Floyd posted on Twitter Monday night that the only reason why Knicks breakout star point guard Jeremy Lin is getting attention is because he’s Asian. I’m going to attempt to play advocate for Floyd for a second. There are a very small number of Asians in the league. That’s true. Obviously Yao Ming was a superstar. There was Wang Zhi-Zhi, Sun Yee and maybe a handful of others.
But to dial Lin’s story to only his lineage is ignoring a number of astounding facts. Not just him being cut by both the Warriors and Rockets, not only the D-League stint, Lin has broken history for ANY NBA player. No player in NBA had scored at least 20 points with seven assists in each of his first four starts until Lin. He’s averaging 27.3 points, 8.3 assists and 2.0 steals in those four starts. His 109 points in those first four starts most by any player since 1976-77. And those are all wins.
Not LeBron James. Not Kobe Bryant and not his royal airness, Michael Jordan. That distinction belongs to Jeremy Lin. Nobody is doing that everyday. Oh and he’s a Harvard graduate who also happens to be Asian-American. Oh and the other thing, he had a foot and one baby toe out of the NBA.
That’s a pretty amazing story.
So that sort of kills Floyd’s theory.
