"Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise."
In response to this tweet I would say he does have one good point. That it certainly helps now that he's been doing really well that he's Asian. The fact that Knicks games are now showing more in Asia is a testament to the market that Jeremy Lin can add. BUT, and this is a big fat bootylicious BUT, being Asian doesn't give him any sort of undue attention to his story. As if he's all hype. It's his incredible play on the court that's giving him this hype. He's scored 136 pts in his first 5 starts which is the most since the ABA NBA merger. Yes Russell Westbrook had similar stats last week as Lin but he's already a proven All-Star. Lin didn't even have a guaranteed contract a couple of weeks ago.
But this does bring up an interesting discussion on race. Does race have anything to do with it at all? Well if you know American culture then YES. In fact I would go far as to being Asian actually has a slight negative effect on Jeremy Lin's path to the NBA. Americans do really good in terms of boxing certain cultures into a tightly and easy to understand stereotype. For an Asian-American your not thought of as an athlete, but more of an engineer or doctor type. That or go into the dry-cleaning business. Actually as Asian-Americans we do a good enough job not promoting the athletics, or anything besides business or the sciences. It's engineer/doctor or bust.
What's my point? I'm just glad to see a fellow Asian-American doing a great job leading an NBA team to WINS. We need more Asian-American leaders.
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Word!
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