Larry Brown Sports

Was anyone more excited about Harvard upsetting New Mexico during the NCAA Tournament Thursday than Jeremy Lin? We highly doubt it.

The prestigious school’s most notable basketball alumnus threw on his three goggles and added about three exclamation points to punctuate his excitement after watching his school win its first NCAA Tournament game. Harvard, a 14 seed from the Ivy League, defeated 3-seed New Mexico 68-62, becoming the fourth 14-seed to win a tournament game in the past 10 years (per SportsCenter).

Here’s the tweet Lin sent, probably on a computer he borrowed from the public library, and from a couch at a friend’s place:

YYYYYEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!! HARVARD winssss!!! hahahahhah i told you…. #threepointgoggles #bracketbusters twitter.com/JLin7/status/3…

— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) March 22, 2013

As good as Lin was in college, he never once played in the tourney. His best season came when Harvard went 21-8 during his senior year and finished third in the Ivy League. This win was a long time coming for Harvard fans.

Photo credit: Twitter/Jeremy Lin

Jeremy Lin has only been with the Houston Rockets for about seven months, but that was enough time for him to develop a sense of family with his new teammates. When the team announced on Wednesday that it had traded Patrick Patterson, Cole Aldrich, Toney Douglas and Marcus Morris, Lin says he was crushed.

“That was just pretty much the worst thing,” he told reporters after Wednesday night’s win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, via CSNHouston.com. “It sucks because we’re a close-knit team and we actually really, really care about everybody that got shipped off and it was just really emotional for me.

“To be honest, I was like ‘I don’t even want to play. I don’t even want to play tonight.’ It was really emotional. I wish them the best. It just sucks to see them go and I guess that’s a part of the business but that’s a tough part for me.”

Lin scored 29 points and added eight assists in the upset win over the Thunder, so it’s safe for him to make a comment like that given the circumstances. Had the Rockets lost the game, I highly doubt he would have admitted the trade made him not even feel like taking the court.

Players never like losing a teammate they have gained a level of comfort with, let alone being informed that they have lost four of them right before a game is about to begin. Lin’s emotional attachment is understandable, but Houston got tremendous potential by bringing in Thomas Robinson and taking advantage of the Sacramento Kings’ desire to dump salaries. The trade should put them in better shape going forward, and Lin of all people should be able to understand that the NBA is a business.

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Jeremy Lin received cheers from the Madison Square Garden crowd in his first game against the Knicks since leaving his former team to sign with the Houston Rockets over the summer. Knicks fans gave Lin a strong applause when he was introduced before the game began. However, the cheers turned into boos as the game went and Houston pulled away.

Lin had 22 points and 8 assists, and most importantly, he was 9-15 on field goals in Houston’s 109-96 win on Monday night. It was the second-highest point total of the season for Lin, and his second-best shooting performance of the year.

“It was a lot of fun playing out there,” Lin said after the game. “I think our team took a step in the right direction. For me, it was great to be back and it was a lot of fun to be back again.

“It was actually a lot better than I thought (it would be),” Lin said of the reception.

Lin was not in the mood to be nostalgic about the “Linsanity” craze he sparked in New York last season.

“I’ve moved on, they’ve moved on,” he said. “We have good memories, but at the same time we’re all in a different place now.”

The win was no doubt satisfying for Lin after he took some criticism for leaving for Houston. Center Tyson Chandler said in October that Lin couldn’t run the Knicks’ offense. Raymond Felton, who replaced him on the Knicks, said he was a better player than Lin. And then you had Carmelo Anthony call Lin’s contract with Houston “ridiculous.”

Oh yeah, having a game against the Knicks while handing them their sixth loss of the year had to have felt great for Lin.

Below are some of his highlights from the game:

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Houston Rockets guard Jeremy Lin was not exactly a highly-touted recruit coming out of high school, and as we know that lack of respect carried over into the NBA. Teams like Duke, UNC and Michigan State may not have been banging down the doors to offer Lin a full scholarship, but that doesn’t mean he was afraid to turn down offers from schools in major conferences — especially ones with coaches who didn’t know his name.

During a recent joint interview with ESPN the Magazine, Lin and James Harden played a game where they had to answer true and false questions about one another. One question for Harden was whether or not a Pac-10 coach once called Lin by the wrong name.

“True,” Harden correctly responded.

“A coach called me … uh, he called me Ron Jeremy,” Lin added. “I kid you not. I said, I am not coming to this school …”

As Andrew Greif of Dime Magazine pointed out, Stanford was the only Pac-10 school Lin had an official visit with when he was in high school. A New York Times feature about Lin last year talked about how he considered walking on at UCLA and Cal. The question asked if Lin was called “Ron Jeremy” during a recruiting visit, but Lin responded that a coach said it over the phone. That doesn’t really help us hone in on a suspect.

Nevertheless, I doubt the coach who mixed Jeremy up with a pornstar ever thought he would have a strand of marijuana and an ice cream named after him.

Here is the video of ESPN the Magazine’s entertaining interview with Lin and Harden:

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Jeremy Lin is getting ready to play the New York Knicks for the first time since leaving them during the offseason to sign with the Houston Rockets. Naturally, he’s facing plenty of questions from the New York media about his time with the team and his departure. His first game against the Knicks also marks a perfect time to reevaluate the Knicks’ decision to let him go, which is looking like a good one so far.

The Knicks are 8-2 and tied for the best record in the league this season. They have Raymond Felton and Jason Kidd as their new point guards, and both are playing pretty well. Lin, on the other hand, is struggling. He’s averaging 10 points per game and has scored in single figures five of Houston’s last seven games. He hasn’t shot over 37.5% from the field in that span.

Houston is 5-7, which isn’t too far off from what they were expected to do. But there’s little doubt that Lin has been disappointing this season. He even admitted that he has been exposed this season.

“I’ve been exposed a lot early on in the season and have a lot to work on,” Lin said, according to the New York Post. “I’m young. I’ve started 30-something games my entire career. It’s something I have to keep in mind. I’ve felt better before but it’s just a process. We have three days off after (tomorrow) and there’s a lot of things I’m going to do for my leg, knee just explosive stuff we’ll work on.”

Lin makes two good points despite his admission. One, he is a young player who has limited experience. Two, he’s still recovering from his knee injury, which he says has cost him explosion this season. Maybe at some point he will start feeling back to full strength and then we will be able to determine how good he is. His shooting was so bad last week that he sat during the overtime against Portland, and he did not play in the fourth quarter of a win over the Bulls on Wednesday. A 33.3 FG% doesn’t cut it as a point guard unless you’re a spectacular playmaker. He needs to break the slump.

Photo Credit: Russ Isabella-US PRESSWIRE

Jeremy Lin is used to having the odds stacked against him. Aside from the fact that his name was never called on draft day and almost every team he has played for has contemplated releasing him at some point, there is the obvious issue of race. There are very few Asian-Americans who have found success in the NBA, and Lin said that has made him somewhat of a target for opponents.

“I’ve always been a target,” he told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. “Everyone looks me and says, ‘I’m not going to let that Asian kid embarrass me. I’m going to go at him.’ That’s how it’s been my whole life. This has been different, though. Now, I was on the scouting report. People started to pay attention to what I could and couldn’t do.

“But a target? I was used to that. I’m not saying I get everyone’s best shot, but I would say people don’t want to be embarrassed by me because of my skin color.”

Lin’s contract situation created a ton of buzz at the conclusion of last season. Is he worth the money? The Houston Rockets were willing to pay $25 million over three years for Lin — a contract offer that Carmelo Anthony was not shy in criticizing. J.R. Smith, another one of Lin’s former teammates, said the New York Knicks would be offending their other players if they paid Lin that handsomely.

“I was a little surprised, but I wasn’t shocked,” Lin said of the criticism he received as a free agent. “I honestly feel it’s part of the underlying issue of race in American society … of being an Asian-American. I haven’t figured it out. I haven’t wrapped my head around it. But it’s something I’m thinking about.”

It should be noted that Lin quickly came back to earth when Mike D’Antoni resigned and Mike Woodson took over. Many of his critics may simply be skeptical that his magical run with the Knicks had more to do with D’Antoni’s guard-friendly system than Lin’s skill set. That being said, it would be incredibly naive to say race is not a factor in the criticism he faces.

Photo credit: Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE

When Jeremy Lin caught wind that one of his new teammates had been traded from the Houston Rockets to the Oklahoma City Thunder, he wanted to do the right thing by calling the rookie and wishing him luck in a new city. The only problem is he called the wrong rookie.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Lin accidentally called rookie guard Scott Machado to wish him well with the Thunder. Obviously he should have called rookie Jeremy Lamb, and as a result he gave Machado quite a scare.

“I was like, ‘Hey, it’s Scott, it’s not Jeremy,’” Machado said when describing the conversation. “’Did you hear something about me?’ I was all nervous. He was like, “Oh, I apologize, I apologize.’ It all worked out.”

Machado was unsure if he would make the Rockets’ roster to begin with until Monday when veteran guard Shaun Livingston was waived, so you can understand why Lin’s phone call restarted an emotional roller coaster that he thought had come to a halt. A new team would have meant a new situation where Machado had to prove himself — something he had already spent an offseason doing in Houston on a non-guaranteed contract.

Crisis averted, Scott. You can go back to getting some shut-eye now.

H/T Game On!
Photo credit: Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE