Now what do we write about? Jeremy Lin Essay

Sam Blinderman

Professor Leake

WRIT 1122

3-4-12

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 an Asian American from the Bay Area of California and graduated from Harvard after four years. His NBA career, however, has been less than stellar up until this February. 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 roughly ten 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^th 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 had faith in his talents and he was seen more as an insurance policy than anything.

The phenomenon dubbed “Linsanity” begun after a breakout performance by Jeremy Lin against the New Jersey Nets. He scored 25 points, dished out 7 assists, and snagged 5 rebounds in his NBA debut as a Knick to help lead the them 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 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 deny him the respect he’s earned. Heavyweight boxer Floyd Mayweather, a notorious loud mouth who always seems to speak his mind on controversial issues decided to stir 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). Here Mayweather is attacking Lin for being Asian and completely discrediting his basketball abilities. It seems as if Mayweather is upset with the news coverage of Lin because he doesn’t see black players getting the same credit. It shows in his tone and arrogance when he claims to be speaking on behalf of other NBA players, a field where he has little credibility seeing as he's a boxer. Granted that Mayweather has a reputation for being a trash talker but he may have 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 that was posted on February 16^th just twelve days after Lin’s breakout game, and shows what a portion of the public thinks. Philadelphia 76er’s forward, Andre Iguodala chimed into the conversation by saying when you see Lin doing what he does you are surprised. He went on to compare Lin to a black person doing well playing hockey. He closes with, “Race does play a role in it but at the same time you have to respect it, that’s how I feel.  You have to respect it whether you like it or not. It’s a feel-good story” (Wells). From what Iguodala said regarding Lin, he believes that race definitely plays a role in his popularity, but doesn’t go as far as Mayweather to not respect Lin’s rise to fame and ability as a player. I think because Iguodala is a fellow NBA player he filters what he says more about his colleagues and understands the situation Lin is going through because all players had to work hard at some point in their career.

 The author of the article that features Iguodala’s comment briefly scolds him for becoming a part of this conversation, and then goes on to counter that race does not play 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 Iguodala said, and completely disagrees with it. He takes the fact Lin is Asian and counters it by explaining that the reasoning behind Lin’s popularity is because he is in New York, the media capital of the world, not because he’s Asian. He elaborates:

Not every success story in sports has to be followed up with talk about someone's race, religion, creed or anything else. Just enjoy the player while they are on the court or field, and stop making things into a bigger deal than they are (Wells).

Here Wells is trying to plead with his audience, which I believe is the general public or anyone who watches sports, to get them to see that, in this case, there is more sports than just race. Wells seems sick of everyone focusing on everything except the player who is doing well. I agree with him that we need to stop focusing on race and enjoy watching the evolution of one of the most promising players the league has to offer.

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 is an editor and writer for Grantland, which is apart of ESPN and covers mostly sports related issues. Rick Quan is a sports anchor in San Francisco, and is the first Chinese American television sports anchor in the United States, and one of the first Asian men to be a fulltime anchor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both Kang and Quan have covered the Jeremy Lin story, and it should be pretty obvious that these two 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 any sport, there’s always going to bias in those articles. Luckily for Kang he writes for a blog and Quan submitted an 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 with 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 two 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 convey to the reader what they feel about the subject. Kang wrote about Jeremy Lin once before while he was still at Harvard in 2010. In a 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” (Person of Interest: Jeremy Lin) 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 Lin because he explains the pride he feel due to the two of them being the same race. I don’t blame him; he’s in a rare situation. African Americans can’t say they have pride in some black players in the NBA because basketball is not a forbidden field for them, 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 with his success. Rick Quan writes in a very similar way to Kang by saying things like, “That is huge” and “If a Chinese-American guy can hold his own against the best athletes in the world, wow!” (Is the 'Linsanity' hype caused by race?) These clearly show that Quan feels pride in Jeremy Lin’s success and that he 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 through race their writing offers a unique opinion on the subject, which makes their audience more interested in their articles. It also allows them to write more freely and voice their own opinions, which add to the value of the 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, it’s interesting to see how different people write on the same topic, it gives the reader a look into who they really are. As for the rest of Linsanity, I project that for the remainder of this season the press will continue to follow Jeremy Lin and when playoff time comes around he will get to show us all what he's truly made of. After the Knicks lose in the playoffs there will be a few weeks of buzz on Sportscenter about what Lin will do next year. From there he will no longer be known as the Asian in the NBA, he’ll be known as Jeremy Lin. Writers will continue to write about him, but instead of questioning his ability as a player and his race, they’ll know what he's capable of and why’s he’s playing so well. The multiple viewpoints used to describe him by writers and people will mesh into one unbiased-accurate description of him that will follow the lines of an NBA point guard. Once and for all, people will stop going Linsane.

Works Cited

Beck, Howard. "Hit by Injuries, Knicks Add Former Harvard Guard." The New York Times. 27 Dec. 2011. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.

Ian Begley. "Floyd Mayweather Questions Jeremy Lin." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 14 Feb. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://espn.go.com/new-york/nba/story/_/id/7572690/floyd-mayweather-says-new-york-knicks-jeremy-lin-spotlight-race-not-play>

Kang, Jay Capsian. "Person of Interest: Jeremy Lin." Grantland.com. 13 Feb. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7570431/jeremy-lin>

Quan, Rick. "Is the 'Linsanity' Hype Caused by Race?" CNN. Cable News Network, 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/15/opinion/quan-lin-asians/index.html>

Wells, Adam. "Jeremy Lin: Andre Iguodala Puts Foot in Mouth with Disrespectful Comments." Bleacher Report. 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1068806-jeremy-lin-andre-iguodala-puts-foot-in-mouth-with-disrespectful-comments>