Why Jeremy Lin Discussion Always Comes Back To Race

A video came out last week highlighting the number of hard fouls Jeremy Lin has received over the past few seasons, prompting the question of whether race has played a factor.

Whether it is his critics or his fans, Jeremy Lin is one of the most polarizing figures in the NBA, thanks to the way he made his splash in 2012.

The discussion of Lin is always clouded by the issue of race. While most of us want a utopia where race doesn’t matter, if you are being realistic, the story of Jeremy Lin in the NBA will always be tied to race.

Outside of Yao Ming, it is hard to find an Asian player who made as significant of an impact during their time in the NBA as Lin. So when Lin started lighting up the then still-relevant Los Angeles Lakers and hitting game winners, it made for a great storyline. It was the perfect storm as the right person in the right place at the right time stepped forward.

The NBA had been making its push into the Chinese market, and though Lin was an American with Taiwanese heritage, having an Asian player, and a notable one, made for a great marketing opportunity as well.

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The NBA doesn’t have a problem with such a cynical approach to marketing. We barely remember when Lin was with the Golden State Warriors early in his career, thanks to the fact he was more of a “promotional advertisement” than anything else according to Hardwood Paroxysm’s Andy Liu.

"He brushed off his time as a Warrior because there were no basketball realness in that aspect. He would sub into a game and the cheers would threaten to spring a leak in the ceiling whenever the ball even came within a five-foot radius of his arms. It seemed like a promotional advertisement, aimed at a target audience and him used as a prop for the commercials. Lin wasn’t enough of a basketball player for that to matter, and he didn’t wallow in the excitement of his placement in the league that seemingly came undeserved."

It didn’t hurt either that Lin’s explosion onto the NBA scene was happening in New York — the media capital of the world — allowing the press to easily seize the moment.

Linsanity made him a household name, but also put a target on his back. Many fans enjoyed his surprising rise to stardom, but others resented the attention he received, attributing it to his race more his rise from obscurity.

All of that is to get us to this video that came out last week, which brought up the question whether he was being treated unfairly or at least differently by some NBA players and referees because he’s Asian.

The idea is certainly being floated around, and Lin actually addressed it Monday.

"“Obviously, I can’t control any of that, so I have to keep playing. I’d love to get more calls. It is part of it, you have to play through it, and so if they give it to you or not you have to keep playing. I’m just thankful the fans are trying to do something about it and trying to push the league to at least review some this stuff. What happened in the film is exactly what happened,” Lin said."

Lin talking about it is a little surprising, much less than the fact thanked the fans as often he’s tried to just be a basketball player and avoid this touchy subject. This makes it reasonable to think he’s noticed all the times he’s been hit in the head and face and hasn’t gotten the call … and wondered why.

He’s roughly a middle-of-the-road player when it comes to getting foul calls on drives, But he is the 28th-ranked player in the NBA when it comes to drawing fouls. However, that doesn’t clear up the picture either as the issue is more about the intensity of the fouls and whether Lin is being left unprotected by officials.

Jeremy Lin | PointAfter

Of course, the tricky part here is determining why he doesn’t get calls or at least why the guilty parties haven’t received flagrant calls. The problem with trying to do that is it is all but impossible to divorce Lin from being Asian, much as it is to separate him from Linsanity. The media and we as humans love a unique story.

Rightly or wrongly, part of what made Lin’s story unique was him being Asian.

Even for the most “colorblind” person (those people don’t exist, no matter what they tell you), it was hard not to notice that Lin looked different from most NBA players. Factor in that he isn’t a physically imposing player like Ming or Yi Jianlian — 7-footers we expect on a basketball court — and he caught fans’ attention.

For some, this was just an interesting wrinkle in the story of the 467th best player in the NBA emerging as a star; for others, it was the only thing they could focus on, for better or for worse.

This fueled jealousy among some players in the NBA — including his teammates — as they felt Lin’s fame is unearned.

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Even though since then he has proven he’s earned his place, the idea lingers what being Asian is the only reason he’s still here. For what it is worth, all three of the teams that kicked him to the curb are in various states of disarray. The Houston Rockets, the Lakers and the Knicks are struggling while Lin and the Hornets are cruising into the playoffs.

Being at worst an average NBA player isn’t enough for some people to get over the idea of whether he’s earned his place in the NBA.

So is that belief among some that Lin is a usurper of fame what drives the hard fouls — and, in effect — the officials’ decisions? The fact is, we can’t say with 100 percent certainty if this is the reason, a reason or if it’s mere coincidence. We can’t get in the minds of the officials or players in these situations.

If it is the jealousy, the idea that Lin’s place in the NBA is undeserved, that’s still about race. Linsanity was fueled by this. It wasn’t just the story of an obscure player from Harvard grabbing the NBA spotlight. The story was about the Asian point guard that was taking over the NBA in February 2012.

People can say that you can’t have it both ways — getting part of your fame from your uniqueness, but not wanting to be treated differently for it — and while there is a reality to that, it doesn’t make it OK for Lin to be treated differently just because of that.

Asians in American culture often have a sort of invisibility. When the term “model minority” gets thrown out, the idea that they suffer from forms of racism is often ignored. It isn’t surprising, considering that despite all the obvious and subtle ways African-Americans deal with racism, some people still ignore it. So the fact racism aimed at Asian-Americans get ignored makes sense.

With any form of racism, sometimes it is difficult to get white Americans to see past, “It’s better than it used to be, so you should be happy.”

Consider that during the Oscars this year — even as the concept of diversity was the main story — one of the jokes was completely based on Asian stereotypes and was the only notable appearance of Asians in the show. Perhaps Lin’s perspective is changing, or at least he’s more comfortable speaking out because he didn’t let that joke go unnoticed.

He was very public in taking issue with the joke,

With many of the positive stereotypes around Asians, it is easy to be dismissive — especially when you aren’t having to deal with those issues — and claim it isn’t a big deal. But for Lin and any other Asian (or any minority for that matter), these are things they face every day.

Despite being one of the more popular players, he still gets stopped from time to time by security, a reminder that he one of the few Asians in the NBA.

It would be easy to dismiss the video as selective editing, to dismiss Lin’s concerns as selfish, but looking at the whole picture, we should at least be asking the question.

None of this is to say anyone who fouls him hard is racist, or that the officials might be, or anything like that. It’s just that it is next to impossible to not consider how Lin’s ethnicity could play a factor.

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Maybe this has nothing to do with race, but with Jeremy Lin, it almost always does.