Inside: Lin nears deal to join Warriors’ Santa Cruz G League team.
Jeremy Lin has been around the world and back since his brief stint with the Warriors in the 2010-11 season. Now, it appears he is rejoining Golden State’s organization just days before the NBA season tips off.
Lin, 32, is working on a deal to be added to Golden State’s G League team in Santa Cruz, a source told this news organization’s Wes Goldberg. The point guard reportedly must first receive clearance from the Chinese Basketball Association, where he played for the Beijing Ducks last season.
The G League doesn’t yet have a start date, so Lin presumably w ill be prepar ing himself in case the Warriors need him due to injury or possible coronavirus spread.
The Warriors plan to sign Lin to a 10- day contract, then waive him, making him eligible to join the Santa Cruz Warriors roster.
Lin, who led Palo Alto High to the 2006 state championship and then played at Harvard, has been working out in the Bay Area during the coronav ir us shutdown. He was spotted at a November workout with several Warriors players, including former teammate Steph Curry. He has also been practicing with the G League Ignite, a new developmental team based in Walnut Creek for high-level recruits who want to go straight to professional basketball rather than attending college.
Lin lit the basketball world on fire in 2012, when he went f rom an end- of- t he - b ench player to the top scorer on the Knicks for a stretch of several weeks, leading New York on a seven- game win streak.
He parlayed that success into a multi-year deal with the Rockets, with whom he started every game in the 2013-14 season. But after his first year in Houston, his role on the team diminished. The Rockets traded him to the Lakers, starting a string of five years bouncing around the league
from Charlotte to Brooklyn to Atlanta and eventually Toronto.
With the Raptors in 2019, Lin won the NBA Finals over the Warriors and got to celebrate at Oracle Arena, but he was a depth player on that championship team. Lin found little interest from NBA teams that offseason, so he turned to China.
Now it appears he’s coming back to the Bay Area, where it all began.
• Andrew Wiggins had a full stat line in Thursday night’s exhibition finale — 19 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 blocks. More important was the role he played with the second unit, which had struggled the first two games.
After starting the game and scoring 11 first- quarter points, Wiggins led Brad Wanamaker, Kent Bazemore, Eric Paschall and Marquese Chriss out for the second quarter. He ignited the group by forcing his way to the rim, finding open shooters on the perimeter and playing inspired defense.
“When he’s going like that,” Bazemore said, “we’re a different team.”
This appears to be Wiggins’ role, at least to start the season — a complementary player with the starters, then serve as the primary option with the second unit.
• Kelly Oubre had his best game (of three) in a Warriors uniform — a preseason-high 22 points on a tidy 8- of-12 shooting.
Instead of forcing shots, he was more patient and a more w illing pa r ticipa nt in the team’s ball movement.
“He settled dow n,” coach Steve Kerr said. “He looks more comfortable.”
• For conditioning reasons, Draymond Green and James Wiseman did not play at all in the preseason after testing positive for the coronavirus prior to training camp.
• The Warriors, who finished 2-1 in a preseason shortened by the pandemic, open the regular season Tuesday at Brooklyn. It will be their first encounter with Kevin Durant since he left the Bay Area as a free agent in 2019. Following the opener, they go to Milwaukee to play the Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo on Christmas Day.
• A PGA Tour event hosted by Curr y in San Francisco likely won’t be taking place after all.
The PGA announced Thursday that Workday had signed a 10-year contract to become the new presenting sponsor of the Memorial Tournament — Jack Nicklaus’ annual event at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio — starting in 2022.
Workday, a financial management firm based in Pleasanton, was going to be the title sponsor of a San Francisco tour stop hosted by Curry, an avid golfer who has promoted the message of accessibility to the sport to the Black community.