The Forkes Report

Tim's Favorite Blogs

The Weather
Ruffle Your Shuffle
Eschew Obfuscation
IM Earthling
Kaki West
Silk Road
The Huffington Post
Talking Points Memo
American Progress
Citizens For Ethics
Crooks And Liars
Common Cause

Media Matters

Blog Directories

Thursday, February 16. 2012

Do The Lin D

Have you seen it yet? If you haven’t, then you aren’t plugged into life in these United States — and Taiwan, now that I think of it. Yes, we be talkin’ ’bout Jeremy Lin, point guard for the New York Knicks!

The lowly New York Knickerbockers, the team in the biggest media market in America, if not the world, hasn’t had a championship since President Nixon was in his first term. They have been in the playoffs twice since the great Patrick Ewing filled the paint, but never getting past the first round. That’s over 12 years if you’re trying to do the math, 1999 to be exact.
 I always like Patrick Ewing, after watching him lead the Georgetown Hoyas to the 1984 Final Four and winning the NCAA Championship.
 You might also remember the 1982 NCAA Championship game, when the Hoyas faced the North Carolina Tar Heels. It was a close game, punctuated by a game-winning jumper from an unknown freshman by the name of Michael Jordan.
 With only one point separating the teams, the Hoyas got the ball and were poised to make the last shot and win the game in the final seconds. In what has become one of the most memorable moments in NCAA basketball history, the Hoyas’ Fred Brown passed the ball to the wrong man, James Worthy of the Tar Heels, sealing the win for Dean Smith and North Carolina.

 That isn’t the iconic moment though; that belongs to then coach John Thompson who hugged the inconsolable Brown. For Coach Thompson, winning wasn’t nearly as important as the well being of his players. John Thompson — class act. As for Patrick Ewing, it’s a shame he never won an NBA ring.

Back to the Knicks of today. So, they lost in the first round of the playoffs last year to the Boston Celtics, despite having marquee players like shooting forward Amar’e Stoudemire and center Carmelo Anthony. What the Knicks really needed was a point guard they could depend on the entire game. They had point guards of course, but no stand out stars.

Until two weeks ago. Carmelo Anthony went down with an injury and Amar’e Stoudemire left the team briefly to mourn the loss of his brother who was killed in an auto accident. On top of that, their starting point guard Iman Shumpert went out with an injury so the Knicks picked up Jeremy Lin who had graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics.

Here’s Lin. He goes to Harvard so he doesn’t get an athletic scholarship. He does well enough to get a few tryouts around the NBA, but doesn’t get signed and is instead assigned to the D-League. That’s a whole different issue.

But then on December 21, 2011 he gets the call from the Knicks and six weeks later he plays his first game in the NBA as a starter. And the Knicks have won seven straight since then, often, no, in all six games, the young Jeremy Lin being the catalyst for every one of those wins.

There was a moment in the Knicks game against the Los Angeles Lakers that could have been iconic. Lin had the ball at the top of the key, slightly off to the right. Rather than pass, Lin cut to the basket, past Kobe Bryant and laid it in, or maybe it was a dunk and Bryant, the one player in the game that Michael Jordan says comes closest to being “just like Mike,” could only stand there and watch, looking somewhat puzzled.

But that isn’t the iconic moment everyone is talking about today. Nope. That occurred Tuesday Night, St. Valentine’s Day, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It looked like the Raptors had the Knicks’, and Lin’s number, exposing and exploiting Lin’s weakness, turnovers, to maintain a lead for most of the game.

Until the 4th quarter when Lin found his rhythm, scoring 12 of his 27 points. There were a few highlight reel moments, but the play for the ages, for the moment anyway, occurred in the final seconds when, tied at 87, Lin held the ball for a few seconds, watching as his opposing guard, Jose Calderon, backed off, giving ground for Lin to advance the ball. And so Lin did, stopping just inches from the arc (the 3-point line) and throwing in the game winning shot with half a second remaining.

The Air Canada Centre, home to the Raptors, erupted for Lin, as if it were Madison Square Garden. That, so far, is the iconic moment in the rise of one Jeremy Lin, unlikeliest of basketball heroes.

“Who the hell is Jeremy Lin?”

He’s the guy who, if this level of play continues, will easily be the rookie of the year. He’s the point guard Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni says he can count on for the entire game.

The guy who, until last weekend, was sleeping on the couches of his brother and teammates. The guy with the name that has been morphed into so many superlatives, sports writers can’t even keep them straight.
 Linsane, Linsanity, Linderalla, By My Val-Lin-Tine, just to use the most prominent.

The question is, can Lin maintain a high standard of excellence throughout this lockout-shortened season? Stoudemire was back with the Knicks Tuesday and he had nothing but praise for Lin. Carmelo Anthony called Lin a “dream come true” for the Knicks and says nothing will change when he returns, possibly by this weekend. Lin will be the point guard, in control of the game. “When I get back Jeremy will have the ball in his hands and I’m playing off of that.”

Most likely, all will be well in New York when Anthony returns to the line-up. Just last night (Wednesday) the Lakers easily beat the Sacramento Kings in Madison Square Garden, playing Lin 26 minutes. Although he only scored 10 points, Lin had a career high 13 assists, saying his role isn’t to score 30 points, but to distribute the ball and that he did.

That’s seven in a row for the Knicks with Jeremy Lin at the helm. He’s got the whole world talking, even the news networks. It’s no secret I watch MSNBC relentlessly: Now with Alex Wagner (she’s hot), Martin Bashir, Dylan Ratigan, Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell.

Every once in a while, if I’m up early enough, I’ll catch a bit of Morning Joe, with my favorite conservative, Joe Scarborough, and his co-host, the very liberal Mika Brzezinski. The have a cast of characters that frequent their show: Mike Barnicle and Willie Geist chief among them. Actually, they are regulars, but that’s immaterial for this.

After that comes The Daily Rundown with Chuck Todd, one of the objective reporters in the lineup, as is Chris Jansen who follows him on the schedule. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the most experienced reporter on TV, Andrea Mitchell and the beautiful — and objective — Tamron Hall. Such a fox, but I watch her program just for the news — really!

The point of all that is, I watch too much TV. Naah, I don’t watch MSNBC all day long. Sometimes I flip over to CNN. Actually, I don’t watch all of them every day, but I watch all of them occasionally, but at least a couple of them every day. Never mind, this is a tangent that … err … is becoming too confessional.

The point being, every one of those news programs had a segment on Jeremy Lin — the Linsanity — Wednesday, after the Knicks star won the game in Toronto. Two of those shows, Al Sharpton’s PoliticsNation and Ed with Ed Schultz, had the most famous Knicks fan, Spike Lee weigh in on the phenomenon. Honestly, Spike’s contributions were less than inspiring. He’s Lin’s best fan, next to the point guard’s family (we hope), but he really didn’t add anything to the adulation we haven’t heard before.

Anyway, Linsanity, it’s here, even in this lowly blog. It’s the great American story. An unknown guy comes out of nowhere, if Harvard can be considered “nowhere,” gets an improbable opportunity and makes the most of it. The guy no one, and I mean no one, thought belonged in the league. And now he’s the biggest basketball star on the planet. The New York Knicks jerseys, and Lin’s #17 in particular, are the highest selling sports paraphernalia on the market. Even President Obama is singing his praises.

So I’ll march along with the herd and sing his praises too. I mean really, the guy is exciting to watch. He may single-handedly bring professional basketball back from the dustbin after that season-crippling lockout that wasted nearly two months of the season.

March Madness begins in a couple weeks and Harvard, now in the top 25, will be the most watched college team in the nation, at least until they are eliminated, which will most likely be in the first round.

But, when the NBA playoffs take off in May, keep an eye on the New York Knicks. They may actually make it past the first round. Seriously, they have to get past Boston, Miami, OKC (the Oklahoma City Thunder) and Dallas, not to mention the two L.A. teams, the Clippers and Lakers, to win a championship.

Kobe Bryant wants that sixth ring and LeBron James wants his first and they are driven to succeed. The playoffs are a whole different thing from the regular season. They play five and seven game series, which requires an entirely different strategy with its own tactics. I guess if I were to head down to Caliente in Tijuana or over to a sports book in Vegas, I might drop some money on the Knicks winning it all, considering the odds. With Jeremy Lin they could actually do it.

Today though, we can enjoy the Linsanity. Dig it!

Posted by Tim Forkes in Sports at 09:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

(Page 1 of 2, totaling 2 entries) » next page