Don’t get me wrong, seeing Jeremy Lin tearing up the NBA right now is a pretty cool thing going on right now. In spite of all the controversy behind race, upbringing, race, education and race, Jeremy Lin is making a league vastly composed of everyone not Asian, look like his personal playground.
I’ll enjoy the Jeremy Lin highlights as he continues to make them happen, and I’ll laugh mockingly at all the horrible Jeremy Lin puns that are sprouting and spreading like AIDS in Thailand, but I have to excuse myself and be one of those guys, at trying to contain some excitement. Forgive me, for I come from a baseball-first fandom in which nothing is sustainable, everything has an end, numbers rule all, and I’m only allowed to suspend disbelief for those within the Atlanta Braves organization.
That being said, my latest crazy conspiracy theory goes along the lines of this:
Jeremy Lin is being allowed to run amok and dominate the shit out of the NBA, because the NBA needs it.
The 2011-2012 NBA season is in disarray. The lockout decimated the fuck out of the popularity of the sport, because although the diehard fans understand the facts, the casual sports viewer which dominates arena attendance and television ratings, has a hard time sympathizing with a bunch of rich millionaires whining about not making enough money. When the season began, the teams were completely mismatched with some teams having tons of stars and some teams having no stars. Some players got lazy over the extended offseason, while others kept in shape playing overseas, or innovatively making up exhibition leagues to kill time with.
The bottom line is that competition is in the shitter, games are lopsided, the schedule is hell for players and fans, and the overall product of the NBA has been well below the expected level of entertainment that professional sport is supposed to be. When the league’s own analysts are ripping it on national television, it is not a good thing.
The NBA needed television viewers, needed butts to fill arenas, and mostly needed something to capture the imagination of people, and get them watching the NBA again.
Enter Jeremy Lin.
A small, 6’3 point guard with a Harvard education, those facts alone are easily enough to dismiss him as a likely NBA flop. An underdog from the get-go, but then throw in the fact that he’s Chinese. A Chinese point guard in a league predominantly full of large black men, and what we have is a proverbial David versus Goliath story for every remaining Knicks game for the rest of the year.
He accomplishes so many things, even before he needs to dribble the ball:
- Educated, prep ball player. Typically, Ivy League college basketball players aren’t necessarily NBA material. The last guy to actually get drafted out of Harvard was back in like the 1950s, and his career didn’t last long. Ivy League players are viewed as patsies and soft, wussy player types. Lin is breaking the stereotype by currently schooling players who came from prestigious basketball programs and international stars.
- The scrappy, hard-working, big-hearted, never-say-die gimmick. He wasn’t drafted, and was cut a bunch of times from other NBA teams. It’s hard to imagine any other reason other than race, because at 6’3, he’s pretty much the size of Steve Nash and bigger than John Stockton, two of the greatest point guards in the history of the game. Lin handles the ball pretty well, from what I’ve seen. Obviously I don’t know all the facts, but he sure doesn’t play like the kind of guy that has a history of repeated roster cuts. Regardless of race, the underdog gimmick is difficult to not root for.
- He’s Chinese. This is the biggest one, obviously. There’s been a gigantic void in NBA viewership now that Yao Ming’s all retired. Casual Chinese people simply have no reason to watch with no Yao. 80% of the NBA is black, and to have this Chinese guy coming in to wreck shit up has pretty much gotten the attention of every single Chinese person and most Asian people on the planet by this point, and he’s now an easy hero and target to cheer for from them alone for no other reason.
So pretty much, Jeremy Lin is a proverbial golden ticket, in-case-of-emergency trump card that the NBA has needed and has cashed in on. Not only has he captured the imaginations of the casual sports fan by coming out of nowhere, his heritage alone has pretty much gotten every single Chinese television set on the planet tuned into every single Knicks game. I’ve seen highlights of several of his games already, and if you didn’t know that blue jerseys meant away and white jerseys were home, you probably would assume every game was a home game for Jeremy Lin, based on the endless cheers he’s getting from every arena he’s been to so far, because every city in America has large chunks of Chinese people who all want to see Jeremy Lin in person.
But I can’t help but feel a little skeptical about the whole thing, because it seems a little too storybook right now. It draws some parallels with the Life, Death and Resurrection of Tim Tebow story, but the difference is that the NFL was never in the danger that the NBA is in. But I sort of think that the NBA and its players are kind of letting Linsanity go this wild right now. Simply put, it’s great for business. The NBA can’t possibly say it was any more popular at any time this season prior to right now.
My skepticism piqued when I saw the highlight of Lin crossing up the Wizards’ John Wall, and then throwing down a dunk, to the approval of all the Chinese folks in Washington D.C., where the Verizon Center is right in the heart of what used to be D.C.’s Chinatown. But what got my attention was the absolute zero-effort the two defenders in the paint made to stop Lin on his way to the hoop. In fact, it wasn’t even a zero effort, but more like a minus-effort, because Maurice Evans actually stepped back and pretty much allowed Lin to throw down. There’s no way he should have been able to get that deep into the paint without at least getting fouled. And to exacerbate a little bit here, black guys are racists and have egos to protect – ain’t no way a Chinese guy is going to march into their paint and throw down – unless he were being allowed to: After all, Jeremy Lin success is good for business, and good business for the NBA means more money. The more money the NBA makes, the more money that the players can make.
The logic is not without flaw, because frankly, like in the case of Lin’s three-pointer with 0.5 seconds left that beat the Raptors, Jeremy Lin still had to make that shot. And I know the NBA three-point line has been pussied up over the last decade, but it’s still not an easy shot with a hand in your face and twenty thousand people watching. He still has to play within the rules, and make sure he doesn’t pick up his dribbles or take more than two steps. But if it gets to the point where refs start ignoring his misdeeds like his name were Chris Webber, then it becomes obvious that this is all an elaborate work.
Let’s face it, the 11-12 NBA season is a wash anyway. Like the 1999 Spurs, whoever wins the championship this year will have an asterisk next to their names, and in discussion will always be postfaced with the dismissive “but.” So with that in consideration, why not sow the seeds and unleash Jeremy Lin and more or less letting him run Hulkamania all over everyone else now, so that people have something to look forward to next year?
The reference to the Prodigal Son is in relation to the 1981 kung-fu movie directed by Sammo Hung, and starring Yuen Biao. Long story short, a rich kid (Biao) believes himself to be a great fighter, but isn’t aware that his father is paying all of his opponents to lose to him. One day an opponent refusing to accept bribery stomps the ever-living shit out of the rich kid, and the rich kid is humbled and forced to learn from scratch. The basis of this conspiracy theory has Jeremy Lin as that prodigal son, who is dominating the shit out of the NBA right now, to what I think might be some incredulous circumstances.
Next season, with a full 82-game schedule and some normalcy established again, if Jeremy Lin is still awesome and dominating the league then too, well then that’s awesome. But if suddenly he becomes a mediocre player, can’t score, can’t drive, and people aren’t afraid to foul him in the lane again, I wouldn’t be surprised either.
