<p>"Lin didn’t receive a single Division 1 scholarship offer after leading Palo Alto (Calif.) High to a state championship four years ago, so he leaned toward academics and went to Harvard. After capping four standout seasons for the Crimson with Ivy League MVP honors, Lin went undrafted in June.</p>
<p>" All the hard work and all the ups and downs of my college career and of the predraft process and summer league, it makes it all worth it now.”...</p>
<p>..."Despite those relatively major setbacks, Lin signed a contract with the Golden State Warriors yesterday. And Lin will have plenty of fans pulling for him in Oakland, which is less than 30 miles from Palo Alto.</p>
<p>"Though the signings of most undrafted rookie free agents barely register a line on the transactions page, an unusually large media contingent showed up for Lin’s introductory press conference. In an area with a large Asian population, that interest can be at least partly attributed to Lin’s Taiwanese heritage."...."Lin, 21, is the first Asian-American signed by the Warriors since 1947 and will be attempting to be just the fourth Asian-American to play in the NBA."</p>
<p>"Lin signed a two-year contract, with the second year a team option. Nearly half of Lin’s 2010 salary, which will be approximately $500,000, is guaranteed."</p>
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<p>It's so hard for me to imagine going to Harvard and graduating with playing basketball as your goal.</p>
<p>It’s rare… most talented players don’t consider top Ivies, and the vast, vast majority will not be playing professionally. The thing they tell us at the Yale/Harvard game is that for the seniors on the field, its virtually their last game.</p>
<p>Lin is a great player, but I wonder how much more recognition he would receive if he performed at a high level in a power conference (Big 10, ACC, Big East, etc.) than the Ivy League. Anyway, good for him, hope he does well in the NBA.</p>
<p>There is a charming irony here. Jeremy was a legitimate big-time prospect coming out of HS, but college recruiters couldn’t get past the fact that he didn’t “look” like a typical hoops star. Harvard gave him a chance to be all-Ivy, upset Boston College twice, and throw down 30 against UConn, but NBA teams couldn’t get past his Asian-American ethnicity and Ivy League basketball background in order to draft him. Only one of the 30 teams in the league was willing to allow him to join their NBA summer league team for a tryout.</p>
<p>Once he emerged as the star of the summer league and in the process outplayed the top pick in the NBA draft, he suddenly had lots of NBA suitors that wanted to sign him to contracts that would only pay off if he made their final roster in the fall. But his hometown team, Golden State, not only gave him the contract - they guaranteed around a quarter-million dollars of it for next season!</p>
<p>Now, why would Golden State want Jeremy Lin so much? Do they see him as a major part of their future? I sure hope so. Do they need depth at the guard position? Undeniably. Is it nice that he’s a hometown hero? Sure. But with Jeremy, the Crimson sold out a road game last year at Santa Clara - a place that never sells out. The stands were filled with excited and proud Asian-Americans. With a 22% Asian population in the Bay Area, do you suppose that Golden State will make any money selling Jeremy Lin jerseys to his hundreds of thousands of new fans?</p>
<p>Hurray! What goes around has finally come around! Congratulations Jeremy - you’ve earned this opportunity and all the rewards that are finally coming with it!</p>
<p>No, he definitely wasn’t. Lin was a one or (at best) two-star recruit. Even he admitted that he grew taller and stronger while in college.</p>
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<p>If you’re going to make such a serious claim as (racial) discrimination, idle speculation won’t cut it. You need proof.</p>
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<p>Only because Harvard couldn’t get higher-ranked recruits. Don’t make it seem as if Harvard was doing Lin any favors. If you don’t believe that Harvard is capable of being ruthless in basketball recruiting, perhaps this Crimson article will change your mind:</p>
<p>Gimme a break. All NBA teams care about is the bottomline ($$$). They draft players based mostly on physical tools and potential upside, not college accomplishments. There were plenty of undrafted college players who had gaudier stats and played against higher competition than Lin. Also, need I remind you that Yao Ming was a former #1 draft pick and Yi Jianlian, a lottery pick.</p>
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<p>This implies that Lin’s race and ethnicity helped him get drafted.</p>
<p>Sorry for the cold water. I don’t think that he will last long in NBA’s tough competition and scheduling. Either he will not see much playing time, or if he has some playing time, and he will get injured. No Asian is good in these sorts of contact sport including basketball, soccer, football, ice hockey, etc…, even Yao Ming is injury prone. No Asian team wins anything in contact sport even if the sport is popular. Perhaps East Asian physque is not suitable for violent contact.</p>
<p>Tell me you are not serious… If you want, I can introduce you to some “Asian” MMA stars who would make your face get familiar with their fists :)</p>
<p>I honestly don’t know if he’ll become better than a journeyman. From high-school to Harvard to NBA, Lin has to be given props. I hope he wont just be a bench warmer, but history doesn’t shine to brightly to players in his position. He has really only one year to show the Warriors he should be on the roster, and hopefully he puts his heart out there and makes an impact.</p>
<p>Gadad…he did not outplay John Wall in the summer league. John Wall lead the league in points and assists. Outplaying someone for a couple of possesions doesn’t mean anything. But yea, he’s decent, but him being asian didn’t make any more of a difference than if he was white.</p>
<p>If there’s a discrimination in basketball, it’s Black or not black. After that, it doesn’t really matter what you are. The low numbers of asians in the NBA is because there aren’t many good asian basketball players. You can’t say this kid should have gotten drafted. Go look at what Sherron Collins did for Kansas, what Jon sheyer did for Duke…and so on. There were lots of proven guards on power house teams that went undrafted.</p>
<p>You have to know a little about the NBA before you make comments like that. Im not gunna lie though, he balled out on John Wall that one game</p>
<p>Hardly anyone gets drafted in the NBA, and really hardly anyone who finishes college. </p>
<p>There have been a few Ivy League NBA players. Chris Dudley and Matt Maloney come to mind.</p>
<p>As for football, there have been plenty of Ivy Leaguers who didn’t hang up their cleats after their senior years. My era at Yale had two future Pro Bowlers: Gary Fencik (Chicago Bears) and John Spagnola (Philadelphia Eagles).</p>
<p>“If you want, I can introduce you to some “Asian” MMA stars who would make your face get familiar with their fists”.</p>
<p>Kung Fu, Taewuando, karate,… are good for movie and show-off. In reality, their practical usage is limited. Based on some controversial studies, the cortex of asian long bones is thinner and sustain less stress. They need technique to make it up to be competitive. I am not 100% agreeable to that. But every stereotype has some truth to it.</p>
<p>It’ll be great if Lin makes the team. Harvard has exactly two of its alumni play in the NBA in the entire history of the league and none since the 1953.</p>
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<p>Whoa, I’m thinking you’ve somehow managed to live this long with ever hearing of sumo wrestling. When those big boys come off the line and hit each other head-on, that’s about as violent as sport contact ever gets. It’s like two 300 to 400 pound NFL linemen hitting each other head-on - while wearing no helmts or pads.</p>
<p>Yes, because we don’t train our armed forces in hand-to-hand combat using many Asian pioneered martial arts. And if you want to see some practical mma, try watching a UFC fight. Judo, BJJ, Muay Thai are all on display, and not in a movie. Also, you have a link for me to examine these “studies”? Don’t forget the Mongols conquered the largest empire in history. There was a lot more than technique involved.</p>
<p>You have evey right to question whether or not Lin will last in the NBA. But you call into question your credibility when you cite his racial bone structure as the source of his potential failure.</p>
<p>Miltary battle is not determined by physical strength, but by military strategy and weapon superiority. You should have better reasoning than using Mongolian empire as evidence of asian physical prowess. Nobody does sumo wrestling in country other than Japan. That is also a bad example of braging Asian being “strong”. Unfortunately, truth sometimes is ugly, but you still have to face it.</p>
<p>It’s true that most of the top sumo wrestlers <em>train</em> in Japan, where the big sumo money is, but many of the top champions come from places other than Japan and/or Asia - Eastern Europe and Polynesia being a particular sumo hotbeds. The point that was being refuted is that Asians are somehow not good at contact sports. Japanese and other Asian sumo wrestlers enage in a very high degree of sporting contact and do just fine whether wrestling their fellow Asians or non-Asians:</p>
<p>Sumo fever has swept the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which has put two wrestlers into the Japanese pro ranks. Georgian sports officials went so far as to build a round earthen sumo-wrestling ring three years ago at their National Sports Arena, where would-be pros now train three times a week. In Brazil, local sumo tournaments are luring tens of thousands of spectators a year, with regional winners from 18 states going on to an annual national championship. </p>
<p>Pacific Islanders and Mongolians, who have long practiced their own tradition of sumo-like wrestling, were the first to break down barriers here more than four decades ago. But the arrival of East Europeans over the past five years has captured attention. Bulgaria’s Kaloyan Mahalyanov, 22 – known here as Kotooshu , or the European Harp – has jumped into the high ranks of sumo, standing out from the chubby champs because of his brooding good looks and tall, muscular frame. Now a sex symbol in Japan – posters and pins of him outsell other wrestlers at sumo stadiums – he has also become a hero in Bulgaria, where all of his bouts are broadcast nationally. </p>
<p>Set to film a new instant soup commercial and negotiating for his own TV show, Mahalyanov, a farmer’s son, is also now fabulously wealthy. The lure of fame and fortune through sumo has become as strong a draw for some young athletes in the developing world as the dream of winning a professional soccer contract in Europe or playing basketball in the NBA. </p>
<p>“There are many young wrestlers like me in Georgia whose only wish is to become a professional sumo wrestler,” said Levan Gorgadze, 18. Gorgadze, 6 feet 5 and 276 pounds, arrived in Japan last month to turn pro after two years on the international amateur circuit. He became interested in sumo when one of his countrymen shot to fame in Japan in 2001.</p>