Nothing really "went wrong" with him other than, of course, his health the last couple seasons. He was able to be a 25+ mpg player on a couple of playoff teams and made more than $60 million in his career and that ain't bad. He never had the skill level, particularly handles for his position, to keep up the kind of production that he put out during these couple of weeks in NY. Don't know if he has more in the tank-- depend on his injury recovery and luck, I guess.
That's not what he said when he wasn't "drafted". He played the whole racist thing up, got himself endorsements , hype and contracts based on that, but scouts were not racist against Yao or Li Jianlan. Just play ball like all the successful minorities have done instead of milking narratives. The only thing his career proved was scouts are smart, not racist.
Considering he wasn't drafted and became a rotation player on multiple NBA teams it clearly proved the scouts overlooked him. Whether that was because of his race is anyone's guess but I would say it's probable it played a role.
Yao was clearly the best of these guys If you had 100 Lins and 100 Yis , you still can't touch 1 Yao. they shouldn't be mentioned with Yao at all
https://www.netsdaily.com/2017/3/14/14925994/morey-bias-played-a-role-in-lin-not-being-drafted “He lit up our model,” said Morey. “Our model said take him with, like, the 15th pick in the draft.” The objective measurement of Jeremy Lin didn’t square with what the experts saw when they watched him play; a not terribly athletic Asian kid. Morey hadn’t completely trusted his model - and so had chickened out and not drafted Lin. A year after the Houston Rockets failed to draft Jeremy Lin, they began to measure the speed of a player’s first two steps: Jeremy Lin had the quickest first move of any player measured. He was explosive and was able to change direction far more quickly than most NBA players. “He’s incredibly athletic,” said Morey. “But the reality is that every **** person, including me, thought he was unathletic. And I can’t think of any reason for it other than he was Asian.”
Look at his explosiveness and quick change of pace... So explosive that Rockets dumped him onto the Lakers and never looked back.
to get this thread to stop appearing, I would have to ignore @Clutch . Anyone else have any suggestions for how to make this friggin' thread disappear????
Yao was a #1 pick, jianlian was a top 10 pick as well. I can see why lin went undrafted and it has nothing to do with his race. He could not cut it on any competitive teams and ended up getting minutes on the worst team in the league for diversity reasons. Would he get a contract if he was African American? Many players didnt think so. Compare that to barea who was a huge part of a title winning team but never complained about being an underdog due to his ethnicity. Pointing out the obvious here.