Let me be the first to start a thread on this kid. We could be witnessing something truly special. No one knew he was last week. Today he is a household name. His name was probably mentioned more times today than Barack Obama’s. What a story! He makes the last spot on the roster of the NY Knicks, after a stint in the NBA Developmental League, after graduating from Harvard. He leads (and truly leads!) a bad Knicks team, missing its 2 superstars, to a four game win streak, culminating in him scoring 38 points and leading the NY Knicks to a win over the L.A. Lakers, outdueling Kobe Bryant in the process. About 80% of tonight’s SportsCenter was about him. The crowd at Madison Square Garden now worships him. And he still has to sleep on his brother’s couch because he was unsure of his next paycheck!
I’m loving this story. As a fair weather, bandwagon jumping Knicks fan*, I’m really interested in how this all plays out. The best part is that they’re winning without their 2 “stars”. Amare should work well with this offensive scheme, I’m not so sure about Carmelo “The Black Hole” Anthony.
Hoping this doesn’t turn into another Kevin Maas story, but I suspect not. He’s not playing well due to trickery or lucky breaks, I can easily see him being effective without needing to shoot the lights out. He does need to keep his turnovers in check, though.
Like D’Antoni said, ride him like Secretariat. You go with the hot hand.
*I don’t know if it’s just how I follow basketball, or if the recent Knicks teams are simply unwatchable, but I can’t bring myself to sit down and watch a basement dwelling Knicks team play.
I’ve heard him being compared to Tim Tebow, which really is a huge disservice to Lin. Tebow won in spite of playing bad, Lin is playing great and making his team win. If he keeps this up he’ll be an all star next year.
I so don’t get the Tebow comparison. Lin is putting up terrific stats and his contribution is obvious to anyone with eyes. Tebow fans had to put up the most convoluted arguments linking his team’s victories to his performance, the stats of which and the appearance of which was just plain terrible.
So they’re superficially similar. If Lin is in fact an NBA-quality starting point guard the comparisons won’t last long, because in four years he’ll still be in the NBA but Tebow will probably not be a professional football player.
I think it’s cool, too. Still too early to see if he lasts or is just having an amazing hot streak, but I hope he lasts and makes a real go of it. Good for him.
His story seems closer to, New York Giants star, Victor Cruz’s. Undrafted free agent barely makes the cut, comes in to replace injured stars, then lights the world on fire. It’s great when something like that happens, and it’s nice to have another Asian player in the league doing well.
Lin is different in that he has a set of skills that are permanent. He may not always shoot well, but he will always have his vision and his dribble.
I have to say that I’ve never seen so much unity and excitement in NY about any new star. And living in the NY area for 35 years, I’ve seen alot of them. But NY is a basketball city and the Knicks are the only team in town. The Giants just won the Super Bowl 5 days ago and they’re already virtually forgotten.
I will jump on the bandwagon only if you guys admit that if he had had the same performances against the same teams, but he was playing for anyone but the Knicks, that he wouldn’t be getting 1/4 of the attention he’s getting now.
I work in Palo Alto, where Lin is from. The local papers have been running stories about him since he was trying out for the Warriors. “Local kid tries to make NBA squad” to “Lin scores his first NBA basket! OMG!” and now this. They’re going nuts to put it lightly.
Looking past the hype and the story…
I don’t watch much basketball, but I decided to catch the game last night. Wow! He’s actually really good. My takeaways are his speed and his Tanooki-sized titanium balls. Terry Porter never drove inside like that.
The best part was Kobe’s pissed-off look after sinking a late 3-pointer, well after they had a realistic chance of a comeback.
What do you make of the potential racism angle? It’s astounding to me that Lin could be 1st team All-State in California and not get offered a D1 scholarship, and that Stanford apparently lied to him about not having any scholarships available. He kicks butt at Harvard, goes undrafted, and bounces around before finally getting a chance on the Knicks, seemingly as a last resort for D’Antoni. I would not be surprised if all the scouts had been like “An Asian guard?! Pfft.”
It has to do with the Knicks, but not in the way I think you mean. It’s because the Knicks have just been putrid for a long time, and they keep giving up the farm to bring in the big names, and it still hasn’t worked, from Marbury to Melo. Then suddenly with the two superstars out and perhaps the Knicks having their darkest hour, the underdog kid comes out of nowhere and “plays the right way” and lights it up. It’s actually a testament to good basketball fundamentals rather than any Knicks/New York cachet. Who wouldn’t like this story? Besides Kobe that is.
No way, not a chance. All the sportswriters were tweeting about him after his first game. If he had been playing for Houston, ESPN would just now be talking about him, and a couple of the sportswriters would be mentioning him on Twitter.
Oh, I love the story. He had insane pressure on his shoulders for the Lakers game and he totally came through. That’s awesome.
I think it’s way past “potential” and well into “pretty obvious.”
Scouts go by what their preconceptions of an athlete are, and that includes race. Not that long ago nobody wanted to give Warren Moon a shot in the NFL because he was black, and blacks just couldn’t be quarterbacks. Even more recently there were pleny of people who thought Japanese players couldn’t make it in Major League Baseball, and then after Hideo Nomo they said well, maybe they can pitch here but no way they can hit, and then Ichiro.
I don’t think that contradicts my argument. He was a breath of fresh air from the getgo. The Knicks were desperate and were going to lose to a sinking Nets team with one (probably disgruntled) star. Houston has had a much better reputation than the Knicks in the last decade with their much smarter front office. They make wise personnel moves and don’t overpay superstars. On top of that, they already have a decent PG in Lowry. So my point is, the Knicks needed this possibly more than any other team. I think that’s the real reason why this story is exploding.
Nate Silver put together a list of all the other players who’ve had similar performances for a four game streak at any point since the 1985-1986 season. As he puts it:
