Jeremy Lin
Jeremy Shu-How Lin (Chinese: 林书豪) signed a three-year, US$25 million contract with the Houston Rockets on July 13, 2012.
Jeremy Shu-How Lin, a descendant from Taiwan born in the United States, swept through the early 2012 season of the U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) with his quick rise from an about-to-be-cut-from-his-third-team player to the leading point guard for the New York Knicks.
His legendary underdog story reached a climax in his first confrontation with NBA’s five-time champion Kobe Bryant from the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 10, 2012, when Lin outscored Bryant with a career-high 38 points and seven assists, leading Knicks to a 92-85 victory against one of the league’s most storied franchises on national TV. Later, his game-winning three-pointers against the Toronto Raptors on Valentine’s Day cemented his legitimacy as a NBA star rather than a temporary craze.
His surprising yet inspiring success also bombarded the media vocabulary. He was called “Linsanity” by Time.com and the nickname has been widely circulated by the public. And his story was dubbed “Linderella,” a play on the popular housemaid-to-princess fairytale.
Born to a couple of immigrant Chinese from Taiwan in Los Angeles, California, on Aug. 23, 1988, Lin didn’t gain much attention in his early days on the basketball court. In 2005, he was denied a basketball scholarship at Stanford University, and instead enrolled in Harvard with his outstanding academic performance. Joe Lacob, the new owner of the Golden State Warriors and a Stanford booster, said the Ivy League school’s failure to recruit Lin “was really stupid. The kid was right across the street. [If] you can’t recognize that, you’ve got a problem.” However, as the owner of Lin’s first NBA team, Lacob himself has let go over Lin, as did all other NBA owners on rookie draft night.
As an undrafted player after his graduation, he was picked up by the Warriors for his rookie year and played sparing minutes off the bench as well as occasionally in the lower D-League. Before the start of his second season, he was picked up by the Houston Rockets and played seven minutes in two pre-season games and was waived on the eve of the season’s start.
After being claimed by the Knicks, Lin had not been sure if his contract would be secured, and slept on his teammate Landry Fields’ couch prior to his rise to stardom.
Lin met with Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou in 2010 when he first played in the NBA. According to Financial Times, Ma later recalled: “I couldn’t see back then that he had such explosiveness.” However, two years later, Lin’s stories dominated the headlines and front pages of the island’s media outlets.
Influenced by a strong Christian belief, Lin is often enamored by his fans with his modest gratitude to his team as well as to God.
However, the "Linsanity" ceased in early Apr. 2012, when Lin underwent a surgery after a knee injury.
