Here’s Stuff on Jeremy Lin You’ll Read Because I Had You at “Jeremy Lin”

Did I ever tell you about the time Jeremy Lin beat Wilt Chamberlain at pinochle? It won him the deed to Jack LaLanne’s house!

I’ve been trying to think of an interesting twist to the whole Jeremy Lin phenomenon to write about. It’s becoming something of a necessity since this story shows no signs of slowing down, but I also can’t approach it from the same perspective of a long-suffering Knicks fan like my Between the Beers colleague. Then I realized something: What’s the use of one long, coherent discourse on the subject when, with Lin’s popularity hitting its zenith, I can pretty much publish anything and garner the same attention? You insatiable (or is it LINsatiable?) Knicks fans will eat up anything with the letters “L-I-N” in it in some order, so to suit both our needs, I’m just posting random, trivial, trifling observations, and knowing the way this story has trended, you’ll gobble it up like Thanksgiving LINner. (Yeah, that pun was weak. Then again, so was the earlier one. Then again, so are all of these.) To start:

-My feelings toward Jets fans and Knicks fans are completely opposite.

(Yes, I know many New Yorkers share rooting interest among the two teams, but my experience has shown each team to bring out a different side of those fans.)

The Jets fans always seem to have a sort of unearned swagger; they’re ready to hedge that swagger by chanting “Same old Jets” in Week 15, but they only have to do so in the first place because they had already convinced themselves their depleted, flawed, overachieving 8-6 team was Super Bowl bound. Their stadium roommates have won the title twice in four years, yet we have to waste airtime every summer discussing Rex Ryan’s guarantees while ignoring how Tom Coughlin actually won the damn thing for real. Plus, if there’s even an iota of truth to the rumor that Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl Kate Upton is dating Mark Sanchez, I will seriously contemplate jamming pencils into both of my eyes. To put it another way: Tom Brady and Mark Sanchez both dating supermodels will probably be the only metric by which we can accurately compare their two careers.

-Meanwhile, the Knicks fans always seem to exude more of an unrequited optimism. The Knicks haven’t won a title since 1973, four years after the Jets’ last championship. But Knicks fans always come across like Linus going to wait for the Great Pumpkin every year. In their hearts, they know the Great Pumpkin (a fitting metaphor for Jerome James if you ask me) isn’t going to show (in the form of a title), but their dedication, passion, persistence, and loyalty to the cause never wanes. It truly is admirable in a fickle sports world to see and hear how many fans are with this team through thick and thin, not once biting on the Brooklyn carrot Mikhail Prokhorov and Jay-Z are dangling in front of them. The ability for an even moderately appealing Knicks team to overtake the town is particularly cool since it occurs in a city where more recent success stories have provided instant gratification, be it the perennially contending Yankees, Jets, and Giants, or even a world-beating first-place hockey team sharing the same building with them but somehow also sharing the spotlight. After years of false saviors and heroes, Linsanity is unbelievably fun and a well-deserved development for both the team and their fans.

-At the same time, it is hilarious that after years of washout after washout shriveling on the Big Apple stage, this unassuming, under-the-radar guy can go from 12th man to starting point guard overnight, then proceed to use his killer instinct to drain a winning three one night while dishing 13 dimes the next. Can we just make his nickname “Bizarro Stevie Francis”?

-I tweeted this out of necessity, not out of desire, and now I’m BRIEFLY writing about it out of necessity, not out of desire: Stop with the Tebow comparisons.

Let’s juxtapose the two:

Tebow: Heisman trophy winner; two-time national champion; most scrutinized prospect in the 2010 Draft; enigma that drew attention during the weeks of nearly all 18 Broncos games in which he didn’t start; player we watched win a playoff game even as we still have no damn clue whether he can execute a basic out route.

Lin: If you’d heard of him before last week, you’re either lying, a little too enamored with the D-League, or Tommy Amaker.

We’ve dissected Tebow’s game ad nauseam since he was a freshman. Lin is a completely new entity. The only comparison between Lin and Tebow is their ability to always find a way to win even with shaky numbers (Lin’s turnovers are always the wet blanket stat when celebrating his performance, a la Tebow’s completion percentage). The only reason the stories feel similar is because of ESPN’s ADD-addled attention span getting diverted to another shiny new object and saturating Sportscenter coverage with it accordingly.

Finally, the reason Tebow’s success surprised us was because his unpolished throwing motion and mechanics were antithetical to those of a prototypical pocket passer. In Lin’s case, he was a surprise because of our next point…

– The NBA doesn’t overlook potential talent; the scouts’ only flaw is misevaluating too many incoming players. So how did Lin not only go undrafted but flounder for a year and a half, to the point where the Knicks themselves almost cut him?

I have no idea what these teams missed or how they missed it, but Lin’s background certainly doesn’t conform to the mold of what we normally associate with budding NBA superstars, and the novelty of it all is why his story has been inspiring to so many. Whereas Tebow was fascinating because he was winning despite being fundamentally flawed, Lin has been lighting it up and excelling in all aspects of his game. In a sense, it’s sort of incorrect to say we’re surprised by Lin, because we really had no idea what to expect. Scouts never told us this was someone to keep an eye on, but most people never actually watched his game and formulated an opinion on him for themselves before now.

Yet perhaps our own stereotypes caused us to initially dismiss him as an NBA afterthought, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. We don’t find as many white players succeeding at running back in the NFL and we don’t find as many African Americans populating the NHL the way we see white Canadian and Swedish players. Do white running backs emerge and succeed? Of course. Are there a good number of African American NHL players? Absolutely. But they still don’t reflect the image of the players we immediately associate with those positions or sports, particularly those who have reached their respective sport’s or position’s greatest heights.

In addition, we associate Harvard graduates with future presidents and Facebook founders and late night comedians more than we do with athletic superstars. This isn’t just limited to basketball. Even Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick told reporters last August, “”I picked the only profession in the world where my Harvard degree worked against me.”

When you’re in the significant minority of something and succeed at it, you stand out. It’s just how it works. Those achievements should be celebrated and hopefully open the door to more people hoping to find success in that particular field. There’s a reason that the top two candidates in the 2008 Democratic primary drew a LOT more attention than the top two candidates in the 2008 Republican primary. Because of the 2008 election, there’s a reason why a female or African American seriously contending for a future presidential nomination won’t feel out of the ordinary. And that’s a good thing.

Jeremy Lin has resonated with the Asian community in a way we haven’t seen since Yao Ming. Even if this February run is the pinnacle of his career, we will always remember it. And when the next Asian-American guard from the Ivy League emerges, it won’t be an anomaly. Our expectations are irrevocably and forever altered, and we’ll know all the possibilities of what we can expect. And that’s the most positive development from all of this.

-“You can’t spell LINsanity without insanity!” – Walt Frazier, when it’s early April and he just stops trying.

-JEREMY LIN. JEREMY LIN. JEREMY LIN. JEREMY LIN. JEREMY LIN. (I guarantee you that’s the exact search term someone enters into Google at some point today.)

-Isn’t there at least a sliver of a chance Mike Lupica follows the strategy from that previous bullet point and hands his editor a crate full of papers with the words “Jeremy Lin” repeatedly scribbled across each page, making it either a Jack Torrance-style descent into utter madness or a genius marketing ploy for the Daily News to abandon substance and just give the people all Lin, all the time?

-My four favorite iPhone photos of ridiculous signs and graphics during last night’s Knicks/Kings game:

– The worst lede no one has written yet: “In 1991, Pearl Jam wrote a song titled “Jeremy,” about an alienated adolescent who shot himself in front of his classmates. Well, this Jeremy is putting up shots of a different kind.”

-Remember that Simpsons episode, “Lisa’s Rival,” where Lisa, the new kid at school, and the new kid’s pretentious, snooty professor father discuss how they play the anagram game? I’ll let the seven-year-old inexplicably voiced by a fully grown Winona Ryder explain: “We take proper names and rearrange the letters to form a description of that person.”

Lisa stumbles when given the name of Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons, only being able to muster up “Jeremy’s Iron.”

Well, since the name of the man of the hour also happens to be Jeremy, I say we try it again.

Jeremy Lin: J In My Reel

Me: One
Fictional cartoon character: Zero

-Predict which of the following happens first:
-A presidential candidate from either party draws a comparison between himself and Jeremy Lin during a stump speech.
-Jeremy Lin makes a guest spot on Saturday Night Live.
-Jeremy Lin is chosen to give the commencement address at Harvard.
-Jeremy Lin is pulled onstage at Van Halen’s MSG show.
-A fellow NBA player is forced to apologize for a Jeremy Lin comment deemed insensitive to people of his ethnicity.
-Jeremy Lin can’t coexist with Carmelo Anthony, leading Anthony to demand a trade back to Denver; the Knicks scramble to decide who else they have to package with Anthony to get Danilo Gallinari back.
-We find out Jeremy Lin doesn’t actually exist, but is really an externalized projection of our innermost fantasies and dreams.
-Jeremy Lin is just Baron Davis in disguise attempting a new piece of performance art.
-Linsanity only further galvanizes the hoops world to the point that we forget to fill out our NCAA brackets; somehow, we score higher than when we do fill them out.
-Jeremy Lin’s blood is extracted and infused into Toney Douglas in a futile effort to transfer his powers.

-Finally, thanks to the fine people at SNLtranscripts.jt.org, I will conclude by posting the dialogue of an old Saturday Night Live Bill Brasky sketch verbatim. All I’ve done is auto-replaced all references to “Bill Brasky” with “Jeremy Lin.” You’ll still probably read the whole damn thing. And you’ll probably believe all of it. Honestly, the myth-making and aggrandizement in the sketch is not much different than watching the Knicks’ postgame show. Just sub in Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Alec Baldwin, and Mark McKinney circa 1996 with Al Trautwig and Tina Cervasio:

First Friend of Lin: Jeremy Lin is a son of a bitch! Do you fellas know Jeremy Lin?

Second Friend of Lin: Hell yeah, I know Jeremy Lin! He’s a big fella, goes about 6’4″, 280. He loves his Scotch!

Third Friend of Lin: He does! He’s a hell of a salesman!

Fourth Friend of Lin: To Jeremy Lin!

Together: Jeremy Lin!!

Third Friend of Lin: Did you know Jeremy Lin is the godfather of my son?

Fourth Friend of Lin: Jeremy Lin?

First Friend of Lin: He’s a big fella!

Second Friend of Lin: Oh yeah, he’s a big guy! Goes about 6’7″, 385.

Third Friend of Lin: Well, anyway.. he shows up at the church in his golf pants, caked in mud. Well, ol’ Jeremy Lin pushes the priest aside and says, “I’ll baptize that piece of calimari!” Then he pours Scotch all over my baby son and says, “There! You’re baptized!”

Fourth Friend of Lin: And your son is blind to this day!

First Friend of Lin: Yeah, he makes brooms somewhere in Georgia, doesn’t he?

Third Friend of Lin: I have no idea. [ pause ] To Jeremy Lin!

Together: Jeremy Lin!!

Second Friend of Lin: Did I ever tell you about the time Jeremy Lin sold me into slavery?

First Friend of Lin: Well, if you’re talking about Jeremy Lin, I believe it!

Second Friend of Lin: Oh, yeah! He puts me on a ship to Thailand, right? And I’m chained to a pipe. Meanwhile, ol’ Lin, he’s back in the States siring three beautiful children with my wife!

First Friend of Lin: I hate Jeremy Lin.. but I respect him!

Guy At Bar: Are you talking about Jeremy Lin? I know Jeremy Lin!

First Friend of Lin: Then let me buy you a round!

Third Friend of Lin: Hey, easy, Hank, easy.. To Jeremy Lin!

Together: Jeremy Lin!!

Fourth Friend of Lin: Did I ever tell you about the time Jeremy Lin showed up at my daughter’s wedding? You know my daughter, she’s a beautiful girl.

First Friend of Lin: I tell you, I’d like to have sex with her!

Fourth Friend of Lin: Well, Lin shows up.. and you know he’s a big fella.

Third Friend of Lin: Goes about 7’8″, 530.

Fourth Friend of Lin: Well, he’s standing right between me and my daughter at the ceremony. He’s got no right to be there, but he’s drunk and he’s Lin! Well, long story short: the priest accidentally marries me and Lin! [ the guys laugh ] Off! Off! Off! We spend the weekend in the Poconos – he loves me like I’ve never been loved before!

Second Friend of Lin: Best damn salesman in the office!

Together: Jeremy Lin!!

Third Friend of Lin: You know how Lin served three tours in ‘Nam?

Fourth Friend of Lin: Uh-huh!

Third Friend of Lin: Well, I’m in Corpus Christi on business a month ago, and I had this eight-foot tall Asian waiter.. which made me a little curious, so I asked him his name, and sure enough it’s Ho Tran Lin!

First Friend of Lin: To Jeremy Shu-How Lin!

Second Friend of Lin: Oh, yeah!

Fourth Friend of Lin: Hey, you ever go camping with Lin?

Third Friend of Lin: Many times.

First Friend of Lin: I went camping with Lin, his wife, and his daughter Debbie!

Third Friend of Lin: Debbie Lin?

First Friend of Lin: Debbie Lin. She’s 7-years-old, goes about 3’5″, 55 pounds. So, I’m in the back of a pickup with Jeremy Lin and a live deer! Well, Lin, he grabs the deer by the antlers, looks at it and says, “I’m Jeremy Lin! Say it!” Then he squeezes the deer in such a way that a sound comes out of its mouth – “Jeremylin!” It wasn’t exactly it, but it was pretty good for a deer!

Third Friend of Lin: That’s Jeremy Lin!

Together: Jeremy Lin!!

Fourth Friend of Lin: I once saw him eat a whole live chicken.

First Friend of Lin: His favorite movie is “One on One” with Robby Benson.

Fourth Friend of Lin: Jeremy Lin once gave me a videotape of him having sex with my wife, and it was the most beautiful damn thing I ever saw!

Second Friend of Lin: I have that tape!

Guy At Bar: [ turning around ] So do I!

Third Friend of Lin: To Jeremy Lin! A ten-foot-tall, two-ton son of a bitch who could eat a hammer and take a shotgun blast standing!

Together: Jeremy Lin!!

Big Booming Voice: [ from extremely tall figure in upper camera angle ] Did someone say Jeremy Lin?

[ the guys get excited and raise their glasses in the air towards Jeremy Lin ]

Together: Jeremy Lin!!