Basketball has never forgiven Linsanity for being the Great [White] Hope
Defending Jeremy Lin is exhausting. Over the weekend, video surfaced that showed Lin, 30, speaking at a church event in China. In it, Lin was visibly distraught about his place in the NBA. “Free agency has been tough,” he said, “because I feel like in some ways the NBA has kind of given up on me, and I always knew if I ever gave anyone a reason to doubt they would.” Most of the attention, and the accompanying ridicule, has been on the first half of that quote, but the substance of Lin’s complaint rests in the latter half. Lin has always been doubted, and likely always will.
To understand how Lin is viewed today is to understand what went into Linsanity to begin with. Carmelo Anthony was out. So was Amar’e Stoudemire. The Knicks were terrible. Then, out of nowhere, Lin went supernova. The Knicks began winning, and Linsanity dominated the national spotlight. Asian-American fans had never experienced anything like it, and their joy, along with the joy of Knick fans celebrating their most thrilling stretch in the last two decades, was the basis for a national phenomenon.
But Linsanity was also a convenient opportunity to criticize Anthony, a great player whose flaws fell in line with those traditionally assigned, by racists, to black players. The fact that Lin went to Harvard was an easy stereotype to wield for those looking for a useful model minority. Lin has carried the burden of both sides of Linsanity his entire career, and it’s cost him the benefit of the doubt from all corners.
First the basketball. Among the many rolling their eyes at Lin Monday was Rashad McCants, a former NBA player whose comment on Instagram summed up many reactions to the video of Lin in a tidy paragraph of grievance:
“Man this guy had at least 6 different opportunities to thrive,” McCants wrote. “Made more money than most guys 10x better than him.”
Present in McCants’ complaints about Lin’s career are all of the hallmarks of resentment toward a Great White Hope. Brown-nosing, playing the right way, a roster spot handed to him ahead of players who were better – the sort of argument that would make sense for, say, Gordon Hayward last season or Adam Morrison in any year of his career.
Also, notably, the same style of argument a wide variety of fans whip out when they want to dismiss a deserving player out of hand. Practically none of those privileges actually apply to Lin, who was assigned to the D-League three times in his rookie year.
The difficulty with Lin as a player has always been that his skill-set is a tough match with his talent level, and neither lines up with his celebrity.
When he’s right, he’s a very good but very specific player, one who is not useful to all teams equally. When he’s not, he’s as bad as any other misfiring role player in the league. That’s what made the setup for Linsanity a perfect match of time and place – a roster obliterated by injuries, a point guard-focused coach in Mike D’Antoni, and a green light to make something happen.
At root, Lin is a slashing point guard who scores at the rim and can create when asked to do so. He operates best with the ball in his hands, and had the misfortune of playing in an era in which stars are given the ball on a greater percentage of possessions than any time in history.
Bad alignment of player and era happen – Roy Hibbert was run out of the league for far lesser sins – but Lin’s luck was either extremely bad or extremely indicative of the era, as he found himself alongside some of the most ball-dominant guards ever, all of whom were more talented than him.
After New York, Lin went to the Rockets the same summer Daryl Morey traded for James Harden. Good luck finding possessions on the ball in that back court. From there he played with Kobe, and then Kemba Walker. He shone briefly in Walker’s absence, and briefly again in his stay with the Nets and Kenny Atkinson before injuries benched him for the rest of his time in Brooklyn. Last season, in Atlanta, he was one of the best bench players in the league before being traded to the Raptors and choking himself out of the rotation by the playoffs.
And still, Lin has been an undeniably useful guard. But while his circumstances have not been ideal, it’s hard to say exactly what “ideal” looks like for his game. He’s a good-but-notgreat guard who is at his best barreling toward the rim, and a streaky-at-best three-point shooter. Contenders tend to have the lead guard roles locked down with guys who do those things better than Lin does them.
All that means, or all it should mean, anyway, is that Lin is like any other veteran guard, a guy who can provide good minutes off the bench – as he did for the majority of last season – and mentor younger players. Take it from Trae Young, who played with Lin in Atlanta last season.
“Me having @JLin7 as one of my Vets,” Young tweeted Sunday. “I’ll tell you I’ll ALWAYS be a fan of him!!”
There is a segment of sports fans who refuse to admit that race plays a part in anything that happens on or off the field. Those fans are wrong, but it’s understandable to see them react to Lin the way they react to many other stories.
I don’t know why teams haven’t gotten in touch with Lin. I’d be shocked if there were an active or even passive blackball against him. But if the broad and indignant reaction can be taken as a remnant of the original resentment of Lin’s usefulness as a model minority cudgel of white hope – just a few years after Steve Nash’s twin MVPs were used to similar effect – then we must ask what that means for an Asian player in a league that has been as casual as the NBA has about anti-Asian sentiment.
In 2003, Shaquille O’Neal, dismissive of the idea that Yao Ming could challenge him as a dominant center, told reporters, “Tell Yao Ming, ‘Ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh.’” Shaq later issued a non-apology, saying, “To say I’m a racist against Asians is crazy… I’m an idiot prankster. I said a joke. It was a 70-30 joke. Seventy percent of people thought it was funny, 30 didn’t.”
The issue isn’t the events themselves, as they barely rate compared to what NBA players and fans see on a given day, but what the reaction to them says about how attuned the league is to anti-Asianness. It’s not. That probably matters when we’re talking about an Asian man holding the bag for how white America chose to use him.
Lin is clearly exhausted. So are we. The joy of Linsanity is a distant memory; all that remains is fear of whatever rock bottom looks like next
(New York Daily News/TNS)