LIN’S IN, RAPS WIN
New Raptor arrives to standing ovation — and manages to chip in with eight points.
Jeremy Lin had just completed his first game as a Toronto Raptor; he was fine, he was trusted by the coach, and he was embraced. And he tried.
“What do you do when you’re a point guard and have no idea what’s going on?” the 30-year-old point guard said with a grin after Toronto’s 129-120 win over the Washington Wizards, in which Lin had eight points, five rebounds, five assists, a steal and a block in 25 minutes, including a game-turning 33-9 run in the second half. “You just do your best.”
There were Chinese-language media in the first row listening, and more cameras in the back, because Lin is different. The first Asian-American NBA player of consequence, the author of Linsanity with New York in 2012, and the bumpy, peripatetic career he has carved out since. Atlanta bought him out, because he wanted to play for a contender while he could. And the Raptors wanted him to come.
So he signed around 5 p.m., did a last medical check, and they gave him the Etch-A-Sketch course in the team’s walkthrough, the basics. He stayed late with fellow new acquisition Marc Gasol, watched some video, went to chapel with other God-fearing players, and came off the bench. Raptors guard Fred VanVleet underwent surgery on his injured thumb Wednesday and could miss five weeks rather than three. So Jeremy Lin would play.
And he tried. He played the zone that Gasol wasn’t ready for in his Saturday debut, and tried to just play with energy. Head coach Nick Nurse said, “I thought it was okay. I would have liked him to be a little bit more aggressive … I
think he went in there thinking pass, pass, pass tonight a little bit and I think he had a chance to take some more shots because I think he can score. But that’s okay ... I think he looked good out there — his speed, quickness, ball handling. He fits in nice out there.”
Lin had started his Toronto day by sending a video to his 1.6 million followers on Instagram of snow from his hotel room with the comment, “Just landed, this Toronto weather is not playing around.” He fit into Toronto’s complicated pregame starter’s intros after his friends sent him videos of Gasol being befuddled by it on Monday. And that was most of what the new Toronto Raptor really knew about what was going on here.
And he ended the day in the spotlight, congratulating Pascal Siakam on his career-high 44 points, “happy for him, even though I just met him.” And asked about the responsibility of his status as Jeremy Lin — after the incandescense of Linsanity and the disappointment of how it ended in New York, and the idea that his Asian status was why he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time and People — the Harvard-educated kid from California reflected on the road that brought him here.
“Yeah, (Mandarin media) probably happens in every city that has a strong Asian contingent,” said Lin. “Happened in Atlanta as well, but not this. So again, I’m very proud to represent Asian people on a global platform, on a global scale. And for me to be here where there’s a lot of Asians — like, I used to run from it. You know? Because that’s all anybody’s ever wanted to look for. Like, ‘Oh, he’s Asian, he’s Asian, he’s Asian.’ And I was like, talk about my basketball. But now people can see I can play, I belong in the NBA, and I’ve really embraced just being able to represent Asians and do it the right way, hopefully.”
He was asked, how long did it take to embrace it? People who have spoken to him say he is deeply aware of his responsibility, of his status, of his celebrity and the power that comes with it. Linsanity was the start. Everything else has been the path he decides.
“Yeah, I mean, I think I was really jaded after the New York stretch,” said Lin. “I think there was a lot of things that happened that made me give up a little bit on people, per se. And that was a huge part of the story, and that was a huge point of contention for a lot of people as to why I was getting the publicity, or why things were the way they were.
“So I kind of wanted to run from that a little bit. I would probably say three years down the road, I kind of turned a corner, and I would say being hurt for two straight years, and seeing that my Asian fan base, I don’t feel like it dropped off one bit. And I haven’t even touched the court. Like, every year I go over to Asia and I can’t even walk through the airport, it’s insane. So to see them do that after all the highs and lows, but really going through the lows post-Linsanity, which culminated in those injuries, for me, I’m still blown away. And again, that’s fed into why I want to carry myself a certain way.”
He’s the biggest small part of something bigger now. Linsanity is one reason he was cheered in Toronto, but it was a long time ago.
He has a chance to create another reason to cheer him, too.