For one brief, wild moment in 2012, Jeremy Lin was the most talked-about athlete in the world.
Over a handful of games with the New York Knicks, he went from being an unknown player struggling to escape the NBA’s D-League to an unstoppable basketball force.
Now, at age 30, Lin remains a free agent and is struggling with the knowledge that he is close to the end of his career.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
“Rock bottom just seems to keep getting more and more rock bottom for me,” Lin told a church in New Taipei City’s Xindian District (新店) on Sunday. “Free agency has been tough, because I feel like in some ways the NBA’s kind of given up on me.”
It feels surprising for a player who just won a championship with the Toronto Raptors to make such an admission until you look at the context.
Lin was a bit player in Toronto and has not been a regular starter for years. It is understandable that he does not feel like he “really earned” his championship ring given his limited playing time.
It is also likely that these words are coming from someone whose entire career will be overshadowed by a handful of weeks during which he was untouchable and unstoppable on the court.
That story — labeled “Linsanity” — started on a couch.
Claimed by the Knicks in late 2011 after a short stint with the Golden State Warriors, Lin spent some time with the team’s D-League affiliation before being plugged into the lineup after injuries struck other players.
Having no idea how long his time in New York would last, Lin stayed in his brother’s apartment.
Slotted into the starting rotation due to the team’s lack of options, Lin’s out-of-nowhere production sparked something with the Knicks, who suddenly went on an improbable winning streak.
The numbers were ridiculous. The Knicks went 7-0 in Lin’s first seven starts at point guard. He scored 136 total points in his first five games, a sequence of victories highlighted by a game-winning three-pointer over the Raptors.
The Knicks had found something unexpected in Lin and they ended up going 9-3 with him as a starter heading into the All-Star break in 2012.
Lin was a phenomenon. He made the cover of Sports Illustrated two weeks in a row. His underdog story made him a worldwide sensation.
Only the fourth Asian-American player in NBA history, his success was rightfully seen as inspirational.
While he had to know that Linsanity was never going to last forever, Lin probably had aspirations that he could at least establish himself as a star player.
That never happened. Lin’s 2011-2012 season ended in a knee injury and the Knicks were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs without him.
The Knicks opted to let him leave for the Houston Rockets, who offered him more money, and Lin has now played for eight NBA teams. He has never made an All-Star team.
By the time he landed in Toronto, it was clear that he was no longer a full-time player.
It might feel like Lin’s career has been a failure, but that is only if you look at it in the context of Linsanity being some sort of repeatable feat rather than an event that was noteworthy because it was so inexplicable.
Lin was never going to be an all-time great. All-time great players do not tend to go undrafted and are not thrown into starting roles by teams out of sheer desperation.
What Lin ended up being was a very good player who has managed to stay in the league for nine seasons despite being completely overlooked at the start of his career.
Along the way he has earned US$65 million on the court, become a role model around the world and is the first Asian-American player to win an NBA championship.
His story remains one of the most remarkable ones in basketball history and not just as a one-season wonder.
Lin cannot be blamed for not quite seeing it that way. Players find themselves looking at the end of their careers at ages when most people have barely started theirs.
Basketball mortality is a painful thing even for those rare greats who leave on their own terms.
Then again, it is not quite over yet. If he wants, Lin will probably get a shot to latch onto another NBA team, although it will be as a veteran player coming off the bench.
It would not be the most glamorous end to a career, but that is also par for the course in this business.
One thing is for certain: He will not experience anything like Linsanity ever again, but that is only because nobody else has, either.
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