{"id":32080,"date":"2012-02-17T21:22:25","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T01:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=32080"},"modified":"2020-06-29T21:22:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T01:22:36","slug":"conspiracy-theory-jeremy-lin-the-nbas-prodigal-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=32080","title":{"rendered":"Conspiracy Theory: Jeremy Lin, the NBA\u2019s Prodigal Son"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, seeing Jeremy Lin tearing up the NBA right now is a pretty cool thing going on right now.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll enjoy the Jeremy Lin highlights as he continues to make them happen, and I\u2019ll 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\u00a0those guys<\/em>, at trying to contain some excitement.\u00a0 Forgive me, for I come from a baseball-first fandom in which nothing is sustainable, everything has an end, numbers rule all, and I\u2019m only allowed to suspend disbelief for those within the Atlanta Braves organization.<\/span><\/p>\n

That being said, my latest crazy conspiracy theory goes along the lines of this:<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeremy Lin is\u00a0being allowed<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to run amok and dominate the shit out of the NBA, because the NBA needs it.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2011-2012 NBA season is in disarray.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 When the season began, the teams were completely mismatched with some teams having tons of stars and some teams having no stars.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 When the league\u2019s own analysts are ripping it on national television, it is not a good thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter Jeremy Lin.<\/span><\/p>\n

A small, 6\u20193 point guard with a Harvard education, those facts alone are easily enough to dismiss him as a likely NBA flop.\u00a0 An underdog from the get-go, but then throw in the fact that he\u2019s Chinese.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

He accomplishes so many things, even before he needs to dribble the ball:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Educated, prep ball player.\u00a0\u00a0 Typically, Ivy League college basketball players aren\u2019t necessarily NBA material.\u00a0 The last guy to actually get drafted out of Harvard was back in like the 1950s, and his career didn\u2019t last long.\u00a0 Ivy League players are viewed as patsies and soft, wussy player types. \u00a0Lin is breaking the stereotype by currently schooling players who came from prestigious basketball programs and international stars.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The scrappy, hard-working, big-hearted, never-say-die gimmick.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t drafted, and was cut a bunch of times from other NBA teams.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine any other reason other than race, because at 6\u20193, he\u2019s pretty much the size of Steve Nash and bigger than John Stockton, two of the greatest point guards in the history of the game.\u00a0 Lin handles the ball pretty well, from what I\u2019ve seen.\u00a0 Obviously I don\u2019t know all the facts, but he sure doesn\u2019t play like the kind of guy that has a history of repeated roster cuts.\u00a0 Regardless of race, the underdog gimmick is difficult to not root for.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. He\u2019s Chinese.\u00a0 This is the biggest one, obviously.\u00a0 There\u2019s been a gigantic void in NBA viewership now that Yao Ming\u2019s all retired.\u00a0 Casual Chinese people simply have no reason to watch with no Yao.\u00a0 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\u2019s now an easy hero and target to cheer for from them alone for no other reason.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen highlights of several of his games already, and if you didn\u2019t 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\u2019s getting from every arena he\u2019s been to so far, because every city in America has large chunks of Chinese people who all want to see Jeremy Lin in person.<\/span><\/p>\n

    But I can\u2019t help but feel a little skeptical about the whole thing, because it seems a little too storybook right now.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But I sort of think that the NBA and its players are kind of letting\u00a0Linsanity<\/strong>\u00a0go this wild right now.\u00a0 Simply put, it\u2019s great for business.\u00a0 The NBA can\u2019t possibly say it was any more popular at any time this season prior to right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

    My skepticism piqued when I saw the highlight of Lin\u00a0crossing up the Wizards\u2019 John Wall, and then throwing down a dunk<\/a>, 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.\u2019s Chinatown.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In fact, it wasn\u2019t even a zero effort, but more like a minus-effort, because Maurice Evans actually stepped back and pretty much allowed Lin to throw down.\u00a0 There\u2019s no way he should have been able to get that deep into the paint without at least getting fouled.\u00a0 And to exacerbate a little bit here, black guys are racists and have egos to protect \u2013 ain\u2019t no way a Chinese guy is going to march into\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0paint and throw down \u2013 unless he were being allowed to: After all, Jeremy Lin success is good for business, and good business for the NBA means more money.\u00a0 The more money the NBA makes, the more money that the players can make.<\/span><\/p>\n

    The logic is not without flaw, because frankly, like in the case of Lin\u2019s three-pointer with 0.5 seconds left that beat the Raptors, Jeremy Lin still had to make that shot.\u00a0 And I know the NBA three-point line has been pussied up over the last decade, but it\u2019s still not an easy shot with a hand in your face and twenty thousand people watching.\u00a0 He still has to play within the rules, and make sure he doesn\u2019t pick up his dribbles or take more than two steps.\u00a0 But if it gets to the point where\u00a0refs start ignoring his misdeeds like his name were Chris Webber<\/a>, then it becomes obvious that this is all an elaborate work.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s face it, the 11-12 NBA season is a wash anyway.\u00a0 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 \u201cbut.\u201d\u00a0 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?<\/span><\/p>\n

    The reference to the Prodigal Son is in relation to the\u00a01981 kung-fu movie directed by Sammo Hung, and starring Yuen Biao<\/a>.\u00a0 Long story short, a rich kid (Biao) believes himself to be a great fighter, but isn\u2019t aware that his father is paying all of his opponents to lose to him.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

    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\u2019s awesome.\u00a0 But if suddenly he becomes a mediocre player, can\u2019t score, can\u2019t drive, and people aren\u2019t afraid to foul him in the lane again, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised either.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Don\u2019t get me wrong, seeing Jeremy Lin tearing up the NBA right now is a pretty cool thing going on right now.\u00a0 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\u2019ll enjoy the … Continue reading Conspiracy Theory: Jeremy Lin, the NBA\u2019s Prodigal Son<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,83,15,89,58],"class_list":["post-32080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-basketball","tag-observations","tag-og","tag-racism","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32082,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32080\/revisions\/32082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}