Maybe it's his underdog backstory, maybe it's his swishing and dishing, maybe it's the fractured state of the Knicks organization, or maybe it's the way his name lends itself to a million puns—but there's just something about Jeremy Lin that people can't get enough of. From Spike Lee to David Chang to the whole NYC-area Asian community, Lin is inspiring people. But who was Lin inspired by? Tim Tebow. "I've drawn actually a lot of inspiration just because he’s such a polarizing figure but I think the things he says in interviews, his approach to the game is just unbelievable and I respect him so much," Lin said in a radio interview in San Francisco.
Sure, there have been plenty of one-season wonders and no-name stars who have burnt out quickly (Benny Agbayani!) after conquering the city for a short time, so it's way, way too soon for anyone to be declaring Lin the Knicks' savior, or even a definitively consistent player. And it might be a tad bit hyperbolic for Chang, the owner of the Momofuku restaurants, to call Lin's emergence "the most important event for Asian-Americans in sports history.”
But Lin is irrefutably striking a chord for many Asian-Americans: “In a way he’s proven that Asians aren’t just smart. They can be athletic, too. I look up to him because he’s an intelligent young man,” said Danny Chen, a senior point guard at Palisades Park High School who met Lin two summers ago. “It’s something Asian-Americans can be proud of right now,” Co Truong, an advertising rep from Brooklyn, told the Daily News. “It’s a Cinderella story.”
"I'm not saying he's Steve Nash," said his former Palo Alto coach Peter Diepenbrock. "But everywhere he's gone they've loved him. Someone just needed to give him a chance, a real chance." Even fellow player Pau Gasol has been impressed by him: “Obviously, a player that didn’t get any minutes, zero minutes, and was sent to the D-League at some point in the season. Pretty much never really done much in this league, and now to put together three games with the numbers that he’s playing is pretty surprising to anyone.”
There is one person who is wholly unmoved by the Lin story: Kobe Bryant. "What? No idea," Bryant told reporters when asked his opinion about Linsanity. "I know who he is but I don’t really know what’s going on too much with them."
