Should we pay more attention to Jeremy Lin just because he is of Asian descent in the NBA?

I would ask a different question.

Why does anything dealing with basketball matter in any way shape or form? A bunch of overpaid whiners.

I don’t care if Lin is Asian, black, Hmong, married, divorced, or anything else. He gets paid well for playing a game.

I think very little of the coverage has to do with him being Asian, that might have something to do with how he was evaluated from highschool up until now though.

The coverage is mostly because (in some approximate order)

> He’s playing amazingly, and it’s unexpected
> He’s in New York
> New York has been searching for a point guard all year, he’s probably the fourth or fifth person they’ve tried in the role
> He was cut twice from other teams, just this year
> He went to Harvard partially because he was ignored by larger basketball programs
> then maybe the fact that he’s Asian

Just his play merits the attention so far.

Sure, I want another Yao Ming rage face.

@elbanditoroso Actually, Lin was being paid next to nothing. He was literally living on his brothers coach in New York, and was expected to be cut as early as the Monday after they first played him.

He went to Harvard, was undrafted, and had never turned heads anywhere. Low and behold they put him in, and he’s had the best 3 game start of any player since the merger (in the late 70’s), and tied for the best 3 game stretch this season (with Lebron James).

The best part of it @elbanditoroso , you were complaining about them being whiners… this guy is none of that. He’s the Tim Tebow of basketball. He’s been nothing but gracious, blames the success on his team mates (even though the two best players on the team are out with injury), and praises his opponents efforts.

As far as the OP. I think him being Asian doesn’t have too much to do with it. There are several talented Asian players in the league today, and one of the best of the last decade was Yao Ming. I think it has a lot more to do with the fact of how this came to be. It would be like a guy who played D2 football, walked onto an NFL team, was about to get cut cuz he had never touched the floor, and they put him in at QB and he started slinging touchdowns all over the place like he was handing out candy on Halloween.

@tedd – calling him the Tebow of basketball is not a strong vote in his favor.

We should pay attention to human talent.

@elbanditoroso I don’t know how anyone can have a negative opinion of Tim Tebow.

@tedd I think what @elbanditoroso was getting at in comparison to Tim Tebow is that the magnitude of the Jeremy Linxperience hasn’t erupted to that level, yet.

I’ve seen some really whack plays by Lin, most notably he had this super sloppy layup versus the Lakers in LA. It was just plain horrible. How he’s become possessed is beyond me! But that’s the beauty of sports.

Should we pay more attention to him because he is Azn? No.

Does the fact that he is of Azn decent make it more special? Probably; there aren’t very many Azn NBA players.

Are his stats turning heads? Absolutely! Can you name any other players that are averaging over 23 pts/game in the first 5 career starts?