Like every basketball fan, I am thrilled by the improbable Story Of Jeremy Lin. I want Jeremy Lin to play well, to continue to play well, to always play well, until his hair is white and Madison Square Garden is but dust beneath the foundation of the arena that takes its place. (CocaPepNikeBudweiserGarden, perhaps.)
But what are we? Simple peasants? It is not sufficient to observe that Jeremy Lin is at the heart of an unprecedented success story. We must dig deeper. Why Jeremy Lin? Why now? Why the Knicks? What does it all mean?
There are the easy answers. Jeremy Lin (where Jeremy Lin is no longer just a name and is now a story, like Rumpelstiltskin) happened because Mike D’Antoni was desperate, because Jeremy Lin (The Player) is significantly better than people thought, and because Jeremy Lin (The Story) was blessed with the perfect, surmountable antagonist: the New York Knicks’ schedule, which in the early days of Jeremy Lin, was as favorable as NBA schedules get. Several bad teams: Washington, New Jersey, Toronto. And tired good teams: Minnesota on its fourth game in five nights; the Lakers on the fifth game of a six-game road trip.
And it is possible that hype masks reality. While Jeremy Lin was laying claim to the record for most points scored in a player’s first five starts, he was also giving the ball to the opposition at a rate that would have made Tim Donaghy raise a wary eyebrow. Against the Toronto Raptors, in a game that Lin would win in the last second, he had eight turnovers.
Yet, Jeremy Lin scored 27 points in that game. He scored 38 (38!) against the Los Angeles Lakers. Favorable schedule, tired opponents, too many turnovers – these are not sufficient for the explanation we require. Neither is any knock on Lin’s talent. Even if he fades into anonymity faster than Milli Vanilli, Lin has proven that he’s a good basketball player.
The lesson from the Jeremy Lin Story is not that he’s not good, it’s that those commonly assumed to be better are not as good as we think.
There might be 700 basketball players good enough to play in the NBA. Of these, around a dozen are so much better than the rest that they deserve contracts that pay them salaries made up of eight digits. Given access to a similar set of circumstances as Jeremy Lin, many of the remaining 688 players might prove to be just as successful as he has been.
Carmelo Anthony will make $18.5 million this year. Jeremy Lin? $762,000. Is Carmelo Anthony twenty-four times as good as Jeremy Lin? If we’ve learned nothing else from Jeremy Lin (The Story), it is the answer to this question. (No.)
NBA teams don’t believe this; they believe it’s easier to pay $18.5 million for Carmelo Anthony than it is to pay $18.5 million for 24 Jeremy Lins.
Does that mean that Jeremy Lin should make $18.5 million? Definitely not. In fact, the next contract that Jeremy Lin signs will probably be too lucrative.
And in that, we will find the inevitable conclusion to Jeremy Lin (The Story): when an NBA team pays too much for Jeremy Lin (The Player), forgetting that, somewhere in the pool of 688, there is another Jeremy Lin, waiting for the chance to put his own name on a Story.
This piece originally appeared in the February 20 edition of the Spanish daily El Pais. For the original (Spanish) version, click here.
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