I watched the Oscar Awards last night and it seemed like the Hurt Locker swept the competition. I have to say I did see the movie and it was well deserved. It was great to see the big names such as Tom Hanks, Michelle Pfeifer, Morgan Freeman, and even Oprah Winfrey. You definitely have to admire and respect the talent there.
It felt like the NBA All-Star game ceremony. This is probably the only show I watched this weekend besides basketball since I do have to share the tube with my wife (and since the Jersey Shore season is over). We did flip channels in between to watch the Godfather II on AMC then to the Style channel (courtesy change) to see what was on.
Other than that, it's safe to say I'm still a hoop junkie at all levels. Here's a list of perspectives on this weekend of hoops March 5-7, 2010.
Player- I played pick up ball early Saturday morning. 7am special at Pacific Athletic Club. It's solid run for about 2 hours, 4 on 4 full court on the side baskets with two games going at the same time. Games are up to 11 by 1's. The crowd is mostly older players but it's pretty competitive and it definitely beats feeling like a hamster on the treadmill. The best thing is that everyone goes hard and for the most part, doesn't complain (it's too early!). It's great to get on a team that develops chemistry which helps your team to win and stay on the court. The worst part you figure would be to lose and sit out.
Spectator- My nephew aka Mike Diesel is 10 and playing for a National Jr. Basketball (NJB) All Net team and they made playoffs. It was his first post season game and he rose to the occasion. With his team having possession and up 2 with 11 seconds remaining, Mikey caught the inbound ball and made sure he was fouled since he wanted to shoot the single bonus free throws (1 and 1). He knocked down both free throws to increase the lead to 4 and sealed the deal. As a fan, it was a very proud moment for me to watch him not only play well, but step up in the clutch.
Coaching- On weekends and weekday evenings, I train and work with Mikey. The more I've watched his games, the more the coaching bug starts to reappear. We work on fundamentals, awareness, and most importantly confidence. I would say I'm pretty intense and can be hard on him but fair at the same time. He's about 5'7 and plays the post but I do have to remember he's still only 10. From my influences and who inspire me, I'd like to say I'm a combination of John Wooden, Bob Knight, Coach K, Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach, Greg Popovich, and the list goes on which means I can come off pretty relaxed, fired up, or even a jokester. Mikey is probably pretty confused at times. My point is as he gets better, I'm sure I'm getting better as well in my delivery and communication. Basketball is an amazing and humbling sport.
NBA Tid Bits-
Rodney Stuckey: Scary moment on Friday night, hopefully he recovers to full strength.
Lakers @ Magic: Big win for the Orlando Magic over the LA Lakers. Kobe celebrated too early, Matt Barnes played the punk role and played it well, Pau is skilled but soft. The best part of the game was the 2nd coming (in appearance) of Dennis Rodman, Ron Artest's new hairdo.
The reason why Allen Iverson has been AWOL. Let's hope he is able to recover.
March Madness is about to begin and so are the NBA playoffs.
Big Game James? Lots to live up to with that name, good luck!
I read this article on SFGate this morning and it made me think of two things.
1. Pride
2. Ham and Eggs
I'm proud to see a fellow Taiwanese playing Division I college ball who has a shot at making the NBA (steak and eggs).
An all white's only league which was announced on Martin Luther King's birthday by promotor who was quoted saying "Remember Pistol Pete and Larry Bird? Where's all that gone." How ironic. If anyone knows basketball, Pistol Pete practically invented street ball moves aka creative fundamentals. And as for Larry Bird. Well, Larry Bird was black. That's how good his game was. Anyone who is this ignorant would be considered a "ham and egger."
There's nothing wrong with cheering for your own people if it's done respectfully and in good taste. Nonetheless, the NBA provides the melting pot. It includes the most fundamental and talented group of athletes in the world. This article dives a bit deeper and expands on my point.
A League of their Own As Palo Alto's Jeremy Lin leads his Harvard hoops squad toward victory, an Atlanta promoter launches an all-white basketball league, leading Jeff Yang to ponder the light and dark side of rooting for the race.
It was an announcement carefully designed to provoke the biggest spit-take possible: On Jan. 18, one day after the federal holiday celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., sports promoter Don "Moose" Lewis issued a media alert proclaiming his intention to found a new pro hoops league called the All-American Basketball Alliance -- which would distinguish itself from the NBA by allowing as players only "natural-born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race."
Those who weren't outraged wondered if the release wasn't an early April Fool's Day prank. But Lewis, reached last week at his offices in Atlanta, asserts that he's dead serious, and that the league's formal debut on the pine is just months away. "We're looking at a June tipoff," he says.
Lewis's claims can't be entirely dismissed out of hand. He's been a sports promoter for two decades, and is the proprietor of the International Boxing Union, a legitimate, if lesser, sanctioning authority that, back in 2003, boasted as its heavyweight champion Shannon Briggs, and has managed to secure ESPN broadcasts of its championship title fights. Meanwhile, an earlier basketball league he founded in 2001, the Global Basketball Alliance (the name remains on the voicemail at Lewis's office), managed to attract eight teams and stage an amateur draft, before folding in April 2002.
"We started as the American Basketball Alliance, and then got a letter from Big Brother in New York," says Lewis. "Apparently, we conflicted with one of the NBA's registered marks. So we changed our name to the Global Basketball Alliance, which was fine because one of our teams was in Mexico City. And we held two seasons of what was basically conventional minor league basketball, but the league just never took off."
Lewis candidly admits that ticket sales were "dismal." "You have the same problem with all minor-league basketball teams, even the subsidized ones like the NBA D-League," he says. "People ask themselves the question, 'Should I spend $20 to see NBA Lite, or should I sit in my living room, drinking beer and watching 500 HD channels on my big screen TV?' I know my answer to that."
Pondering a way to get butts into seats, Lewis took a cue from the headlines. "You look at the papers and you see that Middle Americans, they're having a tough time. Their houses are in foreclosure," he says. "They need a good, wholesome, affordable distraction, and they're nostalgic for genuine American entertainment. And I thought to myself, remember when basketball was real basketball -- none of this 'five steps to the hoop, palming the ball' stuff? Remember Pistol Pete and Larry Bird? Where's that all gone?"
The answer, Lewis surmised, is that it disappeared when the NBA became dominated by street-ball players and foreigners -- turning white Americans into minorities in the league, just like "white, native-born Americans" are becoming a "minority of the U.S. population."
"The thing is, people embrace things they can identify with," he says. "One billion Chinese can relate to Yao Ming -- and that's who they want to see. Now you've got millions of Americans who, I think, want to see players and a style of game they can relate to. We all want to root for our own kind -- it's just human nature."
Colors on the court
Of course, much of Lewis's language is, bluntly speaking, a screen for the most insidious type of racism imaginable -- the type that denies itself while simultaneously claiming injury from a historically victimized population. When he uses the term "our kind," it echoes the bristling, preemptively hateful phrase "your kind" -- as in, "We don't like 'your kind' 'round here." When he says that the NBA is full of uncouth, showboating brawlers ("Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands?"), he's putting family-friendly context around a subtext that's rooted in white fear of a black planet.
But it's hard to argue at least one of Lewis's points -- that we tend to cheer on people who resemble us -- and a roundup of some of the biggest Asian American sports fans I know didn't even try.
"There's no doubt that when I see an Asian face on the field of play, I'm suddenly more interested," says Brian Yang, a Bay Area-bred actor/producer and hoops fanatic who now divides his time between New York and Shanghai. "We grew up loving Bird, Jordan, LeBron. But when Yao Ming came along -- seeing an Asian player on the court, especially as a star, stirs the senses in a different way, because we ethnically identify with that person."
And more than just sports are at stake, points out Bernard Chang, a comic book artist and illustrator who in his spare time plays point in a competitive rec league and coaches a team of six-year-old aspiring hoopsters. "We live in such a visual society these days, that any symbol of recognition is critical," he says. "Many would say that it shouldn't matter -- and, yes, in a perfect world it wouldn't -- but the fact is, you can't discount the importance of seeing a 'familiar face'" -- especially when it's up on the Jumbotron, in an arena full of screaming fans.
That's because in the U.S., athletic skill defines perceptions of social status like no other area of achievement. "Keep in mind that for many people -- both men and women -- sports define masculinity," says Albert Kim, former senior editor for Sports Illustrated. "The implicit message [of the lack of Asians in sports] is that Asian men just aren't as 'manly' as black or white men" -- something that turns out to have real social, political and even economic consequences. After all, how many otherwise unqualified ex-athletes have we elected to higher office? How often do sports metaphors get used in boardrooms (and, uh, bedrooms), carrying with them the explicit implication that benchwarmers and sideline boosters are also-rans in life and love -- not just on the field or court?
Hoop dreams
Carrying a community's dreams on your shoulders is tough enough. Being the proxy for an entire race's manhood, as absurd as it sounds, is a responsibility one wouldn't wish on anyone. And yet, the search for that individual -- the avatar of Asian American athletic fantasies -- continues, most recently landing on a player who in many ways epitomizes the challenges Asians face in breaking into the big leagues of professional sports, while presenting the best hope yet for overcoming them.
In his senior year of high school, Jeremy Lin, the Bay Area-born son of Taiwanese immigrants, took the underdog Palo Alto Vikings to a 32-1 record, and then to a shocking upset victory over the nationally ranked Mater Dei Monarchs in the state Division II championships, scoring 17 points and garnering unanimous accolades as Player of the Year by every influential publication in California sports (including the San Francisco Chronicle). Yet upon graduating, the number of scholarship offers he received from the NCAA's Division I powers could be counted on a closed fist.
"Coaches, scouts and recruiters have to be willing to be color-blind in their evaluation of players," says ESPN anchor Michael Kim. "But you have to wonder if they'd fairly judge a 6-foot 3-inch, 175 pound Asian guard with a similar talent and skillset as a black or white player. And in the case of Jeremy Lin, it doesn't appear as if they did."
Which means that Lin ended up going to his backup school, Harvard University -- an academic powerhouse, but a basketball backwater. For most talented but frustrated hoops hopefuls, that might have been the end of the story. Lin simply did what he'd done at Palo Alto High: Took a team that had been written off as hopeless and put it on his back. By his junior year, he was the only player in the nation to rank among the top 10 players in his conference in every major category -- from points to rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks, to field goal, free throw and three-point percentage. This year, he's been even better, leading to suggestions that he might be the first Asian American to be drafted as an NBA first-round pick since Rex Walters, the hapa Japanese star for the University of Kansas's Jayhawks who was drafted 16th in 1993, played eight seasons in the NBA, and is now coach for the USF Dons.
Lin himself doesn't want to speculate on his pro potential. "I just want to help Harvard win games, and hopefully, an Ivy League title," he says, noting that the expectations of his community are a motivator, but also a distraction. "I'm humbled and honored by the attention I've received -- but right now I'm focused on our team and getting better each day. There'll be time to think about this later."
Lin's fans aren't as patient. They obsessively track his stats, watch YouTube videos of his highlights, debate the high and low points of his game (pros: great basketball IQ, complete player; cons: a 'tweener without a true position, has a funky jumper), and repeatedly assess and reassess his likelihood of NBA success based on every pundit's postgame comments.
"Jeremy has a legit shot at the pros -- albeit a long shot, like from half court," says Steve Chin, an Albany-based journalist and Web producer, and a longtime board member of the Bay Area's Ohtani Asian American basketball program. "But it would mean a lot for the community if he made it. It's uncharted territory for Asian Americans -- to play pro ball in the modern era. He would become an instant role model for Asian American athletes. I'm rooting for him."
And so are thousands of other Asian American fans, who've recently been flocking to games decked out in red -- a hue reflecting both Harvard's crimson and the color believed by Chinese to be a symbol of luck and prosperity.
Sports, in black and white
It's ironic that even as Asian Americans are hanging their hopes on the promise of a single player breaking through to the NBA, Don "Moose" Lewis is pinning his league's potential on getting Caucasian Americans to turn away from it -- and he thinks that potential is huge.
"We're filling a niche. You're Asian and you want to see Asian players succeed, right? And white Americans want to see white players succeed -- it's just the way things are," he says. "It's no different from boxing: You see Caucasian fighters dubbed the 'Great White Hope' all the time, from Rocky Marciano on down, and where's the backlash against that?"
Lewis publicly professes innocence about the racially divisive nature of his venture -- "I have a problem with how media types have exploited and sensationalized what we're trying to do," he says -- but having begun his sports promotion career in professional wrestling, he's eminently aware of the power of controversy to get butts out from living rooms and into arenas.
And truth be told, if the best part of sport is its ability to unite us across divisions -- Jeremy Lin says that, like many of us, he grew up idolizing Michael Jordan and "would've done anything to emulate him" -- its dark underbelly has always been the use of gutter stereotypes, false dichotomies and racist and jingoist urges to sell itself.
You see it in the chants of fans at games -- even playing in the high-minded Ivy League, Lin has been the target of racist catcalling ("Go back to China!" "Open up your eyes, ch*nk!"). You see it in the marketing of teams (hat tip: Washington Redskins!). You even see it in the us-against-them ubernationalism of the Olympics.
Lewis is just being more ... candid, if you will, about what he's trying to do. When pressed about his intentions, he openly affirms that -- like most sports promoters -- his allegiance isn't toward any race, nationality or color other than green.
"There's the opportunity to make some decent money here, and this is how we're doing it -- we've been talking to several TV outlets about turning this into a reality show, where you follow the first season of the AABA, and at the end of the year, a team of AABA all-stars plays a team of black minor-league basketball all-stars," he says. "If that's successful, in our second season, we might launch an all-black league and have the champions of the two leagues compete. The kicker is the name we've come up with: 'Snowball vs. Bro-ball.' Heck, I think we'll fill up arenas just on the concept alone."
PopMail
In the course of writing this column, I outreached to some of the most fervent Asian American hoop fans in my social network. Some of them are players; some, strictly watchers. Some follow sports for a living, others, simply out of passion. All of their responses were interesting and insightful enough that I wanted to share the full "transcript" of their thoughts. But given the space limitations of my column, I've moved that virtual roundtable to the frontier wasteland of my personal blog. Check it out here.
Jeff Yang forecasts global consumer trends for the market-research company Iconoculture (www.iconoculture.com). He is the author of "Once Upon a Time in China: A Guide to the Cinemas of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China," co-author of "I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action" and "Eastern Standard Time," and editor of "Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology" (www.secretidentities.org). He lives in New York City. Check out Jeff Yang's blog at originalspin.posterous.com for updates on this column and alerts about politics, technology, and pop culture news, or connect with him on Facebook: www.facebook.com/originalspin, LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffcyang, or Twitter: http://twitter.com/originalspin.
I was in the office last week talking shop with Teddy Ballgame who coaches Hillsdale High Varsity. Their star player went down with an injury and the coaching staff asked a sophomore who they felt would be able to assume the leadership role. That player's response, "No."
WTH (What the hell??) Just like when I coached a club team a handful of years ago....I subbed out one of my starters so he can get a breather, 2 minutes later I asked him if he was ready, he said "No, I need to rest more."
I don't know if times have changed or if it's just me, but you wouldn't have to ask me twice to get in the game or be a leader, let alone have another piece of dessert.
Maybe we have to find another angle to get to the point. I found a nice excerpt that includes Leadership, this one's for you Teddy!
(via TeamArete.com)
Coach K's Basketball Thoughts -- Notes from a Mike Krzyzewski Clinic
- A real winning attitude is about standards of excellence, which are variable from year to year and from team to team. Being the best you can be, and doing the best you can, are the constants.
- Too many rules get in the way of leadership. Preserve the latitude to lead.
- If you’re always striving to achieve success that is defined by someone else, you’ll always be frustrated. Define your own success.
- Whatever a leader does now sets up what he does later. And there is always a later.
- Success is a matter of preparing to win.
- Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team.
- Never set a goal that involves number of wins— never. Set goals that revolve around playing together as a team. Doing so will put you in a position to win every game.
- Win or lose together.
- Believe that the loose ball you are chasing has your name on it.
- You cannot win every game. But you can learn from every game.
- Don’t let a single game break your heart.
- You might have to throw out your well-crafted plan after only five minutes.
- When you screw up, admit you are wrong. Apologize in front of the whole team. To admit a mistake is not a weakness, it is a strength.
- Look very carefully at the demeanor of your team. Are they healthy, injured, excited, down, energized, or tired?
- Ask your team leaders their opinions.
- Having fun helps reduce pressure.
- Maintain a good sense of humor. You don’t always want your team to see you with furrows in your forehead.
- Before you ever utter a word, the team sees your face, the look in your eyes, even your walk.
- Show the face your team needs to see.
- You do not always beat fear with a hug. Sometimes you have to attack the hell out of it.
- Never forget a defeat. Defeat can be the key to victory.
- At the end of every season, thank your team for their effort.
- If something isn’t working, try something new and different. Innovate. Never give up. Never
As you know, I watch basketball on a daily basis whether it be SportsCenter highlights, NBA or College games, and even high school hoops because I'm such a junkie.
Right now, I'm watching the San Antonio Spurs vs. LA Clippers at Staples....I always enjoy watching Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and one of my favorite players Manu "Obi One" Ginobli. The Spurs will be tough in the playoffs. Sebastian Telfair is starting over Baron Davis(flu)? Last time Michael Jordan had the flu, he dropped 48 against the Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals.
Friday night, Corey Brewer got his posterization on. Derek Fisher, unfortunately, was the victim. But you know what....everyone gets dunked on if you have played long enough. However, this play can be described in one word: DIRTY!
Silent Sunday's
My 10 year old nephew (video's below) just started playing in the All-Net basketball league and they had game this morning. The director of the league issued an email to all the parents and coaches about "Silent Sunday." Please read and let me know what you think.
This Sunday, December 13th is designated as our “Silent Sunday” across all Chapters in the Silicon Valley Section.
Silent Sunday is meant to have the fans “clap” only and do no verbal/vocal cheering.
To make Silent Sunday work, there are a few steps your Chapter can take:
Send a message to your parents/membership and coaches to give advance notice of Silent Sunday
Post multiple signs at your gyms entrances
Have a Player read the signs to the people in the stands before each game
If someone in the stands do not adhere to the spirit of Silent Sunday, do not try and force the issue so as not to put more negative activity in situation
Let’s have fun with this and hope it helps the parents see and learn about allowing the kids to have more fun on the court.
Having fun means developing talent and teaching teamwork. I don't get it, I really don't. All I could think about is would they do this in the basketball Mecca's of this nation? Indiana, North Carolina, New York, Texas!! I don't know what message they were trying to send.
Maybe a few bad parents ruined it with their big mouths and inappropriate comments but don't punish everyone else for their faults. It's just like the terrorists who made a bomb out of liquid and now nobody can bring water through airport security. If there are bad parents who bring negativity, so be it....that's how life is. Teach your kids not be like them. I have to be honest, it was pretty lame.
Nevertheless, it was a great time to see my nephew develop and watch kids play the game at its purest form.
AP Photo/Fred BeckhamIn a close loss to UConn on Sunday, Jeremy Lin scored 30 points and grabbed 9 rebounds.
The perfect form on his jumper? Larry Bird deserves credit for that.
The power end-to-end drive with a dunk to finish? Vintage Dr. J.
The sweet dribble penetration and kickout? Score one for Magic.
As Jeremy Lin dissected and bisected Connecticut to the tune of 30 points Sunday afternoon, his father sat in front of a computer screen on the other side of the country, watching his videotape library of NBA greats come to life in the form of his son.
All those years Gie-Ming Lin spent rewinding his tapes so he could teach himself how to play a game he never even saw until he was an adult? All those hours spent in the local Y with his boys, schooling them in fundamentals over and over, building muscle memory without even knowing what the term meant? That silly dream, the one in which his children would fall in love with basketball as much as he had?
There it was, borne out in a gym in Storrs, Conn.
"Every time he did something good, they'd play it over and over again," Gie-Ming said from his home in Palo Alto, Calif. "I kept watching, and they kept showing him."
Soon the rest of the college basketball world might be turning its collective eye toward Jeremy Lin. Think about what the senior has done just this week for Harvard, which is off to its best start (7-2) in 25 years.
In keeping his team in the game right to the end, Lin scored a career-high 30 points and grabbed 9 boards in a 79-73 loss to No. 12 UConn. Then, in the Crimson's 74-67 upset at Boston College on Wednesday -- the second straight season Harvard has beaten BC -- Lin contributed 25 points.
So in two games against New England's annual NCAA tournament participants, Lin scored 55 points and shot 64 percent from the field and 80 percent from the free throw line.
He boasts an all-around repertoire rarely on display. Last season Lin was the only player in the nation to rank among the top 10 players in his conference in points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, field goal percentage, free throw percentage and 3-point percentage.
This year? He is merely second in the Ivy League in scoring (18.6 points), 10th in rebounding (5.3), fifth in field goal percentage (51.6 percent), third in assists (4.6), second in steals (2.4), sixth in blocked shots (1.2) and top of the pile in turning the heads of esteemed basketball minds, including Hall of Famer Jim Calhoun.
Brian Pohorylo/Icon SMIWant athleticism? How about leaping high into the sky to block a shot by UConn's Jerome Dyson.
"I've seen a lot of teams come through here, and he could play for any of them," the longtime UConn coach said of Lin. "He's got great, great composure on the court. He knows how to play."
And he learned how to play thanks to his father's determination.
Jeremy is not the product of some Marv Marinovich in high-tops, desperate to cultivate the perfect basketball player, but rather a 5-foot-6 immigrant who long ago fell in love with a game and realized that in that game, his own children could gain entry into mainstream America.
Gie-Ming Lin was born in Taiwan, where academics were stressed and athletics ignored. He caught an occasional glimpse of basketball and, for reasons he can't explain, was immediately smitten with the game.
He dreamed of coming to the United States for two reasons: to complete his Ph.D. and "to watch the NBA."
That happened in 1977 when Gie-Ming enrolled at Purdue University for his doctorate in computer engineering. He flipped on the television, and there it was: the NBA in all its late-1970s glory. Kareem, Moses and Dr. J, with Jordan, Bird and Magic waiting in the wings.
"My dad," Jeremy said, "is a complete basketball junkie."
Gie-Ming's first job took him to Los Angeles, where the grueling demands and long hours had him searching for some sort of athletic release.
"I thought it would be great to play basketball," Gie-Ming said.
Only problem? He didn't have the slightest idea how. He had never picked up a ball in his life.
So he turned his attention back to those gripping NBA games. Armed with videotapes of his favorite players, Gie-Ming studied the game with the same fervor he studied for his Ph.D.
"I would just imitate them over and over; I got my hook shot from Kareem," Gie-Ming said, laughing.
It took him years to feel comfortable enough to play in a pickup game, and as he bided his time he decided then -- long before he even had children -- that his own kids would grow up knowing the game from an early age.
When first-born Joshua turned 5, Gie-Ming carted him to the local Y to begin teaching him those valuable skills stored on his videotapes.
Jeremy followed, and then youngest brother Joseph joined in what became a three-nights-a-week routine. The boys would finish their homework and around 8:30 head to the Y with their father for 90 minutes of drills or mini-games.
Forget that all of the players on those videos had long since retired, that the guy with Kareem's hook shot wouldn't hit Abdul-Jabbar's armpit. Gie-Ming recognized what so many other youth coaches have forgotten over time: The foundation for success is the basics.
"I realized if I brought them from a young age it would be like second nature for them," Gie-Ming said. "If they had the fundamentals, the rest would be easy."
Jeremy Lin FamilyJeremy, top right, and his brothers Joshua and Joseph grew up in a hoops-loving family.
His passion soon became their passion, and as the boys grew up, those 90-minute sessions would turn into wee-hour wars, with the boys scrounging for whatever gym they could find to play.
Joshua would star at Henry M. Gunn High School. Jeremy would enroll at rival Palo Alto High, where Joseph is now a senior.
Jeremy was special. He had his father's passion, his own inner motivation and a frame that would sprout to 6-foot-3. A good enough scorer to play 2-guard, Jeremy also was a savvy enough playmaker -- thanks to his dad and Magic -- to play the point. He's a solid outside shooter, but his dad, Julius and Kareem conspired to give him a reliable game around the rim.
In other words, he was otherworldly, a kid so talented that his freshman coach stood up at the team banquet and declared, "Jeremy has a better skill set than anyone I've ever seen at his age."
Named to the varsity as a freshman, Jeremy would earn honors as sophomore of the year and two-time most valuable player in his league.
Immersed in the game as he was, Jeremy never thought he was anything but a normal kid who liked basketball.
Until, that is, the insults came at him, the taunts to go back to China or open his eyes.
He was an Asian-American basketball player, an oddity and a curiosity in the cruel world of high school, where nothing is safer than being like everyone else.
"It was definitely a lot tougher for me growing up," he said. "There was just an overall lack of respect. People didn't think I could play."
His father offered sage advice.
"I told him people are going to say things to him, but he had to stay calm and not get excited by these words; they are only words," Gie-Ming said. "I told him to just win the game for your school and people will respect you."
Once more, Gie-Ming was right. In his senior season Jeremy averaged 15 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds and 5 steals, leading Palo Alto to a 32-1 record and a stunning 51-47 victory over nationally ranked Mater Dei in the CIF Division II state championship game.
Along the way, he converted some of the people who had mocked him. When Palo Alto played Mater Dei, students from both Jeremy's high school and rival Henry M. Gunn High crowded a local pizza joint to cheer for Jeremy and his team.
Converting people outside Northern California was more difficult. By his senior season, Lin was the runaway choice for player of the year by virtually every California publication. Yet he didn't receive a single Division I scholarship offer.
Lin doesn't know why, but believes his ethnicity played a part.
Asian-Americans make up just 0.4 percent of Division I basketball rosters, according to the latest NCAA numbers. That equates to 20 players out of 5,051.
AP Photo/Elise AmendolaIn back-to-back wins over Boston College, Lin has scored a combined 52 points on 18-of-26 shooting.
Harvard offered an education with a hefty price tag. (The Ivy League offers no athletic scholarships.) But it also offered the chance to play Division I ball. So Lin went without hesitation.
Four extremely successful years into his college career, he now finds himself packaged into an uncomfortable box. Lin is at once proud and frustrated with his place as the flag-bearer for Asian-American basketball players.
The Harvard uniform, the Asian background, it all still makes Jeremy something of a novelty. What he longs for most of all is to be a basketball player.
Not an Asian-American basketball player, just a basketball player.
"Jeremy has been one of the better players in the country for a while now," said Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, who, as a Duke graduate and former head coach at both Seton Hall and Michigan, knows a thing or two about talent. "He's as consistent as anyone in the game. People who haven't seen him are wowed by what they see, but we aren't. What you see is who he is."
But stereotypes die hard and remain propagated by the ignorant. At UConn, as Jeremy stepped to the free throw line for the first time, one disgraceful student chanted, "Won-ton soup."
"I do get tired of it; I just want to play," Lin said. "But I've also come to accept it and embrace it. If I help other kids, than it's worth it."
In their 109-year history, the Crimson have never won an Ivy League title and have managed only three second-place finishes. They have had just one league player of the year -- Joe Carrabino in 1984.
The last Harvard man to suit up in the NBA? Ed Smith in 1953.
Lin could change all of that, a thought that boggles the mind of the man who fell in love with a sport so many years ago.
"All this time he was growing up, I never thought about Jeremy playing in college or professionally," Gie-Ming said. "I just enjoyed watching him play. I'm just so proud of him and so happy for him. I told him my dream already has come true."
Dana O'Neil covers college basketball for ESPN.com and can be reached at espnoneil@live.com.
Ron Artest channeled his inner Dennis Rodman. His hair was dyed blonde with letters in three different languages in Lakers purple. The letters spelled "Defense" in Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese.
HoopforLife.com - Everything Basketball....and then some
D. Shu
Student of the Game. Basketball fan and junkie. Picked up a basketball in the 8th grade and haven't put it down since. Competed in high school, JC, Division II, and even had a stint in the Pro's overseas. Seasoned coach and scout at the AAU, high school, and college levels. Currently consulting and still actively playing in leagues across the California Bay Area.
My goal is to provide you everything related to basketball and then some, from my point of view.
IM or email me:
Yahoo/Skype: dshumongous -
davidshu@gmail.com
