As the sports world struggles to come up with clever catch phrases to keep up with Jeremy Lin’s meteoric rise to stardom, the point guard continues to impress on the court and heighten the frenzy off the hardwood floor. His latest achievement was nailing a game-winning three-pointer just shy of the buzzer Tuesday night versus the Toronto Raptors.
Lin, who dropped 27 points and 11 assists in Toronto to help the Knicks extend its winning streak to six games, continues to light up the scoreboards and the headlines.
“Linsanity”
“Linpossible”
“Linvincible”
“VaLinTine’s Day”
Bad Linalogies have filled the internet since Lin’s Kurt Warner-esque rise to stardom. Of course, the contrarion sour grapes brigade is now show its ugly head. Instead of appreciating the show, some players and celebrities are trying to squeeze attention out of Lin’s success.
Boxing champion Floyd Mayweather, who once called Manny Pacquiao a “yellow chump” who he would force to “make me a sushi roll and cook me some rice,” chimed in with a predictable rant against Lin.
“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.”
Wrong.
Undoutedly, Lin’s heritage plays a part in the uniqueness of his story. Many Asian fans will support him because they feel they can relate to him, just as many African-Americans will support Barack Obama in an election. However, the reason Lin’s story is the biggest in sports has nothing to do with his ethnicity, it’s because a) he plays in New York, media capital of the world b) his success was completely unexpected by everyone and c) the numbers he put up in his first five starts have not been done by anyone since the ABA/NBA merger. Not Michael Jordan, not Larry Bird, not Yao Ming.
Nobody has matched Lin’s 136 points in their first five starts. Other players near the top of the list such as Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson also experienced major media coverage during their major runs even though they were expected to be great. Lin was expected to be cut.
Expect more contrarians to come to the forefront as Lin gains fame. Hopefully we’ll get some better catch phrases that we’ve seen thus far. I haven’t seen one using his first name yet. But from the way he’s been playing, we’ll have plenty of time and headlines until someone gets it right.
