As the clock ticked toward 3 a.m. in Lin’s hotel room, his mom, Shirley, handed him the phone for his inaugural conversation as a Laker. “Oh my gosh,” Mike D’Antoni told Jeremy, in his unmistakable West Virginia twang. “I can’t believe we missed each other.”
Lin’s breakthrough came under D’Antoni while the two where in New York. D’Antoni also praised his former point guard and called him “special,” via Torre:
Now he was calling Lin only eight weeks after resigning as coach of the Lakers amid discord with, yes, Kobe Bryant. “You hate to miss an opportunity to coach somebody that receptive, that good,” D’Antoni says. “He’s one of those special point guards.”
