So all week people have been asking me when I’m going to write about the man who has set the NBA on fire, the new savior of New York basketball, Jeremy Lin. (Nope, nobody has asked me that.)
Well, I’m finally breaking my silence on the phenomenon that is Linsanity. I’ve been a Knicks fan since I learned how to dribble a basketball (so, about 6 years old) and I love the Knicks. Maybe my love for them has been overshadowed by my love for the Giants during the past decade (winning will do that), but it’s always still been there.
Watching Jeremy Lin ignite Madison Square Garden during this seven-game winning streak has rivaled just about anything I’ve ever seen in my time as a Knicks fan, including their remarkable 1999 Finals run and the first few games of the Carmelo era last season.
But that’s such an unremarkable blanket statement that doesn’t really touch on why this has been so extraordinary. What makes it unlike anything else is where Jeremy Lin came from: nowhere. It’s almost like he literally materialized on the Knicks roster one day, and a week later NBA.com was sold out of his jerseys. WHAAAAAT?
Then the comparisons started. Is he the NBA version of Tim Tebow? WHAAAAT? I know football season has been over for almost two whole weeks now, but does anybody remember what it was like to watch Tim Tebow during about 85% of every game he played? He was pretty bad. The Tim Tebow craze was mostly about how we were surprised he was actually winning games. He looked so inept and remarkably unremarkable that his winning streak was almost like an inside joke that every sports fan was in on, except for Tebow.
On the contrary, Jeremy Lin is actually really good. I mean, he put up 38 points on Kobe and the Lakers last Friday night in front of a national television audience with just about everyone expecting him to fall back to Earth. Instead, he continued to rise, to almost meteoric heights. Watching that performance against Los Angeles, I don’t ever remember being that giddy during an NBA game. Every circus shot, every reverse layup, every lob pass for an alley-oop evoked the same reaction: Is this really happening? And if it is, HOW?
So yeah, enough with the Tim Tebow comparisons. Here’s a comparison that fits: Victor Cruz. How weird is it that in the span of a few months, two New York sports franchises had a breakout star that came onto the scene in almost identical scenarios? It’s uncanny. Victor Cruz, the No. 4 wide receiver on the New York Giants depth chart until Domenik Hixon went down in Week 2, steps in and ignites the Giants on a remarkable run to a Super Bowl title. Jeremy Lin, probably days away from being cut, living on his brother’s couch, sparks the dreadful 8-15 Knicks on a 7-game winning streak (and counting), possibly saving his coach’s job and his team’s season.
Oh, and how about the fact that they both came from colleges in Massachusetts? Eerie.
Above everything else, it’s been fun to watch, and isn’t that what being a sports fan is supposed to be all about anyway? The Giants provided a pretty good amount of fun this past season (in between the hundreds of mini heart attacks) and God knows I’m going to need something to inject a little excitement into my sports-watching life over the next few months because we all know that baseball season probably won’t be supplying any.
And for the people questioning whether or not Carmelo Anthony is going to “buy in” to this new and reinvigorated style of basketball when he returns from his injury? Complete and utter nonsense. Carmelo Anthony is not a selfish basketball player, he was simply forced to adjust his natural role as a pure scorer to adapt to an offense that was missing a true point guard. What that meant was a lot of isolation plays and a lot of Melo handling the ball — something he wouldn’t need to do with a point guard that can create the way Lin creates.
For Melo to “not buy in” to this would not only be counter-intuitive for him, but it would also not make much sense. Especially when you consider the fact that Melo was actually the one who told D’Antoni to play Lin.
That’s right, on The Boomer & Carton Show this morning, Lin explained that Carmelo was actually his staunchest advocate for playing time when he went down with his injury.
So to say that Carmelo won’t buy in to this new offensive scheme is not only ridiculous, but also misinformed. Either way, Lin’s ability to draw defenders away from their men should create a lot of open looks for Melo when he returns, just as it’s been providing the same open looks for Amar’e, Steve Novak and even Bill Walker. He makes everyone on the court better, even his buddy Landry Fields who is beginning to look like the Landry Fields of early last season and not the post-Melo-trade Landry Fields who sort of disappeared.
Anyway, we don’t know how long this ride is going to last, but you can bet that us Knicks fans are going to enjoy every last twist and turn. It’s not every day that you get to see an undrafted Harvard grad become the biggest story in the NBA and it’s also not every day that you can witness an entire nation of basketball fans get away with unwittingly making thinly veiled and slightly racist puns that nobody gets upset about!
Jeremy Lin: Bridging races and fan bases, all at the same time.
And when a guy that changed his named to Metta World Peace is running around the Los Angeles Lakers locker room screaming “LINSANITY!” at the top of his lungs, even though you just harpooned his team a few nights before, you know that you’ve officially arrived.
