The days of US basketball glory for Jeremy Lin (林書豪) are well behind him, but he said yesterday that he has a different focus in his new team, the Kaohsiung Steelers, in Taiwan’s professional P.League+ — helping the younger generation of players to excel.
Lin — who has bounced around the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) and the National Basketball Association’s G League in the past few years, but retained a large following in Taiwan that was built during the Linsanity craze in 2012 — signed with the Steelers late last month.
At a news conference in Kaohsiung, during which he was introduced as a member of the Steelers, he spoke about how his outlook on the game has changed.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
“When I was younger, I wanted to prove myself by winning championships, but now as I’m older I’m searching for something more meaningful in basketball. Now I’m more into focusing on the new generation of basketball players, and the Steelers have many talented and young players,” the 34-year-old Lin said.
He said it was also the reason he joined the Guangzhou Loong Lions in China at the start of the 2022-2023 season.
One of the younger players on the Steelers roster, 23-year-old Chen Yu-wei (陳又瑋), was also a participant in one of Lin’s basketball camps in Taiwan more than a decade ago.
“To see Yu-wei and other players from my camps [play professionally] makes me really proud,” Lin said, speaking in Mandarin throughout the news conference. “I’m really proud, but it also shows that I’m old now.”
The move to Taiwan would also give Lin a chance to rediscover his passion for the game, something he said he had lost in the past few years as he navigated restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and constantly changed teams.
“I haven’t felt the passion for basketball and felt like a professional basketball player for a long time. So I decided to join the Steelers and I’m really looking forward to the first game to return to an environment with fans,” he said.
Lin described the past four seasons, including when he caught COVID-19 and was isolated for three months, as being particularly difficult because of how rarely he was able to perform in front of fans.
Rediscovering his passion was essential to his goal of serving as a mentor to younger players, he said.
“If I don’t rediscover my passion for basketball, then I might not be a role model,” he said, adding that he had no idea if he would continue to play after this season.
“In the next three months I’ll see where I’m at and if I can find my passion, I’ll think about continuing to play,” he said. “If I can keep playing, I can inspire the next generation of players.”
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