When the NFL season ended with last week’s Super Bowl, “Tebowmania,” a term used for the love of Denver quarterback Tim Tebow, ended with it. Afterward, fans craved a replacement.
Insert the new spark plug of the New York Knicks: Jeremy Lin. The six-foot-three point guard continues to impress, leading the Knicks to five-straight wins and scoring 134 points in his first four career starts. Lin is the only player in the NBA who has at least 20 points and seven assists in each of his four starts. He also scored 32 points in the first 22 games.
“Linsanity” may be the answer for fans craving a new hero, but should his emergence be a surprise? Yes and no.
Lin graduated from Harvard in 2010 with a degree in economics, and he was also a tremendous basketball player. In his junior year, he was the only NCAA Division I men’s basketball player who ranked in the top 10 in his conference for scoring, rebounding, assists, steals and four other categories. Lin also was a consensus selection for All-Ivy League First Team.
In his senior year, he averaged 16.4 points, 4.4 rebounds and 4.5 assists and was again a selection for All-Ivy League First Team. He was one of 30 midseason candidates for the John R. Wooden Award and was one of 11 finalists for the Bob Cousy Award. Even Kansas’ starting point guard Tyshawn Taylor isn’t a finalist for the Cousy Award this year.
Even though Lin had a successful college campaign, he was not selected in the NBA draft. Lin and other undrafted players had to impress organizations in the 2010 NBA Summer League, and several have been successful in their NBA careers.
Ben Wallace, center of the Detroit Pistons, is one of two players who has won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award four times. Bruce Bowen, small forward of the San Antonio Spurs from 2001 to 2009, was named to eight-consecutive NBA All-Defensive teams and won three titles.
Being an undrafted player may not be rare, but a Harvard graduate playing in the NBA is a different story.
If Harvard held an alumni game for its former basketball players who went on to play in the NBA, it would be a game of two-on-two. The list only consists of four players: Lin, Edward Smith, Saul Mariaschin and Wyndol Gray. Lin is the first Harvard graduate to play in the NBA since 1954.
Even if drafted, Lin would have been the first Ivy Leaguer selected since Jerome Allen of Penn in 1995. The last Ivy Leaguer to play in the NBA was Yale’s Chris Dudley in 2003.
Still, many rally behind Lin for a different reason. Lin, an Asian-American, is the first American-born player of Taiwanese or Chinese descent to play in the NBA. Yao Ming, retired center of the Houston Rockets from 2002 to 2011, is one of China’s best-known athletes. Lin may not be a seven-foot-six center, but as an Asian-American, he is developing into the next big thing.
The NBA advertisements kept saying “BIG things are coming,” but the league didn’t know they were talking about Lin.