When the NBA season kicked off this year, no one expected anyone new. As far as anyone was concerned, Kobe Bryant reigned the basketball world, and would continue to do so, until they saw him. His name? Jeremy Lin. The first Asian American professional basketball player to ever play in the NBA. Straight out of Harvard, 23 year old Jeremy Lin has created a name for himself with a last minute shot that secured the Knicks’ victory against the New York Nets on February 4th. Now with millions of people watching his every move, one wonders, how will the 6’3″ basketball star fare?
During his senior year, Jeremy Lin started sending out videos to colleges he wanted to get into, in hopes of winning an athletic scholarship. Even though Jeremy was accepted to most of the schools he had applied to, he was not given any athletic scholarships. Although Ivy League schools did not grant athletic scholarships, Jeremy was guaranteed a spot on the Harvard & Stanford basketball teams. Jeremy ended up playing for Harvard for most of his college career, graduating in 2010 with a 3.1 GPA.
After graduating college, Jeremy bounced around from team to team, never showing his inner talent until February 4th, in a game against the New Jersey Nets. He scored 24 points, but the game he played against the Los Angeles Lakers was the game that marked the beginning of the “Linsanity” era. During the February 10th game, Jeremy Lin scored an astounding 38 points, outscoring even the great Kobe Bryant.
When asked about Jeremy Lin and what he knew about the player that came in and shook the basketball world, Phil Bernstein, a student at PVPHS, replies with a simple statement: “He’s a stud. Nothing else can be said.” And evidently, that is true. The day after the Knicks’ victory over the Lakers, the world wide web has been booming from the hundreds of Jeremy Lin articles that have shown up, the millions of Tweets and Facebook updates that surfaced, and the slogans that have been gracing the covers of newspapers and magazines everywhere in New York, screaming “LIN IT TO WIN IT”, “MAY THE BEST MAN LIN”, & “THE LINNING STREAK”.
If Jeremy Lin had been drafted to play by the NBA, he would have been the first Ivy League graduate to play in the NBA for decades. Unfortunately, Jeremy was undrafted, only sitting in as a replacement for the injured and sick on the New York Knicks. But following his performance during the Lakers game where he crushed the Knicks’ losing streak, Lin was signed on. Ever since, the basketball wonder has led his team into eight straight victories, which has fueled Linsanity even more.
And now as the 2012 NBA season continues on with its steady group of loyal fans watching Lin’s every move, the stage is set for Lin and his career to take off into the unknown. And as for the question above, it seems like Jeremy Lin is doing okay, and will be doing even better as the season goes on.
