Lin at Harvard

CarolNYC · Mar 23, 2013

Is it appropriate to post this 2010 profile of Lin from his Harvard days here? In honor of Harvard's NCAA success and all? I found it quite interesting.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Get ready for the <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Harvard">#Harvard</a> game by reading @<a href="https://twitter.com/pablotorre">pablotorre</a>'s profile of Tommy Amaker—and some kid named Lin. <a href="http://t.co/YHr8a3qMsw" title="http://byl.nr/16N1qBm">byl.nr/16N1qBm</a><a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23Crimsanity">#Crimsanity</a></p>— Byliner (@TheByliner) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheByliner/status/315557321411555328">March 23, 2013</a></blockquote>
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February 01, 2010
Harvard School Of Basketball
With the ambitious recruiting of coach Tommy Amaker and the pro potential of Asian-American guard Jeremy Lin, the Crimson has graduated to another hoops dimension
PABLO S. TORRE

What's most surprising? The possibility that he might become the first Asian-American draft pick in NBA history? The bigoted jeers he regularly hears at games (everything from "wonton soup" to "Open your eyes!")? The number of microphones and cameras of Chinese and Taiwanese outlets—five covered Harvard-Dartmouth on Jan. 9—that broadcast Crimson highlight packages, including interviews with his coach, Tommy Amaker?

Or is it the hysterically proud new fans, the ones filling gyms from Cambridge, Mass., to Santa Clara, Calif., toting signs and wearing customized T-shirts (WE LOVE YOU JEREMY!) more befitting a Jonas brother than a Taiwanese-American Ivy League point guard?

"The most surprising part," Jeremy Lin concludes, shaking his head and exhaling, "is pretty much everything."

It's a mid-January afternoon, and the senior econ major driving the unlikeliest revival in college basketball sits in his fourth-floor dorm room overlooking a frozen Charles River. He's surrounded by photos of family and friends back in Palo Alto, Calif., a poster of Warriors-era Chris Webber and an Xbox in disrepair. Nothing suggests Lin's status as the first finalist in more than a decade for the Wooden award and first for the Cousy award (nation's top point guard) to come from the scholarship-devoid Ivies.

"I never could have predicted any of this," says Lin. "To have people talk about you like that? I'm not really used to it."

Neither is Harvard (13--3, 2--0 in the Ivy League). An institution whose academic prestige is in inverse proportion to its hoops futility, the Crimson has never won even a conference title. But now, 64 years after making its sole NCAA appearance, the oldest university in America has a big-name coach, a player of the year candidate and its best start since 1945. "I always wondered, Why can't the basketball team be great?" says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a booster who kept stats for the team as an undergrad in the 1970s. "Finally, things are building."

So it is that when Harvard visits two-time defending Ivy champ Cornell (16--3, 2--0) this Saturday, it will be the most anticipated conference game in decades—the NCAA selection committee's midseason bracket projects the Crimson as a No. 11 seed and the Big Red as a 12, which would give the Ivies their first at-large tournament bid—and the spotlight will fall not only on high-scoring Cornell forward Ryan Wittman but also on two point guards.

The first one is the curiously under-recruited Lin, a 6'3", 200-pound dynamo who was averaging 17.1 points, 4.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 2.9 steals and 1.3 blocks at week's end. "I've been around a lot of good players in my life," says Amaker, the 1987 national defensive player of the year at Duke, "and Jeremy's up there. He's sensational."
...........
But for all of Amaker's moves to make the Harvard brand more enticing to recruits—switching team sponsors, from New Balance to Nike, bringing old pros Doc Rivers and Grant Hill to clinics ("Now they say they lectured at Harvard," Amaker jokes), highlighting the school's new financial-aid packages, revising the media guide to feature alums from John Adams to Barack Obama—the coach would discover that the key to his turnaround, not to mention his best athlete, was an unassuming holdover who had interviewed him for the job.

Jeremy Shu-How Lin was the only player in the nation last season ranked in the top 10 of every major statistical category in his conference, but this stat might be the most striking: According to the most recent NCAA Race and Ethnicity Report (released in 2009), there are only 18 Asian-American men's basketball players in Division I (0.4%). By contrast, there are 23 students at Harvard with the last name of Lin.

Which is to say that Jeremy's college choice, as stereotypes go, was not terribly novel. Lin's parents, Gie-Ming and Shirley, are 5'6" Taiwanese immigrants who came to the U.S. in the mid-1970s and studied computer engineering (dad) and computer science (mom) at Purdue. Neither ever played a second of organized hoops, but they did watch the NBA. Shirley adored Dr. J; three times a week Gie-Ming took their sons, Joshua, Jeremy and Joseph, to the YMCA and tried to help them mimic the skills they had seen on TV.

All three played high school basketball, but the middle child stood out. "Even as a 5'3", 125-pound freshman, Jeremy lived and breathed basketball," says Peter Diepenbrock, Lin's coach at Palo Alto High. "And more than that, he knew he was the best on any court we stepped on." As a 6'1" senior, Lin led Palo Alto to the state Division II championship, shocking nationally ranked Mater Dei and showing flashes of the primary strengths of his game: fearlessness in the paint, unselfishness in the open floor (he takes only 19.7% of Harvard's shots) and an overhead, catapultlike jumper that is lethal from inside the arc (61.3% this season).

The Kansases and Kentuckys, however, didn't exactly knock down Lin's door. He sent his CV (4.2 GPA, perfect score on his SAT II Math 2C in the ninth grade) and a DVD of highlights—edited by a friend of a friend from church—to all eight Ivies, Stanford, Cal and his dream school, UCLA. Only four schools responded. Out of the Pac-10, Lin recalls, UCLA "wasn't interested," Stanford was "fake interested," and during a visit to Cal a staffer "called me 'Ron.'"

"In hindsight," Santa Clara coach and former Bruins assistant Kerry Keating told the San Francisco Chronicle, "he'd probably be starting for UCLA at point guard."

He hit a 40-footer at the buzzer to beat William & Mary in triple-overtime in November, scored a total of 52 points in two wins over Boston College in the last two years and had 30 points, nine rebounds and two nasty slams in a six-point loss to then No. 14--ranked UConn. Said Huskies coach Jim Calhoun, "I can't think of a team that he wouldn't play for." (There might be one, technically: the Chinese Olympic team. Lin says he would decline a tryout invitation if renouncing his U.S. citizenship would be a requirement for making the team.)

And yet Lin, whose demeanor on the court matches his role as coleader of a campus Bible study group, encounters racism at virtually every game on the road, whether it's fans yelling "Chinese" gibberish (Lin is not fluent in Mandarin, for the record) or opponents using the most vile epithets that can be directed at Asians.

"I really saw it affect Jeremy last year," Harvard guard Oliver McNally says of how Lin would stew in private. "But now? He lets his game speak for itself. They can call him whatever they want."
........
Notably, one fan was on the bandwagon before any signs or microphones or pro scouts appeared. "I think this team is going to surprise everyone," Gie-Ming Lin wrote in an e-mail to Amaker early last fall. "I know it is not easy. But in high school they called my son 'Mr. Improbable.'"

Cue the usual shaking of Jeremy's head, that sheepish exhale of disbelief. For Mr. Improbable, of course, the best part about this surprising season is that nothing seems improbable anymore.

Ivy Pros

If he goes on to play in the NBA, Harvard senior guard Jeremy Lin (right) would become the first Ivy Leaguer in the pros since Yale's Chris Dudley retired after the 2002--03 season. Lin would also be the first Crimson athlete to play in the league since Ed Smith scored 28 points in 11 games for the Knicks in 1953--54. Of the eight Ivy schools, Harvard has accounted for the fewest NBA games played by alumni.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>YYYYYEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!! HARVARD winssss!!! hahahahhah i told you.... <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23threepointgoggles">#threepointgoggles</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23bracketbusters">#bracketbusters</a> <a href="http://t.co/ZlpqTFCPtM" title="http://twitter.com/JLin7/status/314955449734664192/photo/1">twitter.com/JLin7/status/3…</a></p>— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) <a href="https://twitter.com/JLin7/status/314955449734664192">March 22, 2013</a></blockquote>
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RoxD · Mar 23, 2013

It's always good to know a bit history of the team and players.

visible · Mar 23, 2013

Mr. Improbable

TC777JLIN168 · Mar 23, 2013

Good read. Thank you, CarolNYC. Best luck to the Crimsons against Arizona today; hope they pull another upset.

Now Rockets, let's get the Spurs!

lwlee · Mar 23, 2013

That ***** cracks me up everytime. They called me "Ron". Dude was thinking Ron Jeremy.

jvu · Mar 23, 2013

visible said: ↑

Mr. Improbable
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It's Mr. Linprobable get it right

rocketsjudoka · Mar 23, 2013

lwlee said: ↑

That ***** cracks me up everytime. They called me "Ron". Dude was thinking Ron Jeremy.
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If I find out who that guy was at my alma mater I might just punch him.

BamBam · Mar 23, 2013

...........
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Ynnis888 · Mar 23, 2013

That tweet went viral.

vator · Mar 23, 2013

No way this can be real. Cool story bro.

aesthetics80 · Mar 23, 2013

Remember watching that UCONN game. He was single-handedly ripping them up, remember those slams too.

Terry Teagle · Mar 23, 2013

If Lin went to UCLA, he would have been behind Darren Collison, Russell Westbrook, and Arron Afflalo, and passing to Kevin Love and Luc Richard Mbah A Moute.

Dentyne · Mar 23, 2013

Thank you for posting this

Very good read

timyeung · Mar 24, 2013

Lin against UConn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ2mng5e95w

CarolNYC · Mar 24, 2013

timyeung said: ↑

Lin against UConn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ2mng5e95w
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Thanks for the video. Cool stuff.

Jeremy and Bev having some fun after Harvard's big loss yesterday...
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Damn Harvard just got smacked!!! Lol my bad @<a href="https://twitter.com/jlin7">jlin7</a></p>— Patrick Beverley (@patbev21) <a href="https://twitter.com/patbev21/status/315617760103264257">March 24, 2013</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>@<a href="https://twitter.com/patbev21">patbev21</a> checkin to see how arkansas is doing in the tourney. oh wait...theyre fishing or whatever you do in arkansas lol</p>— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) <a href="https://twitter.com/JLin7/status/315618856821465088">March 24, 2013</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>“@<a href="https://twitter.com/jlin7">jlin7</a>: @<a href="https://twitter.com/patbev21">patbev21</a> checkin to see how arkansas is doing in the tourney. oh wait.theyre fishing or whatever you do in arkansas lol-low blow</p>— Patrick Beverley (@patbev21) <a href="https://twitter.com/patbev21/status/315620079117160448">March 24, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Cute.

DXtreme · Mar 24, 2013

Interesting...
Thanks for the article

scaramanga · Mar 24, 2013

I'm glad Lin and Beverley are getting along well and being competitive at the same time...

Jontro · Mar 24, 2013

scaramanga said: ↑

I'm glad Lin and Beverley are getting along well and being competitive at the same time...
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I don't see how Lin cheating on Parsons here is viewed as acceptable. We have to hold them to higher standards.

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