feel like he’s completely proved himself because I’m sure that he’s heard the doubters his entire life. He grew up in Palo Alto and was the best player on his high school team who won the state title in California (they beat a team led by Tyler King, who shot every time he touched it in his freshman year at Duke and then transferred to Villanova and disappeared) and he couldn’t get a basketball scholarship from Stanford. In fact, a Stanford assistant said that he should play Division III basketball.

What I like about Lin is that he’s handled this whole media frenzy incredibly well. He brushes off the offensive headlines (“They apologized. I’ve moved on.”). He’s beyond humble and grounded when it comes to his play and the attention that it’s garnered. He praises his teammates after every win and takes the blame for when they lose.

Is he a product of the system? Sure, but the kid can still ball. He’s scoring at an incredible rate. Sure, most of his early scoring (before ‘Melo returned) was because he was a good player on a bad team (think about Chris Bosh’s numbers in Toronto), but no one else in the history of the league had a stretch like that to start their career as starters.

Lin is exactly what the Knicks and their head coach Mike D’Antoni were missing. The Tyson Chandler signing was awesome (and Chandler is easily my favorite Knick), but it left the Knicks with a gaping hole at the 1. Toney Douglas was an abject disaster. Iman Shumpert showed flashes, but he’s really just an athletic combo guard that thrives defensively. Carmelo became the point forward for a while and that was largely ineffective because he’s a pure scorer, not a distributor.

Lin’s strengths are getting to the rim and finishing, setting up his teammates, quickly and accurately reading the high screen and roll (the essence of D’Antoni’s system), and he has a high basketball IQ. He has a bit of a herky jerky game, but it catches defenders off guard and enables his knack for knifing through defenses. He also has an ever improving jump shot and a lightning quick release.

As good as he is offensively though, he’s atrocious on defense. In fact, the Knicks have said that they didn’t draft him because they didn’t think he could defend on this level. When the ’09-’10 Knicks don’t think you’re good enough defensively you must be terrible. And he is. Last week Deron Williams torched him not only with his scoring, but also in setting up his fellow Nets. There are a host of dynamic point guards in the NBA and if Lin can’t stay in front of them he’s going to be a liability. Tyson Chandler can’t mask all of the Knicks’ deficiencies on the defensive end.

What’s his future in the NBA? Well as long as Mike D’Antoni continues to give him carte blanche on the offensive end (no one that turns it over as much as Lin does would be allowed to stay on the floor for so many minutes) he’s going to get better. I think he can be the third option on a championship team. His ideal stat line is probably 15 points, 10 assists, 4 rebounds, 3 steals, and 3 turnovers.