Just last week, you would have represented an overwhelming majority of the general public, and even a large spectrum of NBA fans, if you uttered those words. My, how times change. Now, everyone (and I do mean everyone) knows a lot more about Jeremy Lin:
Jeremy Lin is a Harvard graduate.
Jeremy Lin is the NBA's first Asian-American player.
Jeremy Lin was undrafted, and ten days ago, didn't know if he'd have a guaranteed contract for the rest of the season.
We know this because, against every fathomable degree of logic and probability, Jeremy Lin came out this week for a floundering team without its two best players and dropped the highest-scoring trio of debut starts in NBA history; all W's.
I just watched him lead his team to another victory, hanging 20 and 8 on a suddenly legitimate Minnesota team, and felt under-whelmed...Remember this is Jeremy Lin we're talking about here, 20 and 8 in a W doesn't underwhelm me unless you're Lebron James or you've been sucking for my fantasy team (...Russell....). What's this World coming to? You can't make this shit up, it's too unreal...Hell I should probably stop writing this right now and get the jump on penning a script for Linsanity: An Underdog Story. In my MIP post last week, I spoke of the various factors that have come together to make unlikely breakouts not all the unlikely this year, and a perfect storm of those variables has created one of the most out-of-nowhere -and certainly sudden - stars in pro sports history. That he's doing it on basketball's biggest stage, for a team who would've traded Walt Frazier's closet for legitimate point guard, makes it even more ridiculous.
Jeremy Lin's story has come along at the perfect time as well. A couple weeks ago, The BS Report talked about how this season's hectic, action-filled schedule was perfect for the on-the-fly social media generation that can watch several games at once, while receiving Twitter updates and harassing the friends they just passed in their online pool. Consequently, Lin's spellbinding story (and really, it sounds ridiculous, but there's nothing else to call it) has rippled much further than it would've ten, even five years ago. The internet's more ubiquitous than ever, and in total pandemonium about what's going on: This morning, after dumping 38 on Kobe and the Lakers, Lin headlined NBA.com's front page, but also ESPN's, and even on Yahoo!, MSN, and even CNN before news of Whitney Houston's passing broke.
I feel like this is big. "News", by and large, as we've come to know it, is garbage. Most of what we're exposed to as mass-media-minions in today's unavoidably informative society is either depressing rhetoric about foreign wars, gun violence, and the trillions of ways to give yourself cancer, or agenda-pushing horseshit that's hardly worth its weight in the salt you should take it with. We're (to some extent) being suppressed by this overload of negative information, because let's face it, it's what people are going to tune in for.
Rarely does such an improbable and non-polarizing feel-good story come along, and that it's permeating into a media pool that's inundated with tragedy and dishonesty is promising. This sounds corny, but plain and simple, the World needs more inspiration; more Jeremy Lins, more reasons to celebrate successes and believe that with driven application, it can be duplicated. If even one little kid, who doesn't watch basketball and never otherwise would've heard of Jeremy Lin, sees him on TV, thinks his story's cool, and gains the confidence to strive for something big and improbable, then we're all better off.
It's going to be interesting to see how Jeremy Lin adapts to having his name known; not only is he suddenly one of the NBA's biggest celebrities, but he'll have a target on him every time he steps onto the floor and won't be taking anyone by surprise ever again. Things are gonna be changing very quickly for him, and even though we feel like we know everything there is to know about Jeremy Lin after this crazy week, we're about to find out much more...
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