NBA commissioner David Stern said yesterday that the rise of the Houston Rockets guard Jeremy Lin (林書豪), the first US-born NBA player of Taiwanese descent, marks a turning point for the US basketball league.
“Jeremy Lin is a true milestone for us,” Stern, who is scheduled to retire in February next year, said in a pre-game press conference ahead of the NBA’s preseason Global Games in Taipei today.
“As it is exciting to watch, and I think he alone is going to have a long-term impact on more and more Asian youngsters playing basketball,” the senior NBA official said.
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Lin’s story has been a lesson for young players that making sacrifices and working hard will contribute to the success of their teams, which includes not just NBA teams seeking championships, but also senior-high school and college teams as well, the commissioner said.
“Eventually, there will be more Asian players playing basketball in the NBA, and that’s the legacy coming from Jeremy Lin’s success,” he said.
The Rockets play against the Indiana Pacers today in the Taipei Arena.
It will be the second preseason game the NBA has put on in Taipei, following a preseason encounter between the Denver Nuggets and the Pacers in October 2009.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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