林书豪成为一个一夜爆发的全球现象仅仅过去5个月，尼克斯就决定了不在留住他，并为他返回休斯敦扫清了障碍。对林来说，休斯敦显然是个更轻松的环境。
林书豪第一次进入交易市场时，仅仅要了69美元。那是在2010年三月，一个寒冷的星期四早晨。哈佛大学的学生自发的癌症社团正在麻州剑桥举办他们一年一 度的“约会拍卖会”。大概75位买家看到了林在投影机里面展示的照片，并听到了林对这张照片的讲解：对于一些关于心灵的问题的回答。（问：你做过的最浪漫 的事情是什么？答：我在餐馆帮一个女生付了她的账单——我有一张买一赠一的优惠券）除了林的简约，他看起来也是最受欢迎的。“我绝对认为他会得到最高的出 价。”Emily Hughes说。Emily曾是一个著名的奥运溜冰选手，当时在哈佛读大二：“他在篮球队打得很好。”但是Emily得到了$202的竞标价，而一个女买 主仅仅给了林$69，因为没有别的人跟她竞价。她不介意跟林出去约会。
这个月，林回归到了自由球 员交易市场。在七月12日，他被召唤到了拉斯维加斯金块酒店的一间套房。在一场4个小时与火箭队的会议中，他跟火箭队签署了一份3年25M的合同。他用了 那支装在火箭助理经理Sam Hinkie口袋里的金块酒店钢笔签的。一周之后，在纽约拒绝匹配那份合同之后，林飞往休斯敦，并去了火箭队老板亚历山大的办公室。Hinkie把那支金 块酒店的钢笔递给他，然后林签了合同。并且，他希望这会结束一段疯狂，并开始另一段职业生涯。“我又可以回到篮球场了。”他说。
当一开始休斯敦提出他们的 原始合同——3年19.5M的保障，尼克斯教练武僧说他们“绝对”会匹配。但是当休斯敦抬高价码，这个在NBA拥有最爱花钱臭名的球队突然变得小气。尼克 斯，这支近年来做了很多有争议的交易的球队，决定反其道行之。他们换掉了他们近年来最火热的球员，仅仅用28岁的肥顿和39岁的基德——他刚经历了他最差 的赛季，而且刚在7月15日因酒驾被逮捕。MSG股票在5天之内下跌1亿。“我有点懵了”周说。
粉丝们理解，球员会为了更好的合同而离开他们最喜欢的球队，但是，那个落选，被裁掉两次，5个月前爆发的英雄是个例外。林是纽约城的产物和受害者，当他的 经历被人抹黑，被人恶意的批评。“我还要时时提醒自己，这些真的发生了。”林说。当他7月18日抵达休斯敦时，他登记进入四季酒店。两个街区之外，他看到 了使馆套房。这是一个奇怪而又温馨的景观，让他联想到了他的过去。他又回到了林疯狂。
林去年12月出现在了使馆酒店房间( 没有四季高级的酒店）。那时他刚被勇士裁，火箭捡起来了他的了非保障和约。他睡在一张床，他父母在另外一张。当酒店的通信信号减弱时，林走去了四季酒店。 “我向他们借用网路，”林说：“他们很好心的让我使用”。他是在训练营里六个控卫里的其中一个，那六个控卫中有一半是有和约在身的，而林在训练时很少有机 会可以碰到球。“我就坐在那边，非常地沮丧，问自己为什么会在这里？”他说。火箭想要保留林，不过自由球员中锋Samuel Dalembert在赛季开始前4天加入了这个队伍。在圣诞前夕，总经理莫雷从佛罗里达的bufalo wild winds打电话给林, 打断林和父母的午餐，并通知他们裁掉了林。
“我当时告诉他，嘿，时间不合，时机不凑巧，”莫雷说：“对不起，我们很喜欢你，我们觉得你将来会有很好的表现。很多时候球队在释出球员时都假装表现善意，可是这次我们是真诚的”
莫雷可以看出林很伤心，可是他没想到他的进一步失落与悲观。“我可能今年不再打比赛，”林说：“我想退出，回家想清楚接下来的方向。”林和他之前哈佛的好友Cheng Ho（何凯成）叙旧了一个晚上。“他很绝望，”何说：“这是他的最低谷。他谈起要放弃篮球。”
莫雷，这位拥有MIT的MBA学位的职业经理人，在评价一个球员时，是根据他能够做什么，而不是看起来怎么样。林就是他所要找的。所以当林抵达纽约并开始 爆发时，莫雷用“混合着好奇和后悔”的心情看着这些。（莫雷的第一反应：我勒个去！）30支NBA都在一定意义上错过了林，但是火箭是最后一个，所以他们 对此最深有体会。在那个林书豪拿下湖人的晚上，火箭教练麦克海尔在他的旅馆里面看不到比赛，所以带着他的助手去了一个体育酒吧。他们都很支持林，但是林打 得越好，他们看起来越失败。在林绝杀猛龙之后，亚历山大给莫雷打电话，质疑他们为什么会错过这块璞玉。
火箭队被众人围攻，林—— 从另一种方式——也是这样。“我遇到了很多奇怪的事情，”他说：“一些人非常地积极：‘给我这个照片，给我这个签名。’有时候他们会尾随我直到车上，敲我 的窗户拉我的门。这些真的吓到我了。我不知道他们要做什么。他们在敲车，而我就像，我的天哪，这是要干啥。我有点受不了了。“
在三月份的时候，林试图潜入到一场哈佛与哥伦比亚大学在纽约的比赛中，他穿着连帽衣盖着他的脑袋。但是Spike Lee（译者注：著名导演）也在其中，他大声喊着：“杰里米，你要站起来！你要站起来，baby！站起来！”在大堆球迷们给他递名片之前，林瞬间就羞怯映 上脸颊。他不训练的时候，很少离开他酒店的房间。“我基本上每天晚上都在自己房间吃饭，”林说：“我几乎可以把菜单背下来了。我的日程安排：牛排三明治， 三文鱼，金枪鱼肉。”
他到底有多么隔离？他知道4月份——当他因左膝受伤而赛季结束时——才有机会去看看时代广场。“我都不知道它在哪里，”他说：“我其实一开始以为韩国城就 是时代广场。”当他鼓起勇气要去的时候，拉上了他从台湾来的表兄，戴着眼镜和一个篮球帽，在夜晚出行。“我看到我的照片和服饰到处都是，”林回忆道：“我 从来没到过一个商店然后看到我的T恤或者球衣正在热卖。我感觉，哇。”林仅仅在篮球和商业上面适合纽约。当被问到他最有挑战的时候时，他说：“所有的时 候。我觉得最困难的部分就是没有隐私。我是一个非常注重隐私的人。当人们在街上认出我，我仍然感到紧张。“
尽管如此，他依然想为尼克 斯打球——他在花园球场的热浪中不会感到害怕，而这正是他喜欢的——并且一直以为他会。作为一个限制自由球员，林仅需要一个合同来让他们匹配，所以他在7 月4号应招去了休斯敦。丰田中心外面的电视墙上显示着，欢迎回来，林书豪。火箭队更衣室里挂着他穿火箭球衣的照片。莫雷最后一次跟他谈话，还是在圣诞夜。 他们都经历了很多。“对不起。”莫雷以这个开场。
林和他的15个朋友庆祝了火箭给他的初始合同，他们去加州帕罗奥托的一家海鲜店吃牛排和龙虾。随后的那个晚上，他和教练们去了一家当地的牛排店。当林在宴 请别人时，火箭队更加饥饿。在他们把主力控卫洛里交易到多伦多，并失去自由球员替补后卫德拉季奇之后，火箭队困在了10个人的前锋线，没有真正的中锋，并 且没有人指挥进攻。亚历山大告诉莫雷：我们需要更积极一些。
火箭队把合同价格提高到了 25M，包括最后第三年14.9M的“毒药合同”，这能让尼克斯深陷奢侈税的泥潭，因为他们已经有了固定的班底。“毒药合同？”尼克斯前后卫菲尔兹对 MSG网络说：这是给多兰的糖果。（译者注：意思是让多兰找到了可以排挤林的接口）但是这个纽约的亿万富翁还是觉得这个合同难以下咽，他同时也拒绝了多伦 多给菲尔兹的合同。“这是我们最好的结构，会让我们有最好的结果，”莫雷现在说，“他们看起来对我们感到不痛快。”
尼克斯的执行团队当时在拉 斯维加斯打夏季联赛，当火箭队使者到他们旅馆递交合同文件的时候，一个接待者说：“他们不接收包裹。”纽约在逃避，因为他们接收文件之后的72小时之内就 要决定是否匹配。前锋安东尼称这个合同是“荒谬的”。后卫JR说这份合同会惹得其他人怨恨。无论如何，莫雷从不认为多兰不会匹配。“我以为他们只是虚晃一 招，”莫雷说：“我觉得我不会获得他。”
但是，周二晚间11点一到，林成了火箭的一人员，最早恭喜他的几个短信中，有一封是来自上海镇东大学的学生叫做姚明的。林跟姚二年前于姚明在台湾举办的慈 善球赛碰过面。“这支球队的文化非常脚踏实地，”姚明在电邮里这样写着：“每一位球员在如此的环境中可以加的团结合一“。至今，尼克斯对于林的离开尚未有 任何发言，并要求员工不要在公众场合提起林的名字。
（这一段照得很不清楚，所以有些字得用猜的） 林在登记入住四季酒店后，他婉拒了。**（这儿图片看不清楚，猜测是火箭公关安排的晚餐），而是跟小钱，二位留队的年轻火箭新秀之一，一 起去日本餐馆用餐。席间不断有球迷前来问候，还有几位是房地产仲介，小钱提供了缓颊， 表示：“我是什么啊，一点都不重要(chopped liver)!” 。这位23岁的前锋给了林一个休斯顿四周的导览。“这里不是纽约，” 小钱说：“这里也不是洛杉矶。这里不会有狗仔队。他可以好好地放松，不需要担心会惹上什么麻烦。“
林将平顺地与麦格海尔的快速攻击系统契合，这战术使用大量的挡拆。他也将能够融入他的新家，这个在美国种族最多元的城市中（休斯顿的亚裔美籍 人口在1990年代成长76％，在2000年代成长45％）。火箭队快速地宣布他们的季票销售量已经成长了约10％，即使他们正处于重建阶段。
休斯顿还在追逐全明星中锋，特别是魔术对的魔兽及湖人队的拜伦，并使用林为诱饵，在姚明时期，几乎火箭的每一项代言交易都是来自中国的赞助商，而 亚历山大更开创了一家以远东市场为焦点的投资公司。但是，关于从小林可以获得的商业机会，火箭老板显得低调：“附加的价值是有的，“而亚历山大表示：”但 是，这一切总是篮球的考量“
虽然NBA的在中国变得更加受欢迎，且在电视收看变动百分上扬了21％之际，火箭已经不再是中国球迷的最爱。“虽然在那儿还有火箭的球迷，“安迪·姚，姚明一位熟识的友人说：“但是现在也有湖人，热火跟雷霆的球迷了”
火箭队希望林可以逐渐地重新建立他们在亚洲市场的优势，但是目前的焦点是先搞定身边的事。小林尚未自己开车，他倾向于在小钱的公寓里租屋。他将继续训练他 的投球跟左手技术。很快地这位前经济学主修将填入莫雷的高级统计系统，二位数学专家将携手，探索开创(the ?? frontier of a career unfolding in reverse，看不清楚)。
在纽约，林书豪已经成为一个现象，在休斯顿，终于他有机会实现他真正的梦想：成为一位职业球员。
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另外这两个封面里面的故事也是他的作品
February 20, 2012 | Volume 116, Issue 8
On the Cover: Jeremy Lin, Basketball, New York knicks. Photographed by: Heinz Kleutmeier / SI
February 20, 2012
From Couch To Clutch
After being cut twice, Jeremy Lin emerged from the end of the Knicks' bench to inspire victories, debunk stereotypes and dazzle the NBA—while living on his brother's sofa
PABLO S. TORRE
One of the most surreal weeks in NBA history started with an eviction. It was Feb. 3, an overcast Friday in New York City, and Joshua Lin, an NYU dental student, had sadly informed his little brother Jeremy that he needed to find another place to crash for the night. Jeremy, an undrafted reserve with the Knicks, had been signed shortly before the New Year; for the last several days, since being recalled from the organization's Developmental League team in Erie, Pa., the 23-year-old point guard had been crashing on the brown couch in Josh's one-bedroom on the Lower East Side. For plenty of Harvard economics majors, living on a sofa would have already proved demoralizing. For one who had already lost two jobs in a 15-day span this winter—the Warriors waived him on Dec. 9, and the Rockets did the same late on Christmas Eve—it was significantly worse.
Jeremy Lin's arrangement with his brother had provided a certain symmetry, though. The two had always been close: Josh, 26, the eldest of the three Lin children, was the person Jeremy measured himself against, trailing him as a kid in Palo Alto like a lost puppy. (Joseph, the youngest Lin, is now a 5'11" freshman guard at Division III Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.) When Josh played junior varsity hoops, there was Jeremy, thrilled to volunteer as scorekeeper. When Josh's Gunn High team completed conditioning drills, there was Jeremy again, sprinting and keeping pace on the sideline. Long after the middle child went on to star for the Crimson, finally growing bigger than any Lin in memory—"When he was a baby, Jeremy ate twice as much as his two brothers," their 5'6" father, Gie-Ming, likes to say—5'9" Josh still knew, better than any defender in college basketball, how to nullify 6'3" Jeremy's best moves.
But now came the weekend, and Josh and his wife, Patricia, had friends coming over. "So my couch," Jeremy recalls, "was occupied for the night." Clinging to his league-minimum contract, which was not yet guaranteed, he found harbor on a sofa in another living room, this one belonging to Knicks teammate Landry Fields. No one imagined that by the next evening, when an exhausted Jeremy returned from a win over the Nets to resume his tenancy on Josh's furniture, his world would be upside down.
Madison Square Garden turned 44 last Saturday, and up until seven days before, any Knicks fans worth their salt would have sworn that they'd seen everything. A villain scoring eight points in 11 seconds in the postseason? Reggie Miller, 1995. A coach clinging to the opposing center's leg in the middle of an all-out brawl, as if he were some kind of koala? Jeff Van Gundy, '98. A four-point play to seal a playoff victory? Larry Johnson, '99. And that was just the mid-to-late '90s.
But this? Nothing, anywhere, has ever resembled the ascendance of Jeremy Shu-How Lin, a legend seemingly pulled from the imagination of a goosefleshed David Stern, if not Disney's most hyperbolic global marketing exec. Five games, five wins for the foundering Knicks—a stretch during which they lost their two best players, Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire—all thanks to a Taiwanese-American Ivy Leaguer whose previous New York hoops experience mostly involved pickup games at an NYU dorm in Union Square last spring. "The whole thing has been overwhelming for me and my family," says Lin, who before last weekend was regularly asked by stadium security if he was a team trainer. "There are lots of times when we have to pinch ourselves and ask, Is this really happening?"
Yes, it is. Really. Lin's original free-agent signing by Golden State in 2010 may have been laughed off as a marketing stunt, and he may be making less than 1/20th of the salary of either Anthony ($18.5 million per year) or Stoudemire ($18.2 million). But there was Lin—whose alleged lack of athleticism had caused him to bungee off 2010 draft boards—outclassing a series of point guards who had been top five picks. First he came off the bench and crossed over the Nets' Deron Williams (No. 3 pick in '05), cleaving a double team and finishing at the rim—and one, en route to 25 points. That performance earned him his first career start two nights later, when he dropped 28 on the Jazz's Devin Harris (No. 5 in '04), perhaps the league's fastest player, while playing all but three minutes and eight seconds. (New York coach Mike D'Antoni said he rode Lin like "friggin' Secretariat.") And in Lin's first road start the Wizards' John Wall (No. 1 in '10) fell victim to a 23-point, 10-assist outburst, highlighted by a sequence in which Lin blew by him on a crossover and dunked, one-handed, sending the Verizon Center into whoops.
The undermanned Knicks were riding a wave of energy from the unlikeliest source. By last Friday—a nationally televised game against the Lakers—the surreality spilled up and out of the World's Most Famous Arena, taking over Planet Earth. Yes, that was Lin, taking on a dismissive Kobe Bryant. (Asked about Linsanity in Boston the night before, Bryant had scoffed to reporters, "I have no idea what you guys are talking about.") Yes, that was Lin, directing the attack, draining threes and outdueling Derek Fisher, turning a five-time champion into a Dartmouth freshman. Yes, that was Lin, facing down Bryant and grinning, with his 38 points (to Kobe's mere 34), winning that many ovations from a mob of 19,763 who might as well have been standing 122 blocks north, at Harlem's Rucker Park. Twenty-four hours after that 92--88 victory, when Lin sank a game-winning free-throw with 4.9 left in a gutty 100--98 defeat of the Timberwolves and Ricky Rubio (No. 5 in '09), it almost felt like a letdown.
Occasionally a young, twice-cast-off NBA player will catch on with a team, maybe carve out a place in the rotation, even use that foothold to slowly build a career. Not Lin. When finally given a spot in the starting lineup, after playing all of 375 career minutes, he instantly put up numbers worthy of an All-Star. His 109 total points surpassed Allen Iverson's 101 for the most by any player in his first four starts since the 1976 NBA-ABA merger. And without either Anthony (out with a strained right groin) or Stoudemire (with his family after the death of his brother on Feb. 6), Lin became the first to have at least 20 points and seven assists in each of those initial starts. The last time he'd achieved such perfection was as a ninth-grader, when he aced the SAT II Math IIC. "It's indescribable," says Fields, a Stanford grad who once held Lin scoreless in college. "I've never seen anything like it."
As Twitter lit up with worldwide hosannas (@SteveNash: "If you love sports you have to love what Jeremy Lin is doing. Getting an opportunity and exploding!!"), the explosion of Lin's popularity caught even his employers unaware. On the Knicks' website the nine best-selling souvenirs became Lin items—all on preorder. Last Thursday, Garden employees had to iron number 17 onto jerseys just to have something on shelves for the Lakers game. "You came too late," one team store employee told Brian Land and his young son, Eli, who had come to the Garden from Jericho, N.Y., and were seeking any sort of Lin memorabilia. At that point it was already halftime, and the crowd—stippled with homemade Lin masks and poster-board signs not seen since he starred at Harvard (SI, Feb. 1, 2010)—had long been chanting M-V-P.
In recent, less cohesive times—notably, when D'Antoni was still pinning his hopes on the return of veteran point guard Baron Davis, who has yet to play this season because of a herniated disk—the players had been shown clip after clip of center Tyson Chandler running into the lane off pick-and-rolls and never receiving a pass. Lin promptly solved that issue. And now, despite a rotation reliant on low profiles (Jared Jeffries, Steve Novak, Bill Walker), the Knicks, who had lost 11 of 13 before Lin's breakout against the Nets, have rallied to a 13--15 record through Sunday, good for eighth in the Eastern Conference. "We have a rhythm," says Jeffries. "And we're riding this kid's coattails to the top."
In the summer of 2007, guard Dan McGeary was a sophomore transfer to Harvard from New Hampshire, and he had one prediction when it came to Lin: I'm going to punk this dude. A year earlier, on a foggy night in Durham, N.H., McGeary had helped limit Lin to two field goals and four assists in 26 minutes. But in retrospect McGeary admits that he was confident for another reason. "All I could remember was this Asian kid," McGeary says. "The Asian thing captivates everyone."
Evaluators of basketball talent, in particular, failed to see the whole picture. At Palo Alto High, Lin had sent out copies of his résumé and a DVD with five minutes of highlights and additional game film, all of which yielded precisely zero scholarship offers. Later he visited Stanford and Cal—not even bothering to push UCLA, his dream program—and got snubbed in person. Lin had led Palo Alto to the state's Division II title as a senior, but even former Harvard assistant Bill Holden, who recruited him, concedes that at first Lin seemed "like an ordinary Division III player." It was only later, Holden says, when he saw Lin at an AAU tournament in Vegas, that "Jeremy looked totally different. He was on a team with a lot of good athletes, D-I players."
McGeary's punking never came to pass. The year before, Lin says, the Crimson's strength coach had informed him that he was "the weakest Harvard basketball player that he or the program had ever seen," so he began lifting weights for the first time in his life. In fact, despite some healthy competition, he and McGeary ultimately became good friends. Lin would brush off racist jeers from opposing fans ("Sweet and sour pork!") and Ivy League opponents (he was called "Ch---" on the court) to average 16.4 points, 4.5 assists and 2.4 steals as a senior. (In high school taunts directed him to orchestra practice, volleyball, the math team—anywhere but basketball.) Last year, when McGeary worked an entry-level job in the Cavaliers' front office, he tried to convince co-workers that his buddy was more than just a novelty act. "There were not a lot of believers," McGeary says. "People couldn't wrap their minds around him."
Today, of course, millions of Asian-Americans are hoping that Lin's arrival sparks the obliteration of so much cognitive dissonance. There have been other Asians in the NBA, most notably Yao Ming. "But we've never had any skill players," says David Chang, a Korean-American hoops junkie and the owner-chef of New York City's renowned Momofuku restaurants. "And being Asian in America, you grow up with the notion that you're not as athletically talented as everyone else. This is all about changing expectations, and all these ridiculous notions of what an Asian should be."
That is the emotion driving the comments sections of every YouTube video posted about Lin. It's the primary engine behind the discussions on Twitter, where he's been a fixture as a worldwide trending topic, not to mention the hundreds of incoming text messages assaulting his phone after every game. Lin's agent, Roger Montgomery, says he's barely slept since Feb. 4. His e-mail server has collapsed, his voice mail is full, and he's hiring staffers simply to handle the volume of messages—inquiries from China, Taiwan and all across the U.S. Then there's Lin's ex-teammate's friend's sister, who works for a morning show. And Lin's friend's brother's friend, who works at a modeling agency and has clients who want to introduce themselves. And the 50 media requests for Lin-related interviews that have flooded Harvard, which last had an NBA player in 1954. "Jeremy is one of very few people who can be a game changer, who can make a difference," says Crimson coach Tommy Amaker. "I don't know what could be more powerful than that."
Think of the singular demographic alloy at play. Lin, who's worked endlessly on his strength and his jump shot in the past year, is a normal-sized, Christian, first-generation Asian-American. He's excelled academically, faced racism on the court, been cut twice and sent to the D-league four times. Now he's an NBA sensation amid the cultural diversity of hoops-starved New York. Opponents aside, who wouldn't be a fan?
Regression is coming, eventually. It must. The rhythm of these Knicks, who often resemble a college team—witness Fields's and Lin's handshake, in which they mime putting glasses into pocket protectors—will shift again. "Lin benefits from the New York philosophy on both ends of the floor. He's good in the pick-and-roll at reading defenses but not a good defender," says an Eastern Conference scout. "Once Melo and Amar'e are there to take the ball out of his hands and he goes through teams for the second time, we will see what he really is."
No matter what happens, though, a more personal point has been made. "We should have kept @jlin7," Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted on Twitter last Thursday. Warriors owner Joe Lacob, who'd led the push to sign Lin after he turned heads in the 2010 Summer League, lamented, "Son of a b----."
Lin, on the other hand, will choose to keep pinching himself. It was not so long ago, after all, that he was a sophomore at Palo Alto, dunking for the first time. ("He came to tell me, 'Daddy, I can dunk!'" Gie-Ming says. "I said, 'Are you sure?'") Even his old Crimson teammates marvel at how vocal Lin has been with vets such as Chandler, grabbing jerseys and yelling across the court. While they're familiar with his humble postgame deflections of attention, this assertive brand of leader isn't the Jeremy they knew. "He's been more dominant in the NBA than he ever was in college," says Harvard guard Oliver McNally, a friend and former teammate. "His confidence is through the roof."
Speaking of roofs, Lin should shortly have one of his own, now that his NBA contract was guaranteed for the minimum $788,872 on Feb. 7. He will end his recent days of largely agoraphobic Lower East Side living. (He hasn't dared risk a riot, much less Josh's privacy, by venturing out for anything more than the occasional bite downstairs.) He'll surrender his spot on the now-mythic couch and pick out an apartment. He'll at last sleep on a mattress. But as recent events in New York have made very clear, those qualify as minor adjustments. Jeremy Lin is here, and he's already home.
February 27, 2012 | Volume 116, Issue 9
On the Cover: Jeremy Lin, Basketball, New York knicks. Photographed by: Chris Trotman / Getty Images
A Run Like No Other
In his second week as a starter, Jeremy Lin dazzled more fans in both hemispheres, flummoxed the world champs, drove a mini-economy and raised one crucial question: Just how much bigger can he get?
PABLO S. TORRE
One misty evening in November, shortly before the end of the NBA lockout, Jeremy Lin's taxi rattled over the William*****urg Bridge from Manhattan into Brooklyn. Lin had come east from California to see his brothers—Josh, a student at NYU's College of Dentistry, and Joseph, a freshman at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y.—but now, en route to dinner, he had a bit of business to iron out as well. From the cab's backseat, alongside Kenny Blakeney, his former assistant coach at Harvard, Lin worked his iPhone, trying to negotiate the details of a contract with Teramo Basket, a club in the Italian league. Then a Warriors backup point guard, Lin had played in only 29 games as a rookie (averaging 2.6 points and 1.4 assists), and he wanted to ensure that he could suit up somewhere. On his agenda for the trip was a visit to the Italian consulate to sort out his visa.
Just as the renowned Peter Luger Steak House appeared on Lin's right, the cab's engine overheated before giving out entirely. Contract talks, at least for the moment, followed suit. "Dude," Blakeney told a similarly starving Lin, gesturing toward Luger, "let's just eat here."
The man who would be the planet's most-talked-about athlete in three months' time walked in—and was shown promptly to the curb. Told that the steak house was full, Lin and Blakeney hailed a livery cab and repaired to their original destination, the (less exclusive) Brooklyn Bowl. There, over drinks at the bar, Blakeney (chocolate milkshake) leveled with his frustrated former player (vanilla). "I want you to understand: You're good," said Blakeney, who just months earlier had left a 15-year career as a college assistant to operate his own New York City--based sports apparel company, Sportin' Scarves. "But the reality is, not everybody's going to appreciate your game."
Now, after two weeks the likes of which sports fans may never see again, reality is so three months ago. Just ask Blakeney—a former Duke guard who purchased no shortage of stock in Linsanity years ahead of this current bubble. He was the one who told Lin he was an NBA player in October 2007, within four weeks of working with him at Harvard ("Jeremy looked at me like I had two heads," Blakeney, 40, recalls); the one who added Lin to his Yahoo! fantasy basketball team, the Obama Ballers, on Feb. 3, the night before Lin broke out against the Nets with 25 points (at the time, Lin was owned in just 1% of leagues); the one to whom Lin gave a shout-out from the Madison Square Garden podium after dropping 38 points on the Lakers on Feb. 10 (saying that Blakeney "did everything he possibly could to invest in me"). But as a basketball coach or a budding businessman, Blakeney never foresaw the global tidal wave upon him now. Or the pop-up economy that's arisen thanks to the 25.0 points, 9.2 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 2.2 steals Lin has averaged during an 8--1 Knicks run through Sunday, capped by a 28-point, 14-assist performance in a 104--97 defeat of the defending champion Mavericks.
Marketers have been privately reaching out to the 23-year-old Lin and his inner circle, trying to convey to them that he's already bigger than Yao Ming, bigger than Tiger Woods—worth at least $300 million, right now, worldwide. And at this current rate? On the top end, they say, Lin could be worth a billion dollars.
Shin Kong Place is a glittering shopping center near Guomao, Beijing's central business district, and last Saturday, over lunch there, Cheng Ho had to do a double take. Ho, a 25-year-old employee of NFL China, is Lin's close friend and a former college classmate. An excitable former Crimson running back from Taiwan, he was for years, by popular acclamation, the most vocal fan at Harvard's 2,195-seat Lavietes Pavilion. But as he sat with a friend at one of Shin Kong's Cantonese restaurants, Ho saw something that defied the superfan's wildest imagination. As five minutes of Lin highlights played on a television, every patron was, like Ho, intently watching. Then, afterward, while walking past a newsstand, Ho noticed his friend's Chinese name, Lin Shu-Hao, decorate the cover of every publication. Later, while riding Beijing's subway, he saw Lin highlights, with sound, enrapturing commuters from mounted video monitors—gadgets that usually went ignored. "Everybody thinks it's crazy in the U.S.," says Ho, who watched the Knicks beat the Jazz at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 6. "But it's a much bigger storm here in China. And it's just the beginning."
Ho's own life has been upended by ripples emanating from 7,000 miles away. Chinese media outlets have bombarded his accounts on Facebook and Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, all requesting ins with Lin. A flood of corporations—from FORTUNE 500 firms to Chinese apparel companies—have e-mailed Ho about Lin, attempting to discuss sponsorship. There has been a void to fill: Yao, the former Rockets star with whom the Taiwanese-American Lin often trades texts, is retired, and no one else of Chinese descent currently stars in any of the world's top sports leagues. "People's heads are spinning trying to find ways to monetize Jeremy," Ho says. "They're going nuts."
Domestically, Linsanity is nothing short of a one-man economic stimulus. Since he came off the bench and defibrillated the moribund Knicks, stock in Madison Square Garden, the team's parent company, has risen 11%. His number 17 jersey is the top seller in the NBA (and has shipped to 23 countries), and sales and traffic to the Knicks' online store have increased more than 4,000%. Modell's, the New York--based sporting goods chain, has sold more than 50,000 pieces of Lin-related merchandise—from towels to T-shirts—and has had to contract new printers in Brooklyn and New Jersey to meet demand. ("It's like Christmas in February," CEO Mitch Modell told Crain's New York Business this week.) Lin has inflated ticket prices at the Garden (up an average of roughly 200% on StubHub.com) and sold out road games in Minnesota and Toronto. And in New York City, MSG's television ratings have climbed some 70%.
With Lin so prominent in the zeitgeist, Saturday Night Live opened last weekend's show with a riff on the way the media covered his story. And a full-length Lin documentary, which had been in the works for months, is now seeking a buyer. On Wikipedia, Lin has gone from a stub of an entry (with zero footnotes as of Jan. 10, 2010) to an ever-evolving, ever-edited biography (with no fewer than 194 footnotes). From Feb. 6 to 14, according to the analytics company General Sentiment, Lin was mentioned on social media not only more often than any NBA player but also more often than Barack Obama—who himself took to his television on Feb. 14 to watch Lin shoot down the Raptors. The next day the President praised Lin's game-winning three to his staff on Marine One. And the day after that, Sarah Palin surfaced in Manhattan, waving around a LINSANITY T-shirt.
It was only two years ago this month that Lin's mother, Shirley, was e-mailing friends in an attempt to drum up online votes for her son's candidacy for the Bob Cousy Award, given to college basketball's best point guard. (Jeremy lost badly to John Wall.) Now? She's so overwhelmed with interview requests that she's in the process of appointing a spokesman for herself and Jeremy's father, Gie-Ming. Lin issued a plea to media back in Taiwan to stop bombarding his relatives overseas, and even his younger brother has felt the spotlight, with news crews filming the 5'11", 135-pound Joseph's practices. Says guard Ephraim McDowell, a captain of Division III Hamilton, "Our last two home games had the most people I've seen in four years." At Amherst one fan held a sign reading LIN-SIGNIFICANT BROTHER.
Ryan Fitzpatrick—the Bills' starting quarterback and, until this month, Harvard's most prominent pro athlete—can relate. "Jeremy's cult following has reached unfathomable levels," Fitzpatrick, 29, says. "I am no longer the guy that went to Harvard. I am now the guy that went to school with Jeremy Lin." No matter that Fitzpatrick doesn't actually know Lin and never overlapped with him in Cambridge. The same applies for actor James Franco (Palo Alto High, '96), a Lin fan who received a cellphone photo of Spike Lee wearing their high school jersey from a classmate who attended last Friday's Knicks game. "It's pretty surreal," Franco says.
So who can blame Lin's former classmate at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School for trying to post a Lin-signed yearbook ("Thanks for being my friend. Have a wonderful summer") on eBay for $4,800? Or the guy selling the autographed Lin rookie card for $1,200? Or the two people—one a stranger, another a self-described former volunteer assistant coach at Palo Alto High—who filed a trademark application for Linsanity? Is anyone surprised that everyone is trying to get a piece? Says Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education and a Harvard forward in the mid-'80s, "I told Jeremy, 'No new friends.' Stick with the people who stuck with you when you got cut."
But there is one exception to Duncan's rule. These Knicks knew scarcely anything about Lin when he arrived on their doorstep on Dec. 27 after being waived twice and sent to the NBA's Developmental League three times. Yes, star forward Amar'e Stoudemire had stood next to Lin for a photo taken at an NBA China reception in Los Angeles a year ago; and shooting guard Landry Fields had played for Stanford in a 111--56 victory over Harvard in '07; and, well, that's more or less it. But at this point, the team—let alone coach Mike D'Antoni, whose continued employment is now plausible—is loath to imagine Teramo's gain at New York's expense. (The lockout's end on Nov. 26 ultimately rendered an Italian contract moot.)
"Every player's dream is to play with a point guard whose eyes are up, and that's the way Jeremy is," says sharpshooting forward Steve Novak. "When there's a guy who plays like that, it's contagious. When he's looking and finding, finding, finding—if you get the ball and you don't have a great shot, you're giving it to somebody else because you know it's coming back to you the next play. You know you don't have to force anything."
This is yet another form of Lin's wealth creation: Before the point guard cracked the starting lineup, Novak hadn't scored in the double digits this season. Since then, he has averaged 12.3 points through Sunday on 45.5% shooting from beyond the arc. Similarly, Fields and 7'1" center Tyson Chandler are both on perpetual alley-oop watch. (Asked how many lobs Lin threw in college, senior Crimson point guard Oliver McNally responded, "Dude ... I can't think of one.") "Tyson's so eager and such a humble guy, and Landry's the exact same way," says Lin, unfailingly deferent. "We're all out there together, buying in."
Yet even in college, Blakeney saw four skills that prompted him to tell Lin as a sophomore that he had NBA potential: his ability to burst forward then suddenly come to a total stop; his expertise in splitting defenses and reading seams "like a running back"; his knack—à la Steve Nash—for getting anywhere he wanted with his dribble; and his acumen in the pick-and-roll. The Harvard staff would have Lin study tape of Jazz great John Stockton running the play, and counting practice, workouts and games, Blakeney estimates, Lin probably used more than 3,000 ball screens in three years.
"Lin, because of the threat of the pass, has made that whole team better," says Frank Layden, who drafted and coached Stockton in Utah. "It's a gift. You wonder, Is Lin another Jerry West? Because he's getting numbers that guys don't get until they've played in this league for a long, long time."
A year ago last week, a starstruck Lin, wearing a black sweater and blue tie, was happily posing with retired NBA players such as Sam Perkins and A.C. Green in Los Angeles. Lin had finagled a gig working All-Star weekend as a support staffer at the skills challenge, and he also got to attend the slam dunk contest and the game itself. This time around? Lin still isn't an All-Star. But he'll assist fellow New York guard Iman Shumpert during the slam dunk contest and play in the Rising Stars Challenge, thus serving as an inevitable if unwilling sun in Orlando's All-Star firmament. For a kid whose childhood bedroom in Palo Alto was plastered with posters of NBA players in action—a soaring Latrell Sprewell in a Warriors uniform, in a silver frame, hung prominently—it's just the latest surreal step. These days, Blakeney happily concedes, no matter where you are on earth, it's almost impossible not to appreciate Lin's game.
"The measure of this man goes way beyond the number of points scored and assists made," says Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao, a basketball fan who is the only Asian athlete whose star may still eclipse Lin's. "He is a shining beacon for so many people." To wit: On Feb. 16, the day after beating the Kings, Lin and Fields showed up at Del Frisco's, a pricey Manhattan steak house on the order of Peter Luger. This time the restaurant burst into applause when he walked in.
Ho had welcomed Lin not far from Del Frisco's when the guard first arrived in the city as a Knick. After being picked up in late December, having been waived twice in 15 days (once by the Warriors, once by the Rockets), Lin came to New York early on New Year's Day after a road game in Sacramento. Ho, who was then working out of the NFL's league office in the city, stayed up talking with Lin and another friend till the early morning hours at Ho's apartment in midtown. That night, Lin crashed on—yes—his first living room couch. "I don't think anyone truly understands how difficult and hopeless it was for Jeremy," Ho says now. "He talked about giving up basketball. How maybe God had a different plan. It was difficult for me to see how unhappy he was at that time. He was just a person who didn't know what was going to come next."
What ultimately came next was unimaginable. And as the story progresses—How will he fare when teams see him for a second time? How will the Knicks gel now that Carmelo Anthony has returned from injury?—Ho still sees his friend everywhere in Beijing. As he gets up at odd hours to root on Internet streams of Knicks games, Harvard hoops' former No. 1 fan must tell himself to cool it. Ho feels guilty about wanting to text Lin so much; wanting to call him after every double double; wanting to bombard him with e-mails, out of sheer joy, just as often as marketers and companies of varying repute bombard him out of capitalistic instinct. "Every time he has a good game, I just go nuts," Ho admits, glumly. "And the effect carries on for several hours. I have to tell myself: Cheng, control yourself."
And what's best for Lin, Ho figures, is even more space than he's been giving him. In fact, considering his dangerously high levels of excitement, Ho is now trying to anticipate the future of the Jeremy Lin economy, if only to reassure himself that the madness will die down. And a stressful yet optimistic thought, once unfathomable, has crossed his mind. What if the good games never stop coming? What if a bubble refuses to pop?
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这个作者就是在小林确定匹配火箭后， 第一个和小林专访的人， 他帮小林写出了
Lin opens up about leaving Knicks: 'Honestly, I preferred New York'
