Linsanity
Photo by: Frank Franklin II / Associated Press / February 15, 2012
Being a Net fan, I was pretty livid back on February 4th when the Nets let this guy dominate them and I had never heard of him before. Luckily for the Nets, Lin went on a tear the next couple weeks having one big game after the next.
It's definitely an amazing story considering he was about to be cut by the team, but got a chance to play and has ran with it better than anyone could have imagined. I like the way he plays the game, the only issue is that he turns the ball over a ton but that should lessen with experience.
As great of a story as he's been, is it just me or has his story gotten too big? He's everywhere you look now. This is his second consecutive week of being on the cover of Sports Illustrated. I normally listen to ESPN Radio in the morning on my drive into work and they've talked about him almost everyday the past two weeks. The most ridiculous thing I've seen also goes out to ESPN. They had a headline yesterday about Lin telling Kris Humphries of the Nets that he doesn't understand why Humphries gets booed at games. If you've been living under a rock the past year, Kris Humphries married reality star Kim Kardashian but the marriage lasted less than 3 months.
How ESPN considered that headline newsworthy is beyond me. This is going the way of other polarizing athletes like Sidney Crosby, Brett Favre, Lebron James, Tim Tebow, etc. where they're shoved down our throats to the point where we can't stand watching these great athletes play. Why can't we just enjoy his basketball skills and not have to read about stories on how he's not living on a couch anymore?
NBA players are tired of hearing about him too. All-Star point guard Deron Williams of the Nets basically alluded to this in his post game comments after the Knicks-Nets game on Monday night. I'm paraphrasing but he mentioned how the Net reporters would ask him about Lin at their practices or shoot arounds. It definitely motivated Williams who had 38 points and led the struggling Nets to an upset victory over the Knicks 100-92.
The point is we don't know how long this ride is going to last but let's enjoy it while we can and not have it force fed to us like a kid being injected with some vegetable he/she would never want. I was going to say broccoli but I actually like that myself.
