On Feb. 24, the National Basketball Association honored its superstars by kicking off the league’s annual All-Star Weekend event, held this year in Orlando, Fla. Admittedly, I didn’t watch the festivities—and apparently I wasn’t alone. The NBA All-Star break, while largely ignored by viewers this year, traditionally gives players time to reflect on the first half of the season and regroup for the second act. Notably missing from the All-Star game itself, but not from the media spotlight, was one of the league’s newest stars: an unassuming point guard for the New York Knicks by the name of Jeremy Lin.
If you haven’t heard of Lin yet, chances are you either don’t follow sports at all or aren’t watching much cable television these days. The biggest story bar-none in the NBA’s first half (and in all of sports, for that matter) hasn’t been any one team or event; it’s been the hype they call “Linsanity,” and it’s gone beyond the confines of the sports pages. Not only is Lin filling up stat sheets and dazzling fans in the Big Apple, but his story has also captivated fans worldwide, especially in his parents’ home country of Taiwan and all across Asia.
Lin, 23, is something of an anomaly. Besides his Taiwanese-American heritage (he was born in Los Angeles and raised in the Bay Area), he’s also a Harvard graduate, a rare Ivy Leaguer making it big in professional sports. Though he doesn’t quite have a rags-to-riches story, Lin came out of college undrafted and unwanted by most teams. Cut by the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets, he spent time honing his game in the NBA’s developmental league before finding a home at the end of the Knicks’ bench.
Through it all, Lin persevered, and when afforded his shot, he took advantage, scoring 38 points in a Feb. 10 win over the Lakers in just his fourth start. He followed it up with a game-winning three-pointer to beat the Toronto Raptors on the road for the Knicks’ sixth straight win. By then, “Linsanity” had fully taken hold. Since Lin became the team’s starting point guard, the team is 8-3, and the 6-foot-3 Lin has already appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice, and the Asian edition of Time Magazine once.
Sports fans have always pulled for the underdog and secretly have a soft spot in their hearts for those athletes able to reach high levels of success against the odds and seemingly out of nowhere. Lin’s rise to Justin Bieber-esque superstardom hasn’t been without controversy, however; in Lin’s case, it’s come from those who are responsible for creating his image.
For one, fans in New York (and some enterprising T-shirt manufacturers) have given Lin the nickname “The Yellow Mamba,” which some people have called racist. It’s a takeoff on Kobe Bryant’s nickname “The Black Mamba,” and it’s presumably a reference to Lin’s Asian ethnicity. On Feb. 15, the MSG Network, which broadcasts Knicks games, showed a fan-made sign with Lin’s face and a fortune cookie reading, “The Knicks Good Fortune.” Several analysts saw the sign as perpetuating an ethnic stereotype and chastised the station for airing it. Finally, after scores of jokes about Lin had made their rounds through social networking sites, ESPN on Feb. 17 ran the unfortunate headline “Chink in the Armor” when describing a Knick loss in which Lin finished with nine turnovers.
The network pulled the headline within a half-hour of its posting, but by then, the damage had been done; screen captures of the page had gone viral. It’s hard to imagine how someone at the top didn’t notice the slur, but whether it was simply a case of an editor falling asleep at the switch or something more sinister, it happened. After a public backlash, ESPN apologized and abruptly fired editor Anthony Federico. Federico has since issued his own apology for the incident, calling the headline a “lapse in judgment” and an innocent mistake. He’s not the only ESPN employee to come under fire for comments about Lin, either; a radio anchor who made a similar slur during a prior live broadcast has been suspended for a month by the network.
April 15 will mark the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier for African-Americans in baseball when he took the field at second base for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers. While Lin’s situation is clearly different from Robinson’s, the media and fan reaction to Lin evokes and even parallels that era, raising questions about whether there’s still unspoken racial discrimination in sports. Lin certainly isn’t the first Asian-American to play in the NBA, but he is the most visible, and he’s forcing people to reconsider long-held stereotypes of Asian athletes. It’s not difficult to see how his success could open the door to more teams looking to the Far East for the next superstar in the future, and it means a great deal to his fans overseas and the athletes who have hopes of someday playing in the United States. For that, Lin is truly a pioneer.
Beyond race and ethnicity, Lin’s story is really the American Dream in reality. It’s an inspiration that people from any background can understand: If you keep your head down and work hard at something long enough, eventually you’ll get your chance to shine. Lin has done as much in a few short weeks’ time, but whether he ends up being the NBA’s flavor-of-the-week version of Tim Tebow or a legitimate winner with staying power remains to be seen. Given how fast he’s risen thus far, it’s hard to picture how his popularity and success could continue at the pace it has without hitting some roadblocks, as many overnight sensations often do.
But what do I know? I’m just a bum. And that’s my view from the bleachers.
The Bleacher Bum can be contacted at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 1-8, 2012.