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The Legacy of Linsanity, 10 Years Later

A decade after Jeremy Lin’s NBA breakout, Lin and some of the people who observed his sudden ascent reflect on the excitement and lasting cultural significance of his heroics for the Knicks in February 2012

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For a couple of weeks in February 2012, Jeremy Lin was considered a superhero. Long before Shang-Chi would arrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Lin was the rare Asian American who broke barriers, performed incredible physical feats, and inspired audiences while wearing a costume—and you didn’t need to visit a movie theater and travel to another world to witness his work. All you had to do was tune into a TV or purchase a ticket to see the New York Knicks play at Madison Square Garden—if you could get your hands on one, that is—and watch as an undrafted point guard from Harvard University torched the opposition on a nightly basis.

If you were watching the NBA that season—hell, even if you weren’t—you probably remember some of the basic plot points and highlights of Lin’s ascent from relative anonymity to global superstardom. After being overlooked in the 2010 NBA draft, Lin flipped a strong summer league performance with the Dallas Mavericks into a two-year contract with the Golden State Warriors (with the second year non-guaranteed), and an opportunity to play for his hometown team in front of his friends and family. But the Palo Alto native bounced back and forth between the Warriors and their then-D-League affiliate Reno Bighorns during his rookie season, and then was cut twice the following season before landing on an injury-depleted Knicks roster in late 2011.

On February 4, 2012, the struggling Knicks were gearing up for their third game in three nights—a byproduct of a lockout-shortened season during which the league pushed to make up for lost time. The deadline for contracts to become guaranteed for the remainder of the season was less than a week away, and as the New Jersey Nets visited Madison Square Garden, Lin’s NBA dreams hung in the balance. “So much stuff had to come together at the right moment—my back was against the wall,” Lin tells The Ringer . “That was going to be it for me. My agent had actually called me before the game and said, ‘If you don’t play well, tonight will probably be your last game in the NBA.’ … The amount of anxiety, the pressure, just the embarrassment that I was facing, if I would finally make it to the NBA and then just completely underperform and fizzle out—that would’ve been a really, really tough pill to swallow.”

Lin came off the bench to score 25 points and dish out seven assists in a much-needed win for the Knicks, who had just lost 11 of their past 13 games. Then, Lin dropped 28 points with eight assists in another win, against the Utah Jazz, two nights later. A couple of nights after that, Lin was crossing up 2010 no. 1 pick John Wall and dunking on the Washington Wizards in the team’s third straight win. Next came a duel against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers at the Garden, where Lin scored 38 points, including a dagger 3 in front of the Lakers bench. Against the Toronto Raptors on Valentine’s Day, he waved away incoming screens with the score tied and the clock waning, and delivered a game-winning triple just before the buzzer.

In Lin’s first five career starts, the Hero From Harvard scored 136 points—the most since the NBA-ABA merger—and went on to lead New York to 10 wins in 13 games, helping to turn around what was beginning to look like another lost season in the Mecca of Basketball. Lin went from sleeping on the couches of his friends and family, and constantly being mistaken as a team trainer by security guards at Madison Square Garden, to landing on back-to-back Sports Illustrated covers and a spot on Time ’s list of The World’s 100 Most Influential People . The first American-born NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent had an unprecedented run for an undrafted guard playing in the league’s biggest market and helped keep the Knicks’ playoff hopes alive—even if he suffered a meniscus tear that would sideline him before season’s end and deprive him of a chance to wrap up his magical run with a storybook ending.

Knicks fans still cherish that brief passage of time as the source of some of the franchise’s greatest moments since the ’90s, and many Asian Americans, regardless of fandom, consider Linsanity a source of pride and inspiration. It hardly matters that Lin’s subsequent stints in Houston with James Harden and Los Angeles with Bryant ended in disappointment, or that injuries derailed any shot of a Linsanity 2.0 when the Brooklyn Nets finally gave him another chance to serve as the star of a team in 2016. He had become an NBA superstar, if only for one glorious month in February 2012, and he proved he was an NBA-caliber player over a nine-year career in the league.

But Lin’s early success would come to haunt him for much of his NBA journey. He couldn’t escape the shadow cast by Linsanity, which made him a symbolic figure for both Asian Americans and Asians around the world, whether he was ready for that mantle or not. “Growing up, I could never just be a basketball player,” Lin says. “I was always immediately identified as being different. People were gunning for me because they thought I sucked, or because they didn’t want to be embarrassed by somebody that looked like me. My whole life, I was always the Asian, and I was just so tired of that. I wanted to be recognized for my skills and for what I was bringing to the court.

“As I went through Linsanity, as I went through more things, I started to see the world for what it is, which is a very broken world with a lot of injustice, with a lot of racism and a lot of stereotyping. And I started to realize, this is not something I should be running from. This is something that I need to be stepping into.”

It’s been a long journey for Lin that has tested his deep religious faith along the way, but over time, he’s been able to embrace Linsanity for the special blip in time that it was. He has found peace as he continues his basketball career overseas, along with a voice to speak out on social issues—one that he was once afraid to use. Ten years after Lin’s mythmaking performance against the Nets, he can celebrate his achievements with the rest of us, and use the appeal of his past to help shape the future he wants to see.

“For all of the ways in which [Lin] is an underdog—D-Leaguer, nerd becoming jock—underneath all of it, the beating heart of the story is still about race to me,” says ESPN’s Pablo Torre, who has been chronicling Lin’s career since his days at Harvard. “And it’s because Asian Americans have spent a lot of time looking for somebody who truly shatters the most conventional stereotype. … Linsanity had the effect of making Asian Americans feel like maybe they were the main character in the movie for once.”

What Lin accomplished on the court during that stretch in February 2012 with the Knicks, as an undrafted 23-year-old, was objectively an incredible sports story—the win column and the numbers don’t lie. But it was the way that Lin looked that made it all such a compelling narrative to begin with, a novelty to the nation and the world. And as he spun past defenses , served alley-oops to a streaking Tyson Chandler , and commanded a floor that he sometimes shared with the likes of franchise stars Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire, he did it all with a swagger and confidence rarely seen in Asians in mainstream media.

“Basketball is one of those sports where you can see the sweat, you see nerves,” Torre says. “You can feel it almost palpably. Watching a basketball game is more like watching a theatrical production than any other sport. It’s really up close. It’s about these 10 people on a court. What Jeremy did, it was like performance art. It was like, ‘Fuck, you can be that confident looking like that.’ You can be that guy for all of these people—who’ve had to identify with people who don’t look like them at all—to find inspiration.

“That’s the thing about growing up as an Asian American,” Torre continues. “All of your heroes are people who don’t look like you because you’ve had to find ways to identify with those people—because you don’t have the option.”

In recent years, representation for Asian Americans in Hollywood has slowly— very slowly —made strides, starting when Constance Wu led the all-Asian cast of Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 after no Hollywood production had done so since the early ’90s. The sports industry has, if anything, proved even more difficult to break into. Because of the longstanding underrepresentation in both spheres, the landscape for Asian Americans in pop culture was largely barren just 10 years ago.

“Linsanity was the first time—and long before Crazy Rich Asians —that Asians found something that we could collectively celebrate and rally around across language boundaries, across ethnicities,” says journalist Jeff Yang. “If you went to those games and you looked around at the percentage of people in the arena who were Asian American, it was quadrupled, quintupled. Everywhere you looked there were Asian Americans. They were holding signs, they were screaming, they were wearing his number and his name. For us, it was like this assembly of community in a time when there weren’t necessarily other things to unite us, to congregate us around this kind of hope and aspiration.”

Lin became a unifying force, a must-see event for many who didn’t even care about basketball. And unlike the 7-foot-6 Yao Ming, the Chinese-born Hall of Famer who hardly had to jump to dunk on his opponents, Lin was 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds and born and raised in the U.S., where he’d harbored relatable hoop dreams of being Like Mike. “For a lot of us, Jeremy Lin represents us,” says Phil Yu, coauthor of the upcoming Rise: A Pop History of Asian America From the Nineties to Now with Yang and Philip Wang. “We’ve been that guy who’s completely underestimated, not just on the basketball court, not just in athletics, but in general. You look at Asian guys, especially, and people size us up immediately and feel like they know who we are on a regular basis, whether that’s at school, at work, in our professions. A lot of the discourse around Jeremy Lin at the time was like, ‘Whoa, how come nobody saw this coming? Where did this guy come from? How could this guy be overlooked?’ And you’re like, ‘You know why he was overlooked.’”

At almost every step of his career, Lin had been overlooked—whether by college recruiters, NBA draft evaluators, or general managers. A common refrain would follow Lin in talent evaluations throughout the years : He looked “unathletic.” As then-Rockets GM Daryl Morey explained to author Michael Lewis in his book The Undoing Project in 2016, Lin lit up the team’s evaluative model ahead of the 2010 draft, assigning his value at the 15th pick, which would have placed him just outside the lottery. But Morey and Co. weren’t prepared to place blind trust in their model; as an Asian American kid, Lin just didn’t pass the eye test. A year after Houston and every other team let Lin go undrafted, the Rockets began measuring the speed of a player’s first two steps, and Lin had the quickest first step of any player measured. “He’s incredibly athletic,” Morey told Lewis. “But the reality is that every fucking person, including me, thought he was unathletic. And I can’t think of any reason for it other than he was Asian.”

In spite of what the gatekeeping talent evaluators saw (or, rather, didn’t see) in Lin at the college and NBA levels, he became a person of interest among Asians well before the start of Linsanity, while he was playing at Harvard and on the precipice of becoming the first Asian American NBA player in the modern era.

Lin became a California high school star while playing for Palo Alto High, where he led the Vikings to a 32-1 record and a California Division II championship title over the nationally ranked Mater Dei during his senior year. Yet he landed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after failing to receive a single Division I scholarship offer. Just by achieving success on the more modest Ivy League circuit, Lin was already in rarefied territory as an Asian American athlete—and people across the country, and around the world, had started to take notice. “Even back then, he was a big deal in China and Taiwan,” recalls Torre. “There were people from China, reporters coming to watch his games in college, and it was sort of this curiosity, but it was real.”

For film producer Christopher Chen and filmmaker Evan Jackson Leong, Lin’s journey to being an Ivy League star was already a story worth telling, and Chen wanted to turn it into a documentary . Lin was humble, a devout Christian who cared about God, family, and basketball—in that order. It took some convincing, but before Lin’s college days were up, Leong and his documentary crew were following him around on campus, as if the Harvard guard were Michael Jordan gearing up for his Last Dance . “It was a long shot for him to make the NBA at the time,” Leong says. “But we were like, ‘If anything, this could inspire the next Jeremy Lin to make it to D-I. Maybe he’ll be even better and make the NBA.’ And if he didn’t make the NBA, we always were like, ‘Well, it’s always going to be a good ending if he becomes a pastor.’”

Even before Lin provided Leong’s Linsanity documentary with a greater ending than anyone could have written, Asians were placing their bets and hopes on him as Yao’s injury-plagued career wound down and a void loomed in the basketball world. But Lin’s journey to the league would be far different from that of Yao, who had been a professional and a star in China before entering the NBA and whose towering presence could make even Shaq seem small. Lin did not strike fear into the hearts of his opponents when he stood before them on the hardwood, and he had always played in a sport—and grew up in a country—where he was a minority. Lin represented the possibility of an Asian American going further than anyone else had in the major American sports leagues, presenting a new role model and new dream for kids to aspire to.

When Lin realized that dream in February 2012, the sudden fame and the heightened expectations that greeted him dwarfed the attention he had drawn from camera crews and international reporters at Harvard. “Imagine: Everybody wanted me to be almost like this superhero character, but I’m 100 percent human,” Lin says. “I can’t live up to that. It’s always like these huge shoes that I can never fill, or like this ghost or shadow casting over anything I do. And it’s never good enough. It’s just like worlds of expectations that other people put on me. That’s why I wanted to run from it.”

Whether Lin was playing for the Vikings, the Crimson, or the Knicks, he almost never ceased to shine in the spotlight, always seeming to perform his best the higher the stakes were. He had that rare killer instinct that allowed him to score 30 points against Kemba Walker and UConn as a senior at Harvard, or knock down a game-ending 3 in front of a season-high crowd of more than 20,000 at the Raptors’ Air Canada Centre . But when Linsanity thrust him into the public spotlight off the court as well, Lin was still that humble kid who wanted only to hoop, and who could do without all the extra attention.

“Jeremy, when I first met him, was one of the worst quotes in the world,” Torre recalls with a laugh. “He was somebody who was naturally very shy, had no interest in being a public figure, who ran away from the term Linsanity. He was uncomfortable in front of cameras, in front of a microphone. During Linsanity itself—as much as he was as public a person could be in New York City, at the height of this shooting-star news cycle—he was kept in hiding. The Knicks, for reasons having to do with their clumsy and counterproductive press strategy and also his natural discomfort, hid him, and they wouldn’t let him talk to me. They kept him away from all of these press opportunities.”

While Lin would receive the honor of gracing magazine covers and win an ESPY Award, he also had to deal with all the shocks that came with becoming an overnight sensation—the good and the bad. The paparazzi stalked his every move, and he’d hear knocks on the door of the downtown hotel he was staying at without notice. (Lin also became tabloid fodder, with rumors swirling of a secret romance between him and Kim Kardashian. What a time.) Then there were all the racist microaggressions, and the sheer, clumsy ignorance displayed by a media industry that now had to discuss an Asian American as its leading story and was prone to manipulating his otherness into a joke or a “witty” pun .

“Mainstream media was still not equipped to talk about Asian Americans in a lot of ways,” says Yu. “Take, for example, the ‘ Chink in the Armor ’ moment . You had people defending it or at least going like, ‘Well, I didn’t know. I didn’t know that was something you couldn’t do.’ There’s a clear blind spot when it comes to talking about Asian Americans in popular culture, because there are so few.”

Linsanity would eventually come to an end, but even after Lin left for Houston with a new four-year, $28 million contract in tow, the insatiable appetite for another chapter of Linsanity followed him. Despite being only 23 years old after his sole season with the Knicks and having plenty of time to improve upon the glaring flaws in his game—too many turnovers, a weak left hand, an inconsistent jumper—that had been exposed in the midst of it, everything he did would be compared to and measured against his Linsanity heroics. “I had a pretty hostile relationship with the word Linsanity for the first few years,” Lin explains. “It felt like I had to validate my identity as a person. And it felt like I had to be this phenomenon instead of just being able to be Jeremy Lin, the person who happens to play basketball and is really good at it.”

As Lin grew under the public eye, his worldview would expand and evolve, as would an understanding of the responsibility and opportunity to speak out against the prejudices he’d faced as an Asian American his entire life. “In the beginning, not only did I not really know what the problems were, I definitely didn’t know how to be a part of the solution,” Lin says. “As time went on, I was able to understand the world more and get to a place where I’m centering myself. I don’t need to establish myself or prove myself to myself anymore. I know who I am. I can start to really develop stronger convictions around certain things. And one of those things is social justice.”

“Even when [Jeremy] would talk about Linsanity to me in the years after , he would never actually say the term Linsanity,” Torre says of those early post-Linsanity years. “He would always call it this euphemism, like he would refer to it as ‘New York’—like, ‘When New York happened.’ And over the years since then, particularly since he left the NBA, he has been so remarkably public in his introspection, and thoughtful. He’s somebody who sees the value of his platform far more than I ever thought he would.”

During the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes amid the pandemic , the most prominent example being the Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021 (in which eight people were killed, including six Asian women), Lin has been a vocal presence across media, decrying these rampant acts of violence, which are often both underreported and underpublicized. He and his sister-in-law Patricia Sun, the CEO of JLIN Marketing, cowrote an article for Time after the tragedy in Atlanta, and Lin has spoken about the surge of anti-Asian violence on podcasts , news segments, and his popular social media accounts . He’s also addressed it in town halls , where he’s shared his experiences of facing racism, from his days of being called a “chink” in Ivy League games to being called “coronavirus” in the G League just last year. His Jeremy Lin Foundation goes even further, serving youth in underserved AAPI communities and other communities of color and spearheading a recent “Be the Light” initiative, which aids COVID relief efforts and works to raise awareness of the rise of anti-Asian racism.

As Leong remembers it, Lin has always been true to his beliefs and the image he presents to the world, even from those early days the filmmaker spent following a fresh-faced Lin on Harvard’s campus and during a challenging rookie season in the Bay Area. “Jeremy, even back then, was so true about what he is and what he stands for,” Leong says. “There was nothing bad that we had to hide, or things that we couldn’t talk about. He’s truly that perfect person to be a role model. And now, to see him grow through these years, he’s taken that spot in the influencer space and in the start of the zeitgeist, of a culture changer, and really just taken the responsibility of it—and uses it for good.”

By the time Lin was a member of the Raptors during their championship run in 2019, he was proudly wearing clothing that celebrated his Asian heritage ahead of every playoff matchup. He became the first Asian American to win an NBA championship that year, and he celebrated with his friend Simu Liu, who would go on to play a larger-than-life hero himself (and cite Lin as an inspiration ). Yet the following summer, Lin was unafraid to share his emotions and conflicted feelings about having played only a minimal role on the team—and the pain he felt about believing the league had given up on him—in front of a packed church in Taiwan filled with fans hanging on to his every word. Along with other prominent athletes such as Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, and Kevin Love, Lin has been vocal about the importance of mental health in recent years, sharing his history of struggling with pregame anxiety and the difficult journey he’s had since Linsanity. In October 2021, he became an ambassador for UNICEF, advocating for the mental health of children, youth, and their caregivers around the world.

Ten years after Lin’s hoops highlights dominated ESPN’s airwaves, his NBA career might be over for good. After spending a year overseas with the Beijing Ducks during the Chinese Basketball Association’s 2019-20 season, he made one last attempt at an NBA comeback in 2021, returning to the G League for the first time since he was a rookie. (“I’ve always known I need to jump through extra hoops to prove I belong, so this was par for the course,” he’d later write .) He finished as the league’s seventh-leading scorer, averaging 19.8 points per game on 50.5 percent shooting (including 42.6 percent from 3-point range), along with 6.4 assists and 3.2 boards. Yet he never got that call-up to the NBA, and Lin left last May, ready to pass the torch to the next generation of Asian American hoopers.

❤️ pic.twitter.com/7socHMLMkH — Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) May 18, 2021

Even with former NBA players like Lance Stephenson and Joe Johnson getting second chances in the league as a consequence of the many COVID cases and new hardship exception rules , Lin says he has no regrets about his decision to return to the CBA and leave the NBA behind—just as it left him behind. “I gave myself a year to chase it,” Lin says. “And I ended up only being able to play 11 games in the G League. And that was it. I want to play basketball; I want to play at a high level. I had so many empty promises from GMs and management, and so many people saying, like, ‘OK, go do this or go do that, and then we’ll talk.’ And then I go and do it, and you can’t even reach them. They won’t even call you back. … I gave myself a year to do it, and I did what I needed to do. And no matter what I do, I don’t think it’ll ever be enough. And so I had peace with that decision and now I’m here, and I have challenges and a fun season ahead of me.”

Lin’s basketball career lives on in China, and though he may never again reach the pinnacle of his hoops dreams that was Linsanity, his story has grown into something much larger than that chapter in his life. But he now recognizes how important that chapter was.

“There’s a different weight to it now,” Lin says, as he considers the legacy of Linsanity 10 years later. “As athletes, we need to have a short memory. If we only focus on the past, we can’t be ready for what’s coming in the future—what the next game or season entails. I’ve always been ingrained to just move on to the next thing. But over time, I assumed that people would kind of forget about Linsanity and stop talking about it, but that’s just really not the case. … This story, it really touched people deeply. And I’m shocked at that. I continue to be shocked at that.”

For years, there was a strange lack of acknowledgement of Linsanity from the Knicks organization, even though it was one of the most fondly remembered periods in the franchise’s long history. Lin and the Knicks had an awkward breakup, one brought about by the Rockets’ infamous “poison pill” contract offer and Knicks owner James Dolan’s hurt feelings . (The Rockets contract featured a spike in its third year that would have put the Knicks deep into the luxury tax, a provision that prompted Melo to publicly characterize the contract as “ridiculous.” ) But when COVID hit in early 2020, and spirits were low in New York, MSG Network turned to Linsanity as a source of inspiration for a city in desperate need of it. For an entire week from late April to early May, viewers could relive every time Mike Breen bestowed his trademark “Bang!” on another one of Lin’s improbable shots, and be reminded that you can still find hope and overcome the odds when all seems lost.

“When I look back at it, it’s even more incredible to know that it was only a two-week period, to think about the impact that it had and it continues to have,” says Alex Wong, an NBA writer and author of Cover Story . “Even a new generation of basketball fans now, if you want to talk to Asian people—Asian basketball fans—you point to Linsanity. That story is never going to get old. It’s going to become like folklore.”

Yu also testifies to Linsanity’s staying power. “While it’s been 10 years since Linsanity, I think we’re going to still see the legacy of that moment reverberate,” he says. “Like the kids who were growing up during that time—that did a lot for Asian Americans, not just in basketball, but in athletics. Who knows what seeds it planted?”

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Jeremy Lin documentary shows why 'Linsanity' still matters to Asian Americans

"Linsanity": It’s a word that still evokes memories and takes us back to a remarkable moment in time when Jeremy Lin was at the center of the basketball universe. He’d started 2012 barely hanging on to an NBA roster spot; a little over a month later, he was in the New York Knicks’ starting lineup and scoring 38 points against the Lakers — the Lakers! — at Madison Square Garden.

Lin’s rise to superstardom is chronicled in the documentary short “38 at the Garden,” premiering Oct. 11 at 9 p.m. Eastern time on HBO. It hits the highlights, including the Lakers game that gives the film its title, but its true purpose is to explain why Linsanity mattered in 2012, and why it matters in 2022.

For Lin, 34, the timing of the documentary is significant.

“I was sick of talking about Linsanity but I am not sick of talking about the violence against the Asian American community," he told TODAY in a recent Zoom interview. "I’m not sick of talking about how messed up our society is in some ways and how we need to move forward. I’m not sick of talking about the microaggressions, injustices, the uphill battle and the lack of empowerment and equity that a lot of minorities have to deal with."

Though the Linsanity run turned out to be brief, its impact is still felt, particularly among those in the Asian American community.

“When I think back on those moments of Linsanity, everyone was talking about this unknown Asian American player. I long to feel those moments of just pure joy and unity. It was really validating. It was too short-lived, but it did really open a door,” says journalist Lisa Ling, an executive producer of “38 at the Garden,” in the film.

I’m not sick of talking about the microaggressions, injustices, the uphill battle and the lack of empowerment and equity that a lot of minorities have to deal with.

Through interviews with Ling, ESPN’s Pablo Torre and comedians Ronny Chieng, Hasan Minhaj and Jenny Yang, “38 at the Garden” explores how Lin, the first Taiwanese American to play in the NBA, lifted Asians and Asian Americans who have long been subjected to harmful stereotypes and who saw him as evidence that they, too, could chase their dreams. Breaking through in a league that had few players of Asian descent (and continues to have few players of Asian descent ), Lin became a powerful symbol of hope.

By calling attention to the surge in hate crimes and bias incidents against the Asian American community in recent years — anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339% nationwide from 2020 to 2021 , according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism — the documentary also illustrates what Lin’s accomplishments have meant beyond the basketball court.

“Maybe the most unifying aspect of the Asian American experience is this desire to be included. It’s to be seen as American, to be counted as one of you. And what Jeremy Lin’s story is is the most visceral example of getting to be a part of a world that had never really had space for you before,” Torre, who is of Filipino descent, says in the film.

“This film is not about me. It’s not about, look at what Jeremy Lin did 10 years ago,” Lin told TODAY. “I hope people walk away from it talking about, how can I be a better person? How can I open and widen my perspective more and how can I be changing the world positively for the next generation?"

A 'back-against-the-wall feeling'

Linsanity is described in almost mythical terms at times in “38 at the Garden”; as Lin himself says in the opening minutes, “There’s no way any of this should have been possible.”

A high school state champion in California and a three-time All-Ivy League player with Harvard, the guard went undrafted by the NBA in 2010 before signing with the Golden State Warriors. After a brief stint with the Houston Rockets in December 2011, he joined the Knicks and seized his chance when given playing time by a team beset by injuries. Lin scored 25 points against the then-New Jersey Nets on Feb. 4, 2012, and then suddenly found himself in the starting lineup.

“I had to prove to everybody that I could do something positive on the court,” Lin told TODAY. “I definitely felt that — like, man, I don’t think my teammates know what I can do. I don’t think my coaches even really know what I can do. I don’t think the fans or my opponents know what I can do. It felt really like, back-against-the-wall feeling.”

Following his breakout performance against the Nets, Lin scored 136 points during a five-game stretch — all wins for the Knicks — that included the 38 points against the Lakers and a game-winning three-pointer against the Toronto Raptors on the road. Lin, a self-described “worrier” who struggles with anxiety to this day, said his faith in God provided him with the confidence to play at a high level.

“To be so immersed in a moment and to be so, like, confident and to be able to just go for it, it’s not something — I don’t live my day-to-day life in that space, in that headspace. But there was just, you know, something where I felt like, man, God gave me this supernatural peace. And when I was just in the moment, it felt like my inhibitions were gone and I was just going for it,” he said.

At the same time, Lin trusted his own abilities, and he credits a Knicks organization that encouraged him and stuck with him after games like a Feb. 17, 2012, matchup against the New Orleans Hornets when he committed nine turnovers.

“Hey, keep going for it, keep playing downhill” was coach Mike D’Antoni’s mentality when it came to his new star, Lin recalled, allowing Lin the freedom to play basketball in a way he was comfortable with.

After Linsanity

If Lin’s NBA career had been a scripted movie, he would have had a lengthy stay with the Knicks, helped them win a championship and may have had his jersey raised to the rafters. In reality, none of those things happened: A knee injury in March 2012 sidelined him for the rest of the season, and he signed a contract with the Rockets that summer that the Knicks declined to match.

Looking back, Lin wishes he could’ve had that fairy-tale ending with the Knicks.

“Without a doubt, I wanted to go back to New York. Houston was not a very fun two years, you know, in terms of my experience, either. I wanted to play forever for the Knicks, you know, with the way the fans had received me. So I was really sad. And I will wonder for sure; I will ask the question, ‘What if?’”

Lin would play with five more NBA teams after his time with the Rockets. In 2019, he became the first Asian American to win an NBA championship when the Raptors defeated the Warriors in the finals.

In a nine-year NBA career in which he averaged double digits in scoring, he’s still most celebrated for the Linsanity run. In 2020, during the early stages of the pandemic when sports networks didn’t have live events to broadcast, the MSG Network re-aired his classic February 2012 games.

Lin feels people “miss out” on his body of work in the NBA because much of it is overshadowed by what he accomplished during Linsanity. Though he’s grown tired of talking about that time in his career to some extent, he also said he’s OK with the ongoing fascination surrounding Linsanity because it is “that special to people.”

There was just, you know, something where I felt like, man, God gave me this supernatural peace. And when I was just in the moment, it felt like my inhibitions were gone and I was just going for it. And that was really, really special.

Lin said goodbye to the NBA — though not to professional basketball — in an Instagram post in May 2021 after a season in the NBA’s developmental G League in which he averaged nearly 20 points per game but did not receive a callup. (Lin, who has been the target of racist taunts and language throughout his basketball life, had made headlines months earlier when he revealed a fellow G League player had called him “coronavirus” on the court .)

He told TODAY he is at peace with how his NBA career came to an end.

“I did what I needed to do,” Lin, who currently plays with the Guangzhou Loong Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association, said. “I proved, at least to myself, that, like, ‘Oh, you’re more than capable of being an NBA player still.’ It’s just that I never got the contract.”

In his Instagram message, Lin addressed “the next generation of Asian American ballers”: “I so wish I could have done more on the NBA court to break more barriers — esp now — but you guys got next. When you get your shot, do NOT hesitate. Don’t worry whether anyone else thinks you belong. The world never will. If there’s any chance to doubt, they will. But when you get your foot in the door, KICK THAT DOOR DOWN. And then bring others up with you.”

Lin — who earlier this year launched the Jeremy Lin Basketball School in partnership with the Canadian Chinese Youth Athletic Association with the goal of building kids’ self-esteem and confidence — encourages young Asian American basketball players to enjoy their journeys. It’s something he didn’t necessarily do when he became a sports icon 10 years ago.

“I didn’t slow down and savor and relish Linsanity because I was just focused on the next game, because that’s how I grew up my whole life,” he said. “It was like, you have to get to the next game because if you (don’t) play well the next game, then the last game doesn’t mean anything. Like, I had no margin of error, and so I approached my life with that mentality.”

His other piece of advice is straight out of the Linsanity playbook: “Be you.”

“It was hard to believe in myself because no one else around me believed in me. But when you are you, and when you are unapologetically you, you give yourself the best chance to do what you’re capable of doing,” he said.

Shane Lou is a senior editor for TODAY.com.

Jeremy Lin reflects on 'Linsanity' 10 years later, gets candid about 'big regret'

Point guard Jeremy Lin’s meteoric ascent across more than two dozen games in the 2012 NBA season — beginning in February of that year and dubbed “Linsanity”— triggered a movement of pride so palpable in the Asian American community that it went far beyond the physical arenas he played in, expanding past the confines of sports. 

And for Lin, the first Taiwanese American in the league who was a point guard for the New York Knicks at the time, talk of the era revives some bittersweet reflections.

“When I was going through Linsanity, I didn’t understand the weight of it,” he said over the phone while on Lunar New Year break in China. “I knew that the Asian community supported me and I knew that it was an inspiration to everybody, but I didn’t understand the depths of it.”The baller has come a long way since those days, in which he says he was hesitant to be labeled an “Asian athlete.” In some ways, Lin recalls, it was amid the madness that unfolded all around him, his own understandings of race and who he was as an Asian American began to percolate. And now, while the community observes the 10-year anniversary of the Linsanity phenomenon this month, the 33-year-old says he’s left with one “big regret.”

“I was just so focused on playing well in the next game, I wasn’t so tuned into what everybody else was saying,” Lin told NBC Asian America. “There was a lack of understanding of what that moment meant and I feel like, because of that … I wasn’t able to say more and do more with my platform off the court that I wish I could have done and should have done.”

“I wasn’t able to say more and do more with my platform off the court that I wish I could have done.”

said Jeremy Lin

Lin, who commemorated the milestone by matching donations to the Jeremy Lin Foundation and UNICEF USA, is looking back on the Linsanity era in a drastically different stage of life. The point guard, who announced he’d stop chasing NBA dreams last year, is playing overseas with the Beijing Ducks for the current Chinese Basketball Association season. He’s also grown increasingly outspoken about the pandemic-fueled racism that the Asian American community has had to contend with, his own complicated, ever-evolving sense of belonging and the histories of Asian Americans who came before him. 

But a decade ago, Lin came off the Knicks bench and blew the crowd away at Madison Square Garden, delivering 25 points and seven assists in a February game against the Nets. It triggered an epic run. Lin ended up scoring 130 points in his first five career starts, dramatically turning around a previously disappointing Knicks season. It was also the beginning of a societal hyperfocus on Lin. As Asian Americans hosted watch parties and Linsanity celebrations, newspapers and television hosts turned to race-related puns to frame the moment. It all prompted the genesis of a personal racial reckoning. Looking back, he said, he wasn’t working with much. 

“I just wanted to be recognized for being a great basketball player. I was so tired of, from literally age 8 until Linsanity, it was always, ‘Oh, he’s a good basketball player, but he’s Asian.’  … And so I was trying to run from that tag,” Lin said. “I didn’t understand how far back the systematic injustices went. I didn’t understand the harm of these microaggressions. I didn’t understand just how much turmoil and adversity that generations and generations of minorities had to go through.”

"I didn’t understand just how much turmoil and adversity that generations and generations of minorities had to go through.”

Lin’s interpretation of his identity at the time was, in part, informed by his younger years during which he heard his race invoked to undercut his basketball game, he said. Growing up in Palo Alto, California, Lin was often around Asian Americans in the surrounding cities. But when he began to play basketball competitively, he was thrust outside what he called his “Bay Area bubble” and into predominantly white areas across the United States, where he said he felt unmistakably unwelcome. This became particularly apparent in college when he began playing teams along the East Coast, he said. 

Then, there were the overt forms of racism — ranging from fans hurling insults about his eyes or shouting names of Chinese takeout dishes at him — alongside decades-long gaps in Asian representation in American media and entertainment, Lin admitted that he internalized a lot of what was around him. To this day, he said, he’s still disentangling himself from many of the stereotypes that have been heaped on Asian men, including how much they’ve been emasculated in the media. 

“I think I was so brainwashed into already being what society had pigeonholed me to be,” he said. “I never grew up thinking I was attractive or manly. Even now, I still struggle with a lot of these things.” 

When Linsanity rolled around, Lin said that he had experienced such clear-cut forms of racism, and was unaware of how subtler comments and slights could be harmful. Moments, like when ESPN published a story about the athlete entitled ‘Chink in the Armor,’ didn’t initially register as racist offenses, Lin said, even though the article drew an immense backlash from Asian Americans. 

“To me, racism was really simple. Racism was basically when people would look at me and call me ‘Yao Ming, Go back to China.’ or ‘Can you even open your eyes?’ ‘Beef chow mein, chicken fried rice’ — what had been called so many times,” Lin recalled. “When they came out with a 'Chink in the Armor' headlines and, when I was playing, people would make fun of Asian genitals, these things to me were just jokes.” 

Though Lin says he wishes he had a deeper racial awareness, Christina Chin, an associate professor of sociology at California State University, Fullerton, explained that there shouldn’t have been an expectation for the athlete to have it all figured out. In a sense, he was on an island of his own. 

“Lin being in that sort of trailblazing role, he didn’t have any other role models to navigate that. There weren’t any other previous conversations that he could read about or share, no other Asian American teammates where he could really connect with and commiserate with,” she said. 

The act of examining Asian Americans in sports through a racialized lens really hadn’t been done before Lin, Chin said. And so, Stanley Thangaraj, author of “Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity” explained that Linsanity was pivotal in exposing just how little the media and the general population knew about the racial group. 

“What Linsanity symbolizes for me, is a long history of refusal — a refusal to engage with Asian American sporting history,” he said. 

The experts noted that Asian Americans everywhere had long formed local leagues across a variety of sports, including basketball. Local legends arose from these leagues, often gaining recognition and joining a pantheon of area basketball heroes. Lin, a descendant of these leagues himself, gave Asian Americans a glimpse of what fame could look like on an international level, Thangaraj said. 

But the media often failed to interpret the moment accurately, instead, ignoring the tradition of ballers in the Asian American community, and defaulting to tired tropes. Rather than being described as the athlete who played with style, Lin was written as the Harvard guy who played a stoic, mind-centered game, Thangaraj said. Articles from that era constantly focused on Lin’s Ivy League ties, made regular puns about test scores, and labeled him as “poised.” Lin, Thangaraj emphasized, had “swagger” that the media chose to erase. 

“The one thing that bothered me about the Linsanity phenomenon was Jeremy Lin was quite a turnover machine, contrary to what the reports were saying,” Thangaraj said. “The journalistic reports were like ‘he’s so composed’ … All these stereotypes of the very brained Asian American kid, when in reality he was playing with such freedom, going all out with different moves and passes that was sometimes sloppy play — that was never covered as such.” 

Experts also note that other descriptions cast Lin as a foreigner, keeping him outside of the American cultural imagination. Thangaraj said that it was not uncommon to see Linsanity described as a “ dynasty ,” or the player depicted as an “emperor.” 

“If you go back to all the sporting news, you will see the use of language that makes him already seem foreign,” Thangaraj said. “What it does is in that process, it does two things: it locates him as so deeply embedded outside of our borders and as a site for desire for Asians, and not Asian Americans.” 

“If you go back to all the sporting news, you will see the use of language that makes him already seem foreign.”

said   AUTHOR STANLEY THANGARAJ

In the years that followed, Lin ramped up his social justice work. On several occasions, he got candid about his experiences with racism. And while he was in China for much of the pandemic, Lin lent his voice to the community, condemning the attacks on Asian Americans and the racist rhetoric around the virus.

“He did us so proud. I hope that he can look back and reflect and realize he left it all out. He took so many chances and he took as many opportunities as he could,” Chin said. 

With everything the player has been through and weathered, oftentimes on his own, Lin doesn’t seem to stop taking those chances. Linsanity was ultimately the start of possibility. 

“Society has always tried to say Asians can’t do this. Asians you can’t do that. You hear about the bamboo ceiling … or people who aren’t even given an opportunity to come to the country at times through history,” Lin said. “What that moment meant was just being able to compete in the same court, in the same arena. And then to defeat and to overcome and to win. 

He added: “I think that’s what I’m really proud of.” 

Kimmy Yam is a reporter for NBC Asian America.

Jeremy Lin doc ’38 at the Garden’ moves Linsanity beyond basketball

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Jeremy Lin did not want to make a nostalgia piece.

The former NBA player, whose sudden ascendance to superstardom was dubbed Linsanity, is humble about that time during the 2011-12 season. An Asian American kid born in Torrance who played college ball at Harvard, Lin is quiet, hard-working and not the kind of player, or person, who draws attention to himself.

A movie? About himself and that time ? It wasn’t something that Lin looked forward to revisiting. He had moved on from that period with the New York Knicks, later joining the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers, winning a championship with the Toronto Raptors and playing in China. Linsanity was behind him. But the persistent filmmakers behind the Oscar-shortlisted documentary “38 at the Garden” — including director Frank Chi and producers Travon Free and Samir Hernandez — eventually were able to persuade Lin to participate in the film and illustrate how impactful he was, unknowingly, to the Asian American community.

Now streaming on HBO Max, “38 at the Garden” chronicles that special season, culminating exactly 11 years ago at a Feb. 10, 2012, game against the Lakers when Lin scored a remarkable 38 points. New York City was already in a frenzy about this unheralded Knicks player, and when Kobe Bryant stepped on the court at Madison Square Garden, it was total pandemonium. The Los Angeles Times caught up with Lin to talk about the film , how his career impacted the Asian American community and the Linsanity of it all.

Why didn’t y ou initially want to participate in making this movie ?

I was trying to turn it down without taking the call. Luckily, I did take the call because the CEO of our company that handles all my off-the-court stuff, she was adamant about me at least listening to their pitch. After listening to their pitch, the one thing we all agreed on was that this is going to be much bigger than just, you know, the stats, the game, the sport of basketball. This is going to be about humanity. This is going to be about what’s going on right now post-pandemic with the [anti-]Asian violence that we’ve been seeing, about minorities and people who are fearing for their lives in this critical moment in history.

Ronny Chieng , Hasan Minhaj and former teammate I man Shumpert. There are some characters in here. What was your reaction to seeing the film for the first time?

The first time I watched, it was the first screening at Tribeca Film Festival. And I was blown away. First off, I did not realize how funny it was going to be with the comedians, with the journalists and with my teammates because I went through Linsanity, but I went through Linsanity from my perspective. I was not reading everything that was being said out there. To see it from everyone else’s lens was really impactful. I didn’t realize it would be that funny. But No. 2, by the end of the movie, there’s a high percentage of people who watch this film and end up in tears. A lot of people are really emotional and a lot of people are thinking about themselves or thinking about society, but they’re definitely not thinking about basketball. They’re definitely not thinking about 38 points at MSG. They’re thinking about something much bigger than that. And that’s what I was blown away with, how they were able to tie it all together.

In the movie, we heard that you were just trying to secure a spot and get playing time. So you really had no clue how it was translating outside the locker room?

I had to do a lot of PR, and no matter how much I would try to hide, there would still be some stuff that I would be aware of. It was just like, “This guy, he’s a great basketball player, but check it out, he’s Asian!” And it kind of eventually felt the same reading it from these big publications and these big TV stations. But to hear from the actual fan perspective, to hear from people who went through it, from people who were minorities who went through it and experienced it, that brought a whole different element of color that I wasn’t aware of. And that’s why I think the film forced me and challenged me to have a much wider perspective.

It was interesting to see how the film analyzed basketball moves you made on the court, like the wave off, and how it displayed courage for an Asian man to take control in that situation. What did you think about the deeper meanings in terms of the Asian community?

I think that moment, and there’s other moments in there that people talk about, but the biggest one is the wave off. And I think that I was not conscious of it in the moment with 12 seconds left on the clock. I wasn’t thinking all these things. I wasn’t thinking, like, waving them off and what that might mean to the next generation. I was trying to win the game and I was so in the moment. But it wasn’t until after hearing how Hasan [Minhaj] was able to break it down, I was like, “You know what? That is true.” I really unapologetically took up my space and elevated myself to do something that I knew I was supposed to do and knew I had the capabilities of doing. And as great as that moment was, there were many times, even after that moment, when I reverted and I did not wave people off. And I think that is the immigrant experience. That is the minority experience. It is not a one-time decision to wave somebody off and do what you know you’re capable of. It is a daily decision. Some days you’ll get it right, some days you won’t.

But in that moment, I was able to get it right.

Jeremy Lin struggles as a free agent: ‘The NBA has kind of given up on me’

The days of Lin-sanity must seem like an eternity ago for NBA free agent Jeremy Lin.

July 28, 2019

Is there a moment you can think of where you didn’t wave someone off?

Yeah, for sure. Even after that Linsanity stretch, there were times. Going to Houston when Houston really wanted to elevate me, put me on all the billboards, be in all the commercials, and they wanted to just make me the guy. And I was shying away from it because I’m not a spotlight type of guy and I want to be just like everybody else and all my other teammates. I don’t want to be just like a megastar who is untouchable. And that’s fine in some aspects of it, but in other aspects, it kind of carried over onto the court and I deferred too much. I accepted blame for things that weren’t even my fault. I continued to hold myself small and to kind of take a smaller role while other people who were more aggressive and assertive were able to eventually take on a bigger role.

How do you feel Linsanity and the film can help others moving forward?

Now 10 years removed and having seen “38 at the Garden,” my relationship with Linsanity is definitely trending up. It is not something that I try to run away from, but it is something as a badge of honor that I’m very proud of. And I think that the one thing that I really want to do now is kind of what “38” is doing. ... I want to tell this story in ways that encourage the next generation of people. There’s a few amazing things when people watch it, especially at the screenings, and they give a lot of feedback and they come and talk to us. There’s one person who was like, “Oh, I watched the movie, and then the next day I asked for a promotion and then three months later I got it.” And there’s other people who talk about different things that they need to do, obstacles that they need to overcome or ways that they need to not hold themselves small.

In the documentary, we see an amazing clip that is absolutely heartbreaking. And it’s the one clip that I remember the most from the entire film. It’s when we see this extremely young Asian girl who is just so [scared] and she’s like, “I don’t want people to see my skin color.” That is me sometimes to this day. I mean, when people look at me sideways if I’m wearing a mask or I’m walking to a grocery store or even when people ask me what I’ve been up to. I’m like, “Oh, I have been playing in China.” And all of a sudden they look at me a certain way because of the political tensions when I’ve been playing basketball in China for the last four seasons before COVID started. This story can continue to kind of be a vehicle for the change that we’re hoping to see.

Jeremy Lin takes sane approach to his opportunity with the Lakers

If you ever meet Jeremy Lin, don’t bring up the “L” word. He doesn’t like it.

Oct. 18, 2014

I’m sure L.A. Times readers will ask how you felt about your time in Los Angeles .

I mean, the Lakers year was difficult. It was really difficult in the sense of we had high expectations. We had Kobe [Bryant] come back from injury. We had Steve Nash, and obviously I was really excited about going there before he even started. Nash was out, then Kobe a few games, then he was out, and it ended up being a really disastrous season — one that all of us were not proud of or satisfied with. But things didn’t click and things didn’t work. It wasn’t because of effort. It would be times I’d be texting with Kobe at, like, 3, 4 in the morning because I couldn’t fall asleep. I’d be watching film, and I’d shoot him a text about something game-related and then he’d text me right back and I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, aren’t you sleeping?” He’s like, “I can’t sleep.” We were trying, but we just weren’t able to get any good momentum the way we wanted to.

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• Jeremy’s Bio
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Jeremy Lin was born August 23, 1988 near Los Angeles and raised in Palo Alto, California. His parents, Gie-Ming and Shirley, emigrated from Taiwan to the United States in the mid-1970s. Jeremy is the middle child in his family, having both an older brother, Josh, and a younger brother, Joseph.

High School

In his senior year of high school, Jeremy averaged 15.1 points, 7.1 assists, 6.2 rebounds and 5.0 steals and led Palo Alto High to a 32-1 record and an upset of nationally ranked Mater Dei, 51-47 for the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Division II state title. In so doing, he also earned himself many state player of the year honors.

Despite this, no colleges, including hometown Stanford, offered him an athletic scholarship. With Harvard and Brown being the only schools to offer him a guaranteed spot on their basketball teams, Jeremy chose to enroll at Harvard.

As a freshman at Harvard (2006-07), Jeremy averaged 4.8 points per game in 18.1 minutes.

He started getting more playing time as a sophomore, averaging 12.6 points, 3.6 assists and 4.8 rebounds, while earning second team All-Ivy League honors.

In his junior year, he was the only NCAA Division I men’s basketball player who ranked in the top ten in his conference for scoring (17.8), rebounding (5.5), assists (4.3), steals (2.4), blocked shots (0.6), field goal percentage (0.502), free throw percentage (0.744), and 3 point shot percentage (0.400), earning a consensus first team All-Ivy League selection.

In his senior year (2009–10), Jeremy averaged 16.4 points, 4.4 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 2.4 steals and 1.1 blocks, and was again a unanimous selection for first team All-Ivy League. He was one of 30 midseason candidates for the John R. Wooden Award and one of 11 finalists for the Bob Cousy Award. He was also invited to the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament.

Lin finished his career as the first player in the history of the Ivy League to record at least 1,450 points (1,483), 450 rebounds (487), 400 assists (406) and 200 steals (225).

He graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics and a 3.1 grade-point average.

After graduating from Harvard, Jeremy went undrafted in the 2010 NBA Draft.

After his impressive Summer League performances, Jeremy received offers to sign from the Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, and an unnamed Eastern Conference team. Jeremy chose to sign a 2-year deal with his favorite team growing up, the hometown Warriors. The deal was partially guaranteed for the first year, with the Warriors holding a team option for the second.

In the first year of his contract with the Warriors, Jeremy played sparingly. He got into 29 games, averaging 2.6 points in 9.8 minutes per game.

Recent Posts

• Tennessee Woman Catches Accidental Case of Linsanity
• Does Jeremy Suffer from Unfair Treatment from the Refs?
• Jeremy Relishes Fresh Start with Lakers
• Jeremy Named One of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World
• Jeremy Recovers from Knee Surgery

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No, Jeremy Lin Did Not Commit The Worst Travel In NBA History Last Night

Midway through the second quarter of last night’s Blazers-Rockets game, Jeremy Lin caught a pass from James Harden and proceeded to take approximately 867 steps towards the basket, and with nary a dribble in sight. At least, that’s what it looked like. In real time, it appears the referees completely whiffed on what would most assuredly be the worst traveling violation outside of an 8-year-old boy’s rec league game.

However, Lin’s “trickeration” was actually the result of some inadvertent camera trickeration, as he did, in fact, take one dribble. Of course, critics will say that Lin still can’t cover that much ground, or take that many steps, with only one dribble, but when you slow things down, it’s obvious that, by the NBA’s definition of traveling, he committed no violation. Remember, these guys are world class athletes, whether it be LeBron James or Lin. Also, the NBA allows one extra step to “gather” the ball, an act that often creates the illusion of three (or even four) total steps.

[ BroBible ]

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Jeremy Shu-How Lin ▪ Twitter : JLin7 ▪ Instagram: jlin7

(Linsanity)

Position: Point Guard and Shooting Guard ▪ Shoots: Right

6-3 ,  200lb  (190cm, 90kg)

Born: August 23 , 1988 in Torrance,  California us

College: Harvard University

High School: Palo Alto in Palo Alto, California

NBA Debut: October 29, 2010

Career Length:  9 years

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Show G-League Assignments

July 21, 2010 : Signed as a free agent with the Golden State Warriors .

December 28, 2010 : Assigned to the Reno Bighorns of the G-League.

January 3, 2011 : Recalled from the Reno Bighorns of the G-League.

January 9, 2011 : Assigned to the Reno Bighorns of the G-League.

February 5, 2011 : Recalled from the Reno Bighorns of the G-League.

March 17, 2011 : Assigned to the Reno Bighorns of the G-League.

March 28, 2011 : Recalled from the Reno Bighorns of the G-League.

December 9, 2011 : Waived by the Golden State Warriors .

December 12, 2011 : Signed as a free agent with the Houston Rockets .

December 27, 2011 : Signed as a free agent with the New York Knicks .

January 17, 2012 : Assigned to the Erie BayHawks of the G-League.

January 23, 2012 : Recalled from the Erie BayHawks of the G-League.

July 17, 2012 : Signed as a free agent with the Houston Rockets .

July 15, 2014 : Traded by the Houston Rockets with a 2015 1st round draft pick ( Larry Nance Jr. was later selected) and a 2015 2nd round draft pick to the Los Angeles Lakers for Sergei Lishouk . Conditional 2015 2nd-rd pick did not convey

July 9, 2015 : Signed a multi-year contract with the Charlotte Hornets .

July 7, 2016 : Signed a multi-year contract with the Brooklyn Nets .

July 13, 2018 : Traded by the Brooklyn Nets with a 2023 2nd round draft pick and a 2025 2nd round draft pick to the Atlanta Hawks for Isaïa Cordinier and a 2019 2nd round draft pick. Conditional 2019 2nd-rd pick was POR own, did not convey 2023 2nd-rd pick was a right to swap, did not convey

February 11, 2019 : Waived by the Atlanta Hawks .

February 13, 2019 : Signed a contract for the rest of the season with the Toronto Raptors .

How old is Jeremy Lin?

Jeremy Lin is 35 years old.

Where was Jeremy Lin born?

Jeremy Lin was born in Torrance, California.

When was Jeremy Lin born?

Jeremy Lin was born on August 23, 1988.

How tall is Jeremy Lin?

Jeremy Lin is 6-3 (190 cm) tall.

How much did Jeremy Lin weigh when playing?

Jeremy Lin weighed 200 lbs (90 kg) when playing.

Is Jeremy Lin in the Hall of Fame?

Jeremy Lin is not in the Hall of Fame.

What position did Jeremy Lin play?

Point Guard and Shooting Guard.

When did Jeremy Lin retire?

Jeremy Lin last played in 2019.

What is Jeremy Lin's net worth?

Jeremy Lin made at least $65,711,054 playing professional basketball.

How much did Jeremy Lin make?

Jeremy Lin made $13,071,063 in 2019.

What did Jeremy Lin average?

Jeremy Lin averaged 11.6 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game.

How many rings does Jeremy Lin have?

Jeremy Lin won one championship.

What is Jeremy Lin's Twitter account?

Jeremy Lin is on Twitter at JLin7 .

What is Jeremy Lin's Instagram account?

Jeremy Lin is on Instagram at jlin7 .

What schools did Jeremy Lin attend?

Jeremy Lin attended Palo Alto in Palo Alto, California and Harvard University .

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Watch CBS News

Watch: Did Jeremy Lin Travel On This Play?

April 28, 2014 / 1:04 PM CDT / CBS Chicago

(CBS) A video making the rounds on social media last night of Rockets guard Jeremy Lin driving for a transition layup in the second quarter against the Trail Blazers at first appears to be one of the most blatant missed traveling calls in NBA history.

Lin shuffles his feet in tiny steps, taking at least four in all and perhaps more after catching the ball around the right wing of the 3-point arc. What you can't see without looking very closely is that Lin actually has a dribble in there too; it's just hard to see because of the camera angle.

Lin missed the layup, but the debate remains: Was it a travel?

The inclination of most is to say yes. As SI.com argues, however,    "The single dribble ... makes Lin's slash to the basket legal. It's another bit of movement amid Lin's flurry of strides, but the timing of the subsequent gather satisfies both the rulebook's stipulations and their current interpretation."

Take a look for yourself.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad-MYlmuhp4#t=10]

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'The highlight of my life': Jeremy Lin reveals marriage of two years

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

Ahead of the Lunar New Year, former NBA star Jeremy Lin revealed that he has been married for about two years.

On Wednesday, Lin wished his followers a happy Lunar New Year in a Facebook post . Along with the greeting, the 34-year-old announced that he married his longtime partner “a couple years ago” in an intimate ceremony, adding that the wedding was the “highlight” of his life.

Although the former Knicks star did not disclose his wife’s name, he wrote his post in both English and Chinese and included a wedding photo.

The funny thing about becoming famous overnight is no one teaches you how to deal with it. As grateful as I am for this crazy journey I’ve been on, I always knew that when I got married I'd want to keep my personal life sacred and to myself for as long as I could. More from NextShark: Daughter of WWII Concentration Camp Detainee Becomes First Asian American Female Episcopal Bishop While I still feel strongly about guarding aspects of my personal life, it has also been hard for people to not know about such a major change. After many years of being together, I married my wife in an intimate ceremony and it’s been the highlight of my life ever since. Finally sharing this beautiful day from over a couple years ago. I'm grateful to have found someone who loves me for who I am, to embrace my unique life, and to just do life with. Hope this next year is full of health, time with loved ones and joyful memories. Happy Lunar New Year from our family to yours.

Last month, Lin announced his departure from the Guangzhou Loong Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association and said he would return to the U.S. to “rest and reset before I make a decision with my family for my next step.”

More from NextShark: Viral TikTok trend accused of appropriating, sexualizing South Asian culture

Lin, who was the first American-born player of Taiwanese descent in the NBA, skyrocketed to fame when playing for the New York Knicks in 2012. As a point guard, he averaged over 22 points and led the Knicks in a seven game win streak that became known as “Linsanity.”

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Netflix’s New Film Strategy: More About the Audience, Less About Auteurs

Dan Lin, the streaming service’s new film chief, wants to produce a more varied slate of movies to better appeal to the array of interests among subscribers.

By Nicole Sperling

Reporting from Los Angeles

Back in, say, 2019, if a filmmaker signed a deal with Netflix, it meant that he or she would be well paid and receive complete creative freedom. Theatrical release? Not so much. Still, the paycheck and the latitude — and the potential to reach the streaming service’s huge subscriber base — helped compensate for the lack of hoopla that comes when a traditional studio opens a film in multiplexes around the world.

But those days are a thing of the past.

Dan Lin arrived as Netflix’s new film chief on April 1, and he has already started making changes. He laid off around 15 people in the creative film executive group, including one vice president and two directors. (Netflix’s entire film department is around 150 people.) He reorganized his film department by genre rather than budget level and has indicated that Netflix is no longer only the home of expensive action flicks featuring big movie stars, like “The Gray Man” with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans or “Red Notice” with Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson.

Rather, Mr. Lin’s mandate is to improve the quality of the movies and produce a wider spectrum of films — at different budget levels — the better to appeal to the varied interests of Netflix’s 260 million subscribers. He will also be changing the formulas for how talent is paid, meaning no more enormous upfront deals.

In other words, Netflix’s age of austerity is well underway. The company declined to comment for this article.

Now that Netflix has emerged as the dominant streaming platform, it no longer has to pay top dollar to lure auteur filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón and Bradley Cooper. It also helps that some of the big studios are again allowing their films to be shown on Netflix not long after they appear in theaters, providing more content to attract subscribers. The latest list of the 10 most-watched English-language films on the service featured six produced outside Netflix.

Mr. Lin’s predecessor as Netflix’s film chief, Scott Stuber, took the job in 2017, when the company had no track record as a place for original movies. To succeed, Mr. Stuber, who had once been the vice chairman of production at Universal Pictures, spent lavishly on talent, promising filmmakers near-complete creative freedom and hefty budgets. It worked — to an extent. The directors got to make their passion projects, and their films earned Oscar nominations (though few wins.)

In 2021, the streamer hit its apex of production, declaring that it would release a new movie a week.

Mr. Stuber, an affable friend to talent, pushed to get Netflix to embrace the idea of wide theatrical releases. And it was a big coup when he landed the sequels to the box office hit “Knives Out,” in a $465 million deal, which some thought could nod toward a change in direction. It never came to be.

Under Mr. Lin, who once ran production at Warner Bros. and produced such hits as “Aladdin” for Disney and the “It” and “Lego” movie franchises, the aim is to make Netflix’s movies better, cheaper and less frequent. Mr. Lin, who declined to comment for this article, also wants his team to become more aggressive producers — developing their own material rather than waiting for projects from producers and agents to come to them, according to two people familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications. This approach, the thinking goes, should help them have more say over the quality of the films.

Netflix was reconsidering its pay structure before Mr. Lin’s arrival. Since the company began sharing performance metrics last year, there have been discussions about basing pay for filmmakers and actors on a film’s performance, similar to how the traditional studios reward them when movies perform well at the box office.

Yet a more economical approach to budgets, along with Netflix’s continued aversion to releasing films in theaters, has some producers and agents in Hollywood griping that the streaming service is no longer a top choice when trying to find a distributor for their films.

Several high-profile filmmakers who made movies for Netflix moved on for their next projects. After making “The Irishman” for Netflix, Mr. Scorsese jumped to AppleTV+ for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Maggie Gyllenhaal is making “The Bride” at Warner Bros. after directing her first film, 2021’s “The Lost Daughter,” for the streamer. And Scott Cooper, who directed “The Pale Blue Eye” for Netflix in 2022, is taking his highly anticipated Bruce Springsteen biopic, starring Jeremy Allen White, to 20th Century. (New films by the Netflix loyalists Guillermo del Toro and Noah Baumbach are both in production for the service.)

Netflix recently declined to bid on the rights to a short story that Millie Bobby Brown, a star of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and the “Enola Holmes” films, was attached to, two people familiar with the matter said. It is also no longer moving forward with a film by Kathryn Bigelow based on David Koepp’s apocalyptic novel “Aurora”; the director left the project a few months ago.

Edward Berger — who directed “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won four Oscars, for Netflix — has been complaining that the service is demanding budget cuts on a film he’s trying to put together with Colin Farrell, according to three people with knowledge of the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate situation.

A spokesperson for Mr. Berger declined to comment.

Shortly after Mr. Stuber left the company, Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, gathered members of the film staff in a conference room and told them that the quality of their movies needed to improve, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communications. She also indicated that if they weren’t comfortable with moving in a different direction, they might want to consider leaving the company.

One thing that does not appear to be changing anytime soon is Netflix’s strategy regarding theatrical release, a bone of contention with some filmmakers and stars — not to mention theater owners.

“The data from the pandemic is clear that movies released only to streaming don’t get the awareness and pop of a movie that was first released theatrically,” said John Fithian, the former president and chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners and founding partner of the Fithian Group, which advises clients on ways to support the cinema experience. “Almost all of the most-watched movies on streaming services are movies that were first released theatrically.”

Yet many in the creative community are rooting for Mr. Lin. With the business consolidating, they are desperate for Netflix to continue buying movies. The hope is that with a renewed focus, Netflix may greenlight movies that the studios would say no to, and provide a home for more romantic comedies and midbudget character studies in Hollywood’s shifting landscape.

An earlier version of this article misstated John Fithian’s former job titles at the National Association of Theatre Owners. He was the president and chief executive, not chairman.

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Nicole Sperling covers Hollywood and the streaming industry. She has been a reporter for more than two decades. More about Nicole Sperling