Jeremy Lin’s star comes back down to earth
A short-lived spurt of on-court mega success made a celebrity and a cultural totem out of the Asian-American basketball player but now the son of Taiwan immigrants just wants to get on with the game
After a Brooklyn Nets practice last month, Brook Lopez, the professional basketball team’s starting centre, walked over to Jeremy Lin, the one-time Knicks sensation now returning to New York as a Net, to discuss a source of locker-room tension. Marvel has recently announced plans to feature Lin in an upcoming comic book, despite the fact that Lin – unlike Lopez, who is both an All-Star and a comics junkie – has only a passing interest in the medium.
“He didn’t even tell me,” Lopez says. “I had to see it on one of my comics sites.”
Such are the privileges of being Jeremy Lin, the 98th-best scorer in the National Basketball Association last season. Lin’s month of remarkable basketball four years ago, combined with the fact that he is the most successful Asian-American player in history, created a phenomenon – Lin holds a trademark on the term Linsanity – that offers perks not given to most mid-level point guards. The least Lin could do, Lopez suggested, was get him a cameo.
“I’ll work on it,” Lin said.
“Maybe in the sequel,” Lopez said. “I’ll be the bad guy.”
