Jeremy Lin Essay #2

What’s All the Linsanity About?

Over the past month Jeremy Lin has picked the NBA up by its heels and shook it violently. He came out of nowhere to save the Knicks’ more than disappointing season, but does anyone really know the truth about him? For starters, he’s Asian American and from the Bay Area of California, went to and graduated from Harvard in four years. His NBA career has been less than stellar up until earlier this month. He was undrafted out of college, and worked hard in the Development League for a twenty game stretch where he averaged roughly 18 points and 4 assists a game. Finally the Golden State Warriors took notice and signed him only to cut him months later to open up salary cap space. He was then picked up by the Houston Rockets and cut again for the same reason. The New York Knicks picked him up on December 27 of last year because he was six foot three, athletic, and has great agility. In an article from the New York Times, Mike D’Antoni was quoted: “If somebody wakes up with a cold, he’s playing a lot. If not, we’ll see” (Beck). This goes to show when he was originally signed not many people in New York has faith in his talents and he was seen more as an insurance policy than anything. The phenomenon dubbed “Linsanity” started after a breakout performance from him against the Nets. He scored 25 points, dished out 7 assists, and snagged 5 rebounds in his NBA debut to lead to the Knicks to a 99-92 win. Since this game he has remained in the spotlight of many news sources and been one of the most highly criticized and complimented players at the same time. The compliments he's been getting is that he's off to the highest scoring start any player in has had in their first seven games since the NBA/ABA merger in the seventies, even Michael. Criticisms of Lin as a player attack him as a person, and many writers use the race card to rationalize the reasons for Linsanity. When following the progression of Linsanity, one can’t help but notice the different ways in which people write and speak of him. The remainder of this essay will analyze the short time span Linsanity has been around, and attempt to identify the different views used to describe it by different media sources and people.

Since there have been so many stories written on Jeremy Lin in such a short period of time, it’s challenging to find the articles that display radical differences of opinion. Luckily Jeremy Lin is Asian, a subject that is very easy for people to pick on in the game of basketball. Playing in high school and college he was subjected to many racial slurs and picked on in almost every visiting arena by opposing fans. Now that he's in the NBA and showing everyone that he can play at a high level, people still find the need to him the respect he’s earned. For example, Boxer Floyd Mayweather stirred up media attention when he posted this to his twitter: "Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise," he responded later that night with more, "I'm speaking my mind on behalf of other NBA players. They are programmed to be politically correct and will be penalized if they speak up” (Begley). Granted that Mayweather has a reputation for being a loud mouth but he has a point. How much of Lin’s popularity is because he's Asian?

In a survey on Bleacher Report that I took, the question read: What role is race playing in Lin’s popularity? The three responses were: “Huge,” “Some, but not enough to be a big deal,” and “None”. Out of the 3,849 votes, 49.4% voted “Some, but not enough to be a big deal,” 40.1% voted “Huge,” and only 10.5% voted “None.” The survey was featured in an article about how Andre Iguodala chimed into the conversation by saying when you see Lin do what he does you are surprised. The comment by Iguodala is at the top of the article, then the author briefly scolds him for becoming a part of this conversation, and goes on to counter that race plays a major role in Lin’s popularity. He writes, “Has anyone actually stopped to think that Lin is getting all this hype, not because he is Asian, but because he plays in New York and the team is on a seven-game winning streak? If Lin were putting up the numbers he has and the team was losing, would anyone care as much? Of course not. The hype machine is coming because of the New York factor” (Wells). This shows Harris’s move of countering because Wells takes what is written, and completely disagrees with it. He takes the fact Lin is Asian and ignores it. Then goes on to explain that the reasoning behind Lin’s popularity is because they are in New York, the media capital of the world. He elaborates, “Lin is not the best player in the league, but because he was undrafted out of college, was cut by the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets before the New York Knicks took a flier on him and is now thriving, he is the best story” (Wells). As a member of the general pubic, I agree with Wells. We shouldn’t be hung up that an Asian kid is all the sudden playing well in the NBA, but rather that no one knew who he was less than a month ago. Sit back and enjoy watching the evolution of who has already promised to be one of the most exciting young point guards in the NBA.

As everyone well knows by now, there are always two sides to an argument. Usually writers try to avoid bias because it shows favoritism and makes for some very questionable headlines. Jay Caspian Kang, a writer for Grantland, and Rick Quan, a sports anchor in San Francisco, have both covered the Jeremy Lin story. It should be pretty obvious that both these writers have something in common with Jeremy Lin. All three of them are of some Asian decent. Not to be racist in any way, but when an Asian writer writes about an Asian athlete who has been defying all odds in the game of basketball, there’s always going to bias in those articles. Luckily for Kang he writes for a blog and Quan submitted his opinion piece to CNN so the addition of bias in this situation is a good thing.

When Kang and Quan write about Jeremy Lin, their writing shows a sense of pride they have being similar to him. In this case they are demonstrating two of Aristotle’s appeals that we use in writing today, ethos and pathos. The character of the speaker plays a role in the credibility of the story, and when I noticed the bylines of three articles were Asian names I paid closer attention to how they were written. Their sense of pride is where they demonstrate pathos, in their emotions and ability to connect to the reader by making them feel what they feel. Kang wrote about Jeremy Lin once before while he was still at Harvard in 2010. In his more recent article he referenced that experience by stating, “What I was trying to describe was the very strange, specific, and rare pride one feels when watching one of their own succeed in a forbidden field” (Some sort of citation). The forbidden field Kang refers to is the game of basketball, which barely has any Asians in it, and through his writing he is showing bias towards Jeremy Lin because the two are alike. I don’t blame him; he’s in a rare situation. African Americans can’t say they have pride in some players in the league because they make up the majority, but Lin is the exception. He’s the only Asian American in the league and that unifies a race of people to feel what Kang is feeling. Rick Quan writes in a very similar way to Kang. He says things like, “That is huge” and “If a Chinese-American guy can hold his own against the best athletes in the world, wow!” (Some sort of citation). These clearly show that Quan feels for Jeremy Lin and that he too relates to him because they are both Asian. Also one can tell from the way he writes that he feels connected with Asians in general because he says “we” to describe his race. Kang and Quan both use race as a way to make their articles more interesting. By relating to the topic they are writing about they offer a unique opinion on a subject, which makes their audience more interested in their articles.

The authors that we have explored have focused on Jeremy Lin being an Asian American in the game of basketball. Whether they have criticized that the American public needs to drop the fact that he is Asian and start appreciating him for the excellent point guard he is or explained the sense of pride they share with him for being the same race, they are all talking about the same thing. As an observer to the story, I project that for the rest of the year Linsanity will continue to hold onto New York and when playoff time comes around Jeremy Lin will get to show us all what he's truly made of. After the Knicks lose in the playoffs there will be two maybe three weeks max of buzz on Sportscenter about what Lin will do next year. From there Jeremy Lin will no longer be known as the Asian kid in the NBA, he’ll be known as Jeremy Lin. Writers will continue to write about him, but now instead of questioning his ability, he will have become one of the regulars to writers and they’ll know what he's capable of. Once and for all people will stop going Linsane.