Linsanity moves to Houston

As most of the world who follows the NBA or Asian American athletes or the very fine intersection of the two in the singular figure of Jeremy Lin now knows, Lin is moving to Houston to join the Rockets because the NY Knicks wouldn't match the Rockets' offer.

Lin accepting the 2012 ESPY award for best breakout athlete

 The New York Times has a piece that describes the reasons for the Knicks failure to retain Lin, and Jeff Yang of The Wall Street Journal talks about the impact this will have on Asian American fans.  Yang quotes my friend and colleague, Tim Yu, whose astute observations bear repeating in full:

“I don’t care who he plays for — I’m a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan,” says Timothy Yu, an associate professor of Asian American Studies (and Jeremy Lin Studies pioneer) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “What I’m mad about is that the Knicks just completely cut him loose — and they’re blaming him for cutting such a hard-nosed deal with the Rockets. The fact of the matter is that even the team that benefited from Linsanity doesn’t believe it’s for real. That really burns me as an Asian American fan. But shed no tears for Jeremy: An Asian American athlete is getting paid like a superstar, because he is one — and that’s cool.”

Like Yu, I am a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan.  In fact, I have been a Lin fan from back when he was playing in the Ivy League and awarded him a T.G.I.F. (The Great Impossible Feat) back in February 2010.  Who knew that just two years later, I'd have caught the fever called Linsanity.

Farewell  Jeremy.  I hope Houston treats you right.  Most importantly, I hope that you have an AMAZING season/career such that the Knicks and all the fans in NYC and around the world will weep at this decision.  I, for one, am just excited to be seeing you play and to know that you are getting what you deserve--a salary and recognition to match your talent!

So long NYC! I'm headed to HOUSTON!!!

[Update: 1:46pm EST:  Just saw an interview that Lin did before the 2012 ESPY awards last week--it's just under 4 minutes and at around the 2 minute mark he gets asked about his impact on the Asian community and talks about what it's like for him as an Asian American breaking stereotypes about Asian American athletes--you just gotta love this guy!]






[Second Update -- July 19, 2012: Just saw this GQ article in which the author, Devin Gordon, talks openly about what no one wants to say was part of the whole Lin-to-Houston kerfuffle: Lin's race and ethnicity played a part in the calculations of Dolan, the Knick's owner, even if subconsciously.  Here's a quote from Gordon that says SO MUCH of what I, and many other Asian Americans, think/feel:

"But here's what I am confident saying about Dolan on the subject of Lin's ethnicity: he has absolutely no grasp of what Jeremy Lin really means as a cultural phenomenon. It does not pierce his bubble. It stirs no emotion in him. He doesn't understand what it means for millions of people in this country, and around the world, to watch the first Asian-American superstar athlete excel on the highest stage, and what it means to have that player wearing the uniform of his team. The pride, the joy, the inspiration, the transformative effect it can have on an entire generation of kids."

Read More http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2012/07/the-jeremy-lin-debate-no-one-wants-to-have.html#ixzz215OGDUTd

I've caught the fever and it's called LINSANITY

I've been wanting to write, for over a week, about the phenomenon we now refer to as "Linsanity" -- the rise of NY Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin.



If you live in the U.S. or China/Taiwan, you have not been able to not hear about, read about, and watch the highlight reels of Jeremy Lin tearing up the court at Madison Square Garden and at basketball arenas around the nation (and across the border in Toronto). The general rhetoric is that he came out of nowhere, an underdog who was underappreciated and undervalued, and now he has risen to stratospheric heights, saving the Knick's season, reinvigorating fans in NYC (and around the nation), and inspiring Asian Americans to claim Lin as Ours--he is one of us.

One of us.

That's a very powerful notion for Asian Americans--that we are seeing, EVERYWHERE, the face and body of a male Asian American athlete on a national stage--that we are watching Jeremy Lin hold his own night after night, quelling the nay sayers (and the haters) about being a fluke and showing that he had always had talent, but it was obscured by the stereotypes and misperceptions that people associated with college and professional basketball (and really mainline college and professional sports) have about Asian American athletes: we aren't really real.

And it's painful to not be really real. It's not just Asian American athletes who suffer from this perception--it's the way in our 21st Century society has made "real" what you see on a screen--whether it's the tv screen, the movie screen, or your computer screen. If it's not an image for mass consumption, it doesn't exist. If you aren't being represented on a sitcom, opening up a blockbuster movie, passing a ball or playing at the Grammy's, you're not real.

Asian Americans have not, historically, had a lot of positive screen time--and certainly haven't had screen time outside of pretty stereotypical roles--the martial artist, the geisha, the enemy soldier or war refugee, the nerd.

But now we've got Jeremy Lin!

And while I don't want to overstate his importance, there is no escaping that we are in a moment--and that particularly for Asian Americans, there is a sense that finally we have someone--someone who is getting a lot of screen time. Someone who defies stereotypes. Someone who has grabbed the nation's attention and is succeeding in an arena reserved for the most masculine of athletes (and this is additionally significant in terms of the way that Asian American men have traditionally been portrayed, especially in the media, as feminized and weak).

There's an especially astute post by my friend and colleague, Timothy Yu--it's long but it's definitely worth reading because Tim really gets at the heart of why Jeremy Lin is so important to Asian Americans at this particular moment, especially Tim's last line:

"This is why Asian Americans love Jeremy Lin: he's everything we are, and he's everything we've been told we can never be."

I don't know how long Linsanity will last--like all things, there will be a time when the Knick's winning streak will end and at the very least if the improbable happens and Lin keeps winning and winning, the basketball season will come to an end. And I know that there's also going to be the inevitable racist comment (there have been some minor ones already)--and certainly Lin has already faced racist taunts before. But what is important in the here and now are all the ways that Lin is inspiring to so many. And while I know I've concentrated on how he is an inspiration to Asian Americans, I feel really gratified to see that at least among some journalists, there has been an effort to do real racial analysis that is thoughtful and that recognizes all the ways that Lin has been overlooked and underappreciated because of society's stereotypes of who can play basketball. In other words, Lin's race matters.

Then again, I always think race matters!