Imagine an Asian boy attending Harvard. Imagine that boy, no one knows quite how, manages to sign a contract in the NBA after ending up undrafted. Imagine him destined to never make his mark, to wander a few years and then disappear into anonymity. Here now imagine that same unknown kid, not particularly talented let alone popular, becoming the most famous basketball player in the world for a week. Linsanity cannot really be explained rationally, but we want to try anyway.
On February 27, 2012, Time headlines. “Linsanity!” putting him on the cover and making him the face of the NBA in the eyes of the world. To give a measure of the Jeremy Lin phenomenon, just think that in 2012 he was the most searched NBA player on Google after LeBron James and Michael Jordan.
“hoo lee fuck” headlines the New York Post, “Jeremy Lin, the King of New York” is echoed by the New York Post. That’s all anyone in the American sports world talks about, because that’s all anyone can talk about. Such a thing had never been seen, and nothing since has come to touch such levels of disbelief, in the NBA but also outside. Lin’s season will end badly, with an injury that will not allow him to play in the Playoffs. In the summer he will monetize, as was obvious, signing with those Houston Rockets who had cut him a year earlier. Linsanity will never return, but Lin will be permanently in the NBA until 2019. That 14.6 average points scored in his season at the Knicks will still remain his best in a long career that will also see him win a ring with the Raptors in 2019, albeit as an extreme comprimario.
We’ve told you before, we’ll tell you again. There has never been anything like Linsanity. Two weeks in which an unknown, undrafted, last of the rotations until the day before, took on the world and was able to shape reality, at least the reality on a basketball court, to his own liking. Something so mindless that it didn’t seem real. Instead, real it was. Those who have not experienced it will not believe it, but Linsanity existed for real.
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