IT WAS LINSANE!
News takes look back on fifth anniversary of Jeremy’s introduction to New York and the world
KENNY ATKINSON still thinks back to that time sometimes, lets his mind wander back to five years ago.
Every so often, the Brooklyn Nets coach will walk past a playground in his new borough, his eyes watching the players in action, noticing a handful of Asians on the court.
“I recognize the Asian community just walking around Brooklyn,” he says. “You go to a playground, Asian guys are playing — and they’re ballers.”
They’re ballers just like Jeremy Lin, the point guard who, five Februaries ago, made the road for Asian-American basketball players just a little bit easier. Flash back to this time in 2012 and all New York (and much more than that) was midway through a unique stretch of hoops called Linsanity, obsessed with a Knick resurgence led not by Carmelo Anthony, but by an unheralded Asian-American point guard from Harvard who rocketed from the obscurity of a teammate’s couch to megastardom.
February marked the most dynamic portion of a 26-game stretch that saw Lin breathe life into a franchise, but for the Asian-American community, it was even more. For Asian-American fans, it was a pivotal month, the first time that an Asian-American was the country’s sports darling. For Asian-Americans, Jeremy Lin was a one-man wrecking ball crashing through long-standing stereotypes. For Asians, Linsanity was more than mere fandom; it was a chance to alter perceptions of a minority group that still searched (and still searches) for its voice. “He’s an accidental Asian-American civil rights hero,” says Frank Wu, chair of the Committee of 100, a New Yorkbased advocacy group that works to improve relations between Americans and those with Chinese backgrounds. “He destroyed stereotypes . . . The stereotype is Asian-Americans are nerds, geeks. They’re wimpy, not athletic. But we’re not just violin-playing child prodigies.” It was a stereotype perpetuated by society and internalized by a minority community in need of a hero in the mold of Lin. By the time Lin came along, several Asians had played in the NBA, highlighted by Yao Ming. But the Rockets great, who retired the season before Linsanity, had been schooled in China, and his success could be easily rationalized: He stood at 7-6. Yao reminded Asian-Americans of their potential, but he wasn’t relatable, “the product of a vast Chinese genetic pool and a Chinese system for producing star athletes,” says Wu. He was far from normal, easily viewed as an outlier.
Lin? He was “normal,” just 6-3, and he’d played through high school and at Harvard. He was the Asian-American who deviated from society’s expectations of his culture, conquered the U.S. system of sports development and advanced to the country’s grandest athletic test. And then, in his fourth start as a Knick, he hung 38 points on the great Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. “It’s the defining test of American masculinity, and Jeremy Lin shows that AsianAmerican guys can make it,” says Wu of the NBA. “Before Jeremy Lin, not even Asian-Americans thought of Asian-American guys as athletes. We thought of ourselves as brainy nerds and geeks.” It was only natural, then, that so many others saw Asian-Americans the same way before Lin. Lin served as inarguable proof of Asian-American athleticism, yet the narrative of his early career provides examples of just how aggressively racial stereotypes permeate societal thought and analysis. And perhaps that’s why the guard has admitted several times in recent years that he doesn’t like the term “Linsanity,” a term that’s become synonymous with his emergence. It’s a term inextricably linked to a flawed narrative that perpetuates an Asian-American myth, the idea of Asians as the “model minority.” Lin was initially painted as a try-hard player, a nevergive-up, rags-to-riches tale sleeping on Knicks teammate Landry Fields’ couch, and even five years later, you see few stories that tout Lin’s “explosiveness” or “athleticism.” He’s the product of society’s typical boxing in of talents based on race. And stereotypes have long lived in basketball, from the European shooter who lacks toughness to the shot-blocking big man from Africa to the white player who plays dirty from Duke. Such ideas emanate from lazy, race-based comparisons, evolving into lazy assumptions. Atkinson knows them well, although he believes they’ve dissipated in the NBA. “I think we all stereotype types of players, like on what part of the world they’re from,” he says. “But I don’t think that exists as much anymore.” Lin arrived with no relevant comparisons on the court, so he simply became the latest triumph of the Asian-American work ethic, even though Atkinson, then a Knick assistant, was learning in workouts and practices that there were other reasons for the young guard’s rise. Yes, Lin had “tremendous respect for the Asian work ethic,” says Atkinson, and seemed to thrive on criticism. He had something else too. “I remember in the Knicks, our performance people telling me how athletic he was, and I didn’t realize what a good athlete he was until I was working with him,” Atkinson says. “I was like, holy-moly . . . subconsciously, you wonder, ‘Am I stereotyping?’ But the reality is, he’s fast, he’s strong, like super-strong hips.” Joel Franks, author of “Asian American Basketball: A Century of Sport, Community and Culture,” thinks Lin’s story was too often about work ethic, even though the guard actually struggles with an overreliance on his athleticism on the court.
“The model minority stereotype has been stretched to include Lin, but having a Harvard education and a strong work ethic will not get you into the NBA or (help you) do as well as he has done unless you’re a superbly gifted athlete,” says Franks, a professor at San Jose State. “I agree . . . that Lin’s athleticism has been downplayed. If anything, however, his problems have come from being too ‘streety,’ depending too much on athleticism.”
However Lin balanced his athleticism and his smarts, he made it work that February of 2012, starting his first game on Feb. 4 and leading the Knicks to a 10-4 record the rest of the month. Since then, things have never been the same, even if Lin has never quite matched that explosion five years ago.
He finished that season averaging 14.6 points and 6.2 assists per game, still the best numbers of his career — and numbers that had most assuming the Knicks would re-sign him. But when the Houston Rockets offered him a backloaded four-year deal that summer, New York let him go.
He spent two seasons in Houston, then bounced to the Lakers and Hornets before signing a three-year deal with Brooklyn this offseason, reuniting with Atkinson, now a first-year head coach, and returning to the city he once made Linsane.
The homecoming has not been smooth. A nagging left hamstring injury has limited Lin to just 12 games for the nine-win Nets. Five years after he owned February, he’s yet to play a game this month. He’s 28 now, a veteran and no longer the darling of New York, and he barely talks of Linsanity, not even to Atkinson.
“It’s funny,” says Atkinson. “I thought we’d talk about it more, just in passing. But I think we’ve both moved on, like really moved on. We’re in such a different place . . . I think we’re so busy right now and so occupied with this project with the Nets.”
There’s plenty of work remaining in Brooklyn - and even more work ahead for Asian-Americans in pro sports. Linsanity shattered barriers and stereotypes, but Lin remains the lone full-blooded Asian in the league.
For all the talk of diversity in sports in 2017, there’s been little outcry to increase Asian-American representation in pro sports. That’s partly because Asian-Americans haven’t demanded it, although Franks adds that stereotyping may hurt as well.
“We cannot dismiss the prevalence of stereotypes that persuade non-Asian-American coaches, players, media and fans that AsianAmericans are not athletic, hungry and tough enough to excel at basketball,” he says.
And there are few signs of change on the horizon; can you name a top-tier Asian-American college hoops prospect?
“Lin’s brief stardom and continued usefulness as an NBA player should have subverted stereotypes,” says Franks. “(But) until other Asian-Americans get attention as Division I and NBA standouts, he might be unfortunately seen as an outlier.”
But the outlier has started the glacial process of shifting how society thinks of Asian-Americans in sport. Just ask Atkinson what he believes an Asian-American baller can bring to the court.
“Speed and creativity and vision and athlete (is what I think of),” Atkinson says. “Jeremy, he’s kind of the face right now.
“The fact that Jeremy contributed to changing so many mindsets, I think that’s just great.”