Jeremy Lin (林書豪), the first US-born NBA player of Taiwanese descent, ranks among the most popular candidates for selection as Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of this year, the magazine said on Thursday.
Every year, Time invites its readers from around the world to vote online for the leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes they consider to be the most influential people in the world for that year.
As of Thursday, Lin — the New York Knicks star point guard — had emerged as one of the top 10 vote-getters, with 72 percent of voters saying the 23-year-old basketball sensation “definitely” should be on the Time 100 most influential list.
Photo: EPA
In a brief introduction, the magazine recounted Lin’s meteoric rise to stardom after leading the struggling Knicks to a seven-game winning streak last month.
“At the beginning of February, Lin was the benchwarmer from Harvard on a bad New York Knicks basketball team. By the end of the month, the Asian-American point guard was a global sensation who had scored 136 points in his first five starts, the most for any NBA player since the 1976 NBA-ABA merger,” Time says.
“Though Lin is no longer setting scoring records, he seems to have settled into the starting point-guard role under new Knicks coach Mike Woodson,” it adds.
Among the other candidates for the selection this year are US President Barack Obama, Grammy Awards-winning British soul/pop singer Adele, Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
Official online voting ends on Friday and the poll winner will be featured in the Time 100 issue. The complete Time 100 list will be chosen by the magazine’s editors and revealed on the magazine’s Web site on April 17.
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