Taiwanese-American professional basketball player Jeremy Lin (林書豪) yesterday remained tight-lipped about which National Basketball Association (NBA) team he hoped to play for next season, saying that the most crucial thing is that he should feel happy playing basketball.
“To me, the most important thing as a free agent is that I am happy when I play basketball or show up for work. I was happy last year, but I was not particularly happy for the first five years [as an NBA player],” he said at a press conference in Taipei. “To be happy, I need to consider a few things. Of course I am going to consider who is coaching the team, the team’s style, the players on the team and their chance of winning, as well as the on-court time I have and if I have a chance to start.”
As to which team he would prefer to sign with, Lin said his agent would call him after the June 23 NBA draft is completed, when the NBA teams are scheduled to trade players.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The 27-year-old Charlotte Hornets guard had quite a productive season, averaging 11.7 points, 3 assists and 3.2 rebounds per game. His average score went up to 12.4 points in the playoffs.
Earlier this week, US media reports said he had declined the player option on his contract and is to become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
Several NBA teams were reported to be interested in recruiting Lin, including the New York Knicks, the Houston Rockets, the Brooklyn Nets, the Philadelphia 76ers, the San Antonio Spurs, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Portland Trail Blazers.
Lin was greeted by more than 200 fans on his arrival at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport early yesterday morning. Apart from giving autographs, Lin took selfies with his fans and gave away autographed caps and T-shirts.
Lin also attended a news conference organized by his sponsor, Adidas, where he met with some high-school basketball players.
Lin’s brother, Joseph Lin (林書緯), is a point guard with the Fubon Braves of the Super Basketball League.
Jeremy Lin said he is very proud of his younger brother’s achievement.
He said he knew many young players watched YouTube videos and copied the moves of famous players.
He said footwork and the fundamentals of the game are the most important things for young players to learn, adding that beautiful moves do not necessarily help increase a player’s shooting average.
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
PUBLIC POLL: More than half believe Chinese drills would make Taiwanese less willing to unify with China, while 36 percent said an invasion was highly unlikely Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points. Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said. Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said. Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
RSS