An ode to Jeremy Lin

During my freshman year, the extent of my UCI basketball fanhood (which was in its infancy) was casually scanning the box scores and attended home games when I could. I remember thinking that it was interesting that they were playing Harvard on the road that season, and also thinking that it was somewhat embarrassing that it took overtime to beat them. Upon checking that box score though, a name jumped out at me: J Lin.

"Hey, an Asian guy! And what? A 20/13/3 night? With five steals and 43 minutes, the most on the team!? This guy is pretty good!" Being the blatant homer Asian athlete fan that I am, I proceeded to read up on him and continued to follow him for the rest of his collegiate career.

I learned that he was Harvard's best player, and that he had gone to Harvard the East Coast because no West Coast California Pac-10 teams had offered him a scholarship, despite gaudy high school numbers (Harvard doesn't give athletic scholarships). I learned that he was a devout Christian who was considering becoming a pastor. I even learned that he was his high school newspaper's editor. Needless to say, he quickly became one of my favorite college players, someone I would always update Yi on whenever he had a particularly good night.

That being said, I never thought that Lin would make it to the NBA. He wasn't drafted, and while he was good in college, he wasn't carry-his-team-to-the-NCAA Tournament good. At least so I thought. Sticking in the NBA is an extremely hard task, even for those drafted in the second round and from bigger name schools. It isn't like Lin was some 7-foot big man who could exist in the NBA simply due to his size. It isn't like Lin is super athletic or even the quickest guy on the court. When the Warriors signed him as a rookie free agent, I thought it was more of a token nod, due to Lin being from the Bay Area. When he started to actually do well in the preseason rookie games, I was impressed. When he made the team, I was excited. When he stuck with the team minus a few trips to the D-League, I was happy. But always lingering in the back of my mind was a sense of doubt. Maybe Lin was there as a sort of publicity stunt due to the high amount of Asians in the Bay Area. Maybe he was only there because the Warriors stunk that year.

This year when he was cut by the Warriors, I thought it might have been the end of the line. Plenty of players get a cup of coffee in the NBA and then disappear, never to be heard from again. I thought that Lin's ~40 games his rookie season were a fair cup of coffee, and just hoped that he would at least get a few 10-day contracts. When the Houston Rockets claimed him, I was again pleasantly surprised. Again however, I wondered if the Rockets were just appealing to their Asian fan base recovering from the lack of Yao. When he was bounced to the Knicks, I started thinking that Lin was just hanging on by a thread, not playing very often at all. I always hoped and rooted for him to persevere, but I didn't expect anything too crazy.

Then a couple nights ago, Mike D'Antoni played Lin in the first half, as one of the first guys off the bench. A beacon of hope! Last night, Lin finally got his chance to shine. He proceeded to lead all scorers with 25 points, outplaying all-star Deron Williams and carrying the Knicks on a night when Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire weren't getting it done. He even got all of Madison Square Garden chanting his name and "MVP! MVP!". Big time stuff. Some significant quotes to sum it up:

“Jeremy came out and gave us a great spark off the bench, and that was phenomenal for us tonight,” forward Amare Stoudemire said.

“If you would have told me Melo would go 3 for 15 and Amare would get in foul trouble, I’d think, `Man, we’d win by double figures,”’ Nets coach Avery Johnson said. “But when you have a guy coming off your bench like that and getting 25 points, it’s pretty deflating.”

“I had my doubts, but we just stayed with it and he has some of the qualities that we needed,” D’Antoni said.

“There is so much focus on Carmelo, Amare and the other guys that our game plan was to help off him and go under (screens) on him,” Williams said. “He started knocking down shots, got confidence. He was taking it to the basket and had a lot of success.”

"At times it did cross my mind; maybe I might not get a chance," said Lin, who played sparingly for Golden State last season.

"Let me go home and digest this a little bit, but obviously we're going back to the well," D'Antoni said. "He can give us something that we can't do without."

To sum it up, Jeremy Lin is the proverbial Hollywood story of an underdog who everyone doubted. From college coaches to the NBA, it's been Lin that has had to prove people wrong. As the first Asian-American NBA player, Lin is an inspiration and role model. He strives to know God more intimately, and is unashamed of his faith. Today, his tweet after the game began: "God is good during our ups and our downs!"

Playing in the NBA is just about THE most unlikely (and yet one of the most common) pipe dream for any young Asian American guy. The fact that JLin was able to do it gives me confidence in a small way that I will one day be able to accomplish a pipe dream of my own.