The Knicks were 8-15 and fans were yelling for D’Antoni’s firing as coach. In a home game versus New Jersey, Lin scored 25 points and dished out 7 assists in 36 minutes of action in a 99-92 victory. Two nights later on February 6th, D’Antoni moved Lin into the starting lineup against Utah. Lin played an astonishing 45 of 48 minutes in his start while scoring 28 points and handing out 8 assists. New York won their second straight game, 99-88. On Wednesday, February 8th, the Knicks travel to Washington, D.C. to face one of the NBA’s worst teams, the Wizards. With Kobe Bryant and the Lakers coming to New York on Friday, it looked like a potential letdown in Washington. However, Lin had his first career double-digit points and assists game in the NBA. The double-double included 23 points and 10 assists.
The Knicks had won three in a row with Lin as the point guard but they faced the L.A. Lakers. Comparisons were made between Lin and Lakers star Kobe Bryant. Bryant flashed out on the NBA scene as a high-school basketball whiz in 1996-97. The hype was incredible for a regular-season game featuring two teams with average records. The Knicks were 11-15 at this point while the Lakers were 15-11. The Lakers are a good but not an elite championship team. Nevertheless, with two of the Knicks starters out of the lineup in Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire, Los Angeles had an advantage. With his teammates struggling to score, Lin asserted himself more offensively. He collected 38 of New York’s 92 points in the game. Lin hit 13 of 23 field goal attempts and 10 of 13 free throws. The Knicks won again despite only having two players besides Lin score more than 10 points. New York had won four consecutive games with a two-game road trip coming up in Minnesota and Toronto.
In Minnesota, Lin had his worst game statically but his teammates stepped up instead. Steve Novak had 15 points including a three-point shot which tied the score at 98 with under a minute to go. Iman Shumpert pumped in 20 points while Landry Fields added 19 and Tyson Chandler pitched in with 12. Lin scored at least 20 points for the fifth straight game but shot an awful 8 for 24 including making only 1 of 13 attempts in the second half. He even missed the first of two free throws with five seconds left before making the second to give New York the lead.
Last night in Toronto, Lin again played reckless and out of control for most of the game. He committed a career-high eight turnovers while his team fell behind by 17 points. His opposing guard, Jose Calderon was lighting him up offensively and defensively. Calderon had 12 of his 25 points in the first quarter . Lin turned the ball over on three straight Knick possessions in the second.
After the third period and with the Knicks trailing by 9, D’Antoni switched defenders on Calderon selecting Iman Shumpert to guard him. Shumpert shut down Calderon allowing Lin, a weaker defender, to concentrate on offense. Shumpert stole the ball away from Calderon with the Raptors leading by 5 in the final two minutes and dunked at the other end to make it 87-84. The Raptors missed on their next possession thanks to a Tyson Chandler block. Lin led New York down the floor trailing by 3 points. He dribbled fearlessly into traffic, got fouled by Toronto big man Amir Johnson, and flipped the ball in while falling.
Like in Minnesota, Lin swished the free throw when he needed to tie the game. The Raptors again failed at getting a basket and the Knicks had the ball with 43 seconds left in regulation. Shumpert tried banking a shot off the rim as the 24 second shot clock ticked down. It clanged off the rim but Chandler grabbed the ball and passed back to Lin with 20 seconds. Lin held the ball twenty-five feet away from the basket as he setup the last shot. He started to dribbled forward while Calderon backed away fearing Lin would move past him. Instead he stopped and shot a long three-pointer over him and straight into the hoop with less than a second to go. Lin finished with 27 points and 11 assists and the Knicks continued their winning streak at six games.
The crowd in Toronto erupted like it was Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Raptors held a special Asian Heritage Night in honor of Lin, American-born but raised by Taiwanese parents. Thousands of Asian men and women screamed gleefully for one of their own excelling in a sport of basketball born in North America. Thousands of Knicks fans cheered back in New York as their team which looked down and out a week ago is now a contender for a playoff spot.
This is Linsanity, if that is an actual word. He was a high-school standout in Palo Alto, California near the University of Stanford. He was not offered a scholarship even though he was two-time Most Valuable Player in his school’s district league. He was named the scholar athlete of the year in Northern California and the player of the year by two local San Francisco newspapers. Somehow, he had to leave not only the Bay Area but the west coast to get noticed academically and athletically by Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Boston.
Lin scored 1,483 points in 4 years at Harvard ranking him fifth in school history. Lin was an all-around player with more than 450 rebounds, 406 assists, and 225 steals, a combination never achieved before in Ivy League play. No NBA team, including the Knicks, bothered to draft Lin out of college. The Dallas Mavericks signed him for five games of summer league action in 2010.. His hometown team, the Golden State Warriors, released him after 29 regular season games of limited playing time in 2010-11. Lin never gave up, got an opportunity, and proved that stereotypes are just labels and do not represent a whole group. Every person is unique and so is Jeremy Lin.
No comments:
Post a Comment