If Jeremy Lin had been around to Linspire me, this picture may have contained a hardwood floor, some high tops, and maybe even a ball of some sort.
This is my favorite sports story line since watching Hoosiers, and a movie script will certainly be written about Jeremy Lin. (I sincerely hope they come up with a better title than "Linsanity!") However, you can't beat watching the story develop in real time in real life. They story is compelling because it is a true underdog story that transcends basketball and makes the improbable seem plausible.
What makes Jeremy Lin a Classic Underdog Story?
At its heart, this is an underdog story, which is why it's so captivating. But what makes an underdog? I can think of four common elements to the underdog story: overcoming Linsurmountable odds (yes, you will find an easy pun here and there--it's Linevitable), achieving success (often of a non-traditional flavor), having a relate-able and humble protagonist, and challenging the idea that an athlete should fit a specific mold. Not all great sports stories have all four elements, but the Jeremy Lin story does.
The first element is overcoming long odds, which requires perseverance in the face of great adversity. Just getting to the NBA, let alone turning around a team, is improbable enough for an individual. Lin's chance to prove himself was an unlikely event because he was not recruited, drafted, or retained by two teams. In the section below, I go into much more detail about how a confluence of many events created a perfect atmosphere for the Lin story. The only events that could have made it more compelling are if A) he had survived a life threatening medical procedure, B) risen out of abject squalor, C) won a battle with addiction and/or old age, or D) all of the above. The bottom line is that Lin had to wait for his chance and was close to giving up on his dream of playing in the NBA. Luckily, he stuck with it, and it's worked out pretty well for all of us so far.
The second element of the underdog story is success, often with a modified definition. Rudy never led his team to a National Title; Billy Beane didn't win the World Series; the Jamaican Olympic Bobsled Team failed to win gold. They were all stories of success though. Jeremy Lin doesn't have to carry his team to a Championship. In the past two weeks, he's already achieved success, which was the turnaround of the Knicks, the rejuvenation of a franchise and a city's basketball hopes, and making regular people care about the regular season of the NBA. Sure, we may hope he takes the Knicks all the way and wins a bunch of rings, but it almost doesn't matter because he's already won us over.
The third element of the underdog story is a protagonist with whom people can identify. Sports fans want athletes who share something with them. It's why you root for the home team or your country of origin. People want want to see a team full of people like them win. While it may be an absurd connection, it's a connection that creates an emotional investment in the game. That's why Christians root for Tebow, upstate New Yorkers root for Jimmer Fredette, and alumni root for athletes from their schools. Of course, if the athlete is exceptional, it makes it easier to root for him or her.
As I alluded to at the beginning of this post, I have a lot of things in common with Jeremy Lin, which makes it very easy for me to root for him. I'm Asian American, grew up in the Bay Area, tried out for my high school basketball team, got a degree from a decent school, broke my ankle in high school, wear socks, have been to New York City, am male, etc. Heck, Lin was literally playing ball down the street from where I worked while he was in high school. I probably drove by him on my way home. It's easy for me to see him as a better, more successful version of me, which makes it very easy for me to hope he does well. But what about everybody else? I think people are drawn to his struggle and success, but beyond that, I'm not really sure what makes him relate-able to everybody else. Do they like his humility? Maybe they are drawn to the simple fact that he was unlikely to make it so far and be so successful. Or maybe they like him because he defies their expectations of what a pro baller should look like.
The fourth element of an underdog story is that the underdog challenges people's expectations. Football players should be big; small towns, schools, or budgets should not be able to field enough talent to win a championship; tropical countries should not be able to compete in the Winter Olympics. Basketball players are usually tall, black, maybe white, and not Ivy League graduates. Jeremy Lin isn't short, but he's also a minority on the court in the way he looks and the academic path he took. To me, his race is a big part of this story. I think if all things were the same but he were black, he wouldn't have hit the news cycle as big. I think if he were white, it would have been a slightly bigger story, but not as big as if he were Asian. We expect black players to dominate the league.
Lin's race is the most apparent way he defies what we expect NBA players to be, and it makes him easier to follow on the court. Of course, he had to have some skills and help his team win a lot; those are the minimum requirements of this story line. The fact remains that we have not seen an Asian American of Chinese or Taiwanese descent in the league, which makes Jeremy Lin a novelty of sorts. I think he gives Asian American kids a great role model, and if he had been around when I was in high school, I may have chosen a different sport. I'm not saying I'd be in the NBA right now (though it's pretty likely), but I definitely would have tried harder to get into Harvard undergrad. Lin is obviously a pretty good player, but the fact that he is forcing all of us to reevaluate our notion of who can be a good player is an element of the story that most of us find appealing. He even inspired SNL to make a moderately funny skit about race--I know, shocking.
A Perfect Storm Provides a Perfect Chance
Back to the first element of the underdog story: overcoming long odds. The likeliness of Jeremy Lin playing, let alone starting, for the Knicks was so Linfinitesimal that I would have given you 10:1 odds that on Rudy was more likely to wear a Notre Dame jersey. I would also have bet on Seabiscuit, the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team, Rocky Balboa, Hickory high school basketball, the cash-strapped Oakland A's, the South African rugby team, and the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team before I bet on Jeremy Lin to start. If you can get all those sports movie references, I'll buy you some Lingonberry jam at IKEA next time we're there together. That's not a pun, it's a real thing.
First of all, neither of Lin's parents were over 5'6", but he's 6'3". According to the myeh source of Wikipedia (which a lot of this Lin history is from--this is a blog, what do you expect?), the average height of an NBA point guard is 6'1", and they are the shortest players on the court. Lin was lucky that his maternal side had some height and he was fed enough to have it realized. Then this kid grew up in the Bay Area, which we all know is a huge disadvantage. If you hadn't noticed, those of us who grew up in the Bay Area are intelligent, athletic, charming, emotionally stable, virile, considerate, sensitive, creative, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, and most of all, very, very humble. Huh, I guess it's not a disadvantage. Anyway, Lin played good basketball in high school but did not receive any scholarship offers from colleges. He decided to go to Harvard, which is like the Stanford of the east for those of you who have not heard of it. Harvard now has a total of THREE players EVER who played in the NBA, according to ESPN, the last of which played in 1954. After that, Lin was not considered desirable enough to be drafted by the NBA, but after some workouts with some teams, he received some offers to ride suit up and ride some pine.
He went to Golden State, where he was third string behind a player who was runner-up for Rookie of the Year the previous year and a second player who was so good that he was drafted out of high school. Three times that season, he was sent to the NBA minor leagues, where he improved, and was then called back up. Enter the NBA lockout, where the current season was threatened by players and owners wanting more money from each other. The result was that basketball leagues in other countries started looking at the US players to recruit. Lin was close to signing a deal days before the lockout ended on November 26, 2011.
Lin got dumped onto the waiver wires by the Warriors on December 9, where the Rockets picked him up on December 12, only to later put him back on the waiver wire for the Knicks to grab him on December 27. Some sportscasters mention that the Rockets were only forced to do this because the NBA commissioner made an unpopular decision to block a trade that would have sent two of the guards above Lin on the depth chart somewhere else. I'm not convinced the dates work out, but it adds to the story if true. In New York, he slept on his brother's couch then his teammate's couch as he was also buried on the depth chart behind two point guards who I think were only playing because the two guards ahead of them were injured. He only got a chance to play because the Knicks were playing so poorly against the Celtics and the coach decided to give him a chance.
So, about three months ago, Lin was looking to sign with another team on another continent. In the last two months and change, he's been on the payroll of three teams. One month ago, he was buried behind two to four other guards.
Everything in life fell into place for Lin to end up in New York, which is a key place in the story. New York City has the largest TV market in the country. It also has at least two teams nearby for each of the four major sports (Giants, Jets, Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Islanders--I guess hockey missed the memo to have a team that ends with "ets"). I'm not sure most New Yorkers care about regular seasons of sports unless its football (even then, I'm not sure they really, really care like Detroit or Cleveland or Chicago fans--cities put upon by championship droughts/dearths). But sports are prevalent in New York, meaning New York is the place where a story like this is most likely to make headlines and make them fast. Also playing into this story is the fact that the NBA lockout led to a shorter, more compact season in which games are played more frequently. The result is an accelerated news cycle where people don't have to wait as long between games to see how Jeremy Lin does in his next game.
Let's not ignore the timing of the story as it fell into the news cycle either. February is super boring for the sports fan. The Super Bowl early in the month is the end of substantial football talk, pro or college, until the draft in April. You've got hockey, college hoops, and hockey steadily working towards their playoffs and March Madness, but those seasons are so long, they are hard to follow closely until the playoffs. No tennis or golf majors in February. The interminable baseball season hasn't even begun. The Super Bowl was on February 5. Jeremy Lin made his first mark on February 4 when he dropped 25 points on the Nets in a win. He only saw substantial minutes in this game because a fellow player suggested to the coach to let Lin play. Lin started for the Knicks in a win on the 6th, and won his third game on the 8th. At that point, it was the considered a trend. The timing in sports news cycles could not have been much better. It didn't hurt that the story followed Tebow mania, which elicited a lot of comparisons (most of which are unwarranted in my opinion).
The bottom line is that Lin took an incredibly low-probability, nontraditional path to play in the NBA. Through a series of unlikely events that broke his way, he persevered to make the most of his one big shot and become the sensation he has humbly embraced. He could have thrown in the towel, but he didn't and now a lot of people are talking about him and cheering him. Like all underdogs, he inspires people to stick out the bad times because things could work out in the end. I guess you don't have to be like me to relate to Lin.
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