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I am not Chinese, but I am an Asian-American as well as a passionate basketball fan. Thus, the sudden emergence of Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks has me very excited.
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Yes, it’s only been three games of excellence from Lin -- but for a moribund Knicks club that is unlikely to make the playoffs this year, Lin is the only real reason to watch the team, given that Carmelo Anthony is injured and Amare Stoudemire is attending to a family tragedy.
Lin completely shatters both the stereotypes of Chinese/Taiwanese people (and Asian-Americans as a whole) and of basketball players. He is not only from an ethnic group that is woefully under-represented in U.S. sports, but he is also a Harvard graduate (not too many Cambridge alums currently playing in the NBA).
Lin’s route to the NBA has been a circuitous struggle, to say the least, and highly eccentric. He received no athletic scholarship offers when he graduated from high school (despite enjoying a sterling prep career in his native California). Later, he was undrafted after graduating from Harvard. Even then, his first NBA club, the Golden State Warriors (who hardly played him), did not even guarantee his contract.
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Before the Knicks got him, he had already been waived by two clubs.
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Now it looks like he may have found a real home in New York.
More importantly, Lin is a fabulous playmaker, a creative passer and can even dunk the basketball!
In Wednesday night’s game against the Washington Wizards, Lin scored 23 points and dished out 10 assists, as the Knicks won. He has now scored in excess of 20 points in three straight starts (all of which the Knicks won, by the way).
However, I sincerely hope that Lin becomes a full-time starter and meaningful player in the league -- rather than an “exotic” one-hit wonder.
I recall how I felt when the Houston Rockets drafted Yao Ming of China in 2002 as the top pick. I was overwhelmed that there was a 7-foot-6 Chinese person who could play basketball.
However, Yao was ultimately a bit of a disappointment. He had a fine career in Houston, but it seemed like Yao never really got in tune with how American basketball is played. This was obviously not his fault, since Yao was immersed in the Chinese culture and its basketball style, which calls for teamwork and selflessness. That’s all fine, but it doesn’t make for entertaining and enervating basketball.
Yao seemed rather passive, at least during his first two or three years, while other centers like Shaquille O’Neal, easily bullied him around the post. It took Yao several years to start banging back and playing in the U.S. style.
Another problem with Yao was that he didn’t feel comfortable speaking in English to the U.S. public for the first few years of his career (he had a translator serving as his “voice” to the media). This seemed to further widen the gulf between him and his non-Chinese fans and failed to give the American public a clear picture of his personality.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Yao, but Lin is a more compelling figure.
