LIN INTERVIEW WITH MARC STEIN

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March 16, 2021

Jeremy Lin passed up more money in China so he could play in front of N.B.A. scouts this year in the N.B.A.’s development league.Juan Ocampo/NBAE, via Getty Images

 

Speaking Up

By Marc Stein

 

It was Room 3296 at Coronado Springs Resort, inside the gates of Walt Disney World in Florida. Jeremy Lin said he had memorized every aspect of its layout.

“I know where the scratch marks on the wall are,” Lin said. “I know where the spider webs were.”

 

Lin spent 43 days and 42 nights in that room as a member of the Santa Cruz Warriors, playing in the N.B.A. G League bubble in a bid to make it back to the best league in the world for the first time since the 2018-19 season. After a season of gaudy statistics and rock-star treatment with the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association, Lin bypassed millions of dollars in China to play for $35,000 in the N.B.A.’s developmental league and give scouts ample opportunity to study him.

Lin, 32, finished the G League’s abbreviated season at 19.8 points per game on 50.5 percent shooting and with strong, 42.6 percent shooting from 3-point range, but missed six of the 15 games with a back injury. While he waits to see if he did enough for an N.B.A. team to sign him, Lin once again finds himself in the spotlight as a leading voice in the Asian-American community.

 

After another G League player called him “coronavirus” on the court, Lin, who is Taiwanese-American, has been speaking out against the racism and bigotry that numerous Asian-Americans have faced since former President Donald J. Trump began referring to the coronavirus as the “China virus” last year.

Lin spoke about his N.B.A. comeback bid and his activism in a wide-ranging phone conversation on Monday.

 

(The highlights of the interview have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)

On his willingness to play in the G League as a nine-year N.B.A. veteran:

 

The more that we talked to teams, they were telling my agent: “Hey, we want to see if Jeremy’s healthy, and we want to see if Jeremy can still go. No offense to some of the leagues overseas, but we would love to see him here in front of us, in an N.B.A. system, playing under N.B.A. rules.”

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I know I’m an N.B.A. player. I know I’m a better shooter. I know I’m a better defender. I know I’m more well rounded as a basketball player. I know these things, but I just needed a chance to show it.

 

Lin, with Santa Cruz, going against the Toronto Raptors’ G League team.Juan Ocampo/NBAE, via Getty Images

On how he was received by fellow G Leaguers:

 

There were two instances where a player said to me, “I grew up watching you play.” I’ve never had another player tell me that, but then I was like, “OK, well, you’re 18 or 19 years old, so I understand that.”

On facing younger players still trying to establish an N.B.A. foothold:

 

Ever since I was out of the league, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get back in. Now you can put your money where your mouth is and compete against all these hungry players. It’s the ultimate competitors’ den where everyone in there is just going at each other.

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I’ve been a target my whole life. Since I was a kid, I was either a target because people look at me and they’re like: “Oh, he’s not that good. I’m going to take his head off. He’s lunch meat.” Or they don’t want to be embarrassed by me. Now you add on the whole “Linsanity” thing, and I have an even bigger target, and if you watched the games, I was commanding a lot of attention from opposing teams. But it’s fun.

 

Fans hold up New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin photos during a game against Sacramento in his Linsanity run in New York.Frank Franklin II/Associated Press

On initially not wanting to discuss Linsanity, his run with the Knicks in February 2012 that landed him on Sports Illustrated’s cover two weeks in a row:

 

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That’s how I felt about it for a few years after. But at this point I’ve come around now to really appreciating and embracing it. For a while it was kind of this phenomenon, or this shadow, or this expectation, or this ghost that I was chasing — sometimes chasing, and sometimes trying to run away from. Now it’s more like a badge of honor that I’m really proud of and what it meant to so many people.

At the same time, there’s a lot more basketball left in my body. I definitely appreciate everything about Linsanity and what it taught me, but I really believe I’m a better player now than I was then. The G League validated a lot of what I felt like I was doing in my training but I hadn’t shown yet.

 

On revealing the on-court incident in which he was called “coronavirus” and speaking out to support the #StopAsianHate campaign:

With everything happening recently, I feel like I needed to say something. The hate, the racism and the attacks on the Asian-American community are obviously wrong, so that needs to be stated and that’s part of my role. I also feel like part of my role is to bring solidarity and unity, so I need to educate myself and continue to learn more and also support other groups, other movements and other organizations while also bringing awareness to the Asian-American plight.

 

And then another part is to play basketball and play well, because I think there’s a lot of underlying stuff about Asian-Americans being quiet and passive and just, “Yeah, we’ll tell them what to do and they won’t talk back.” So for me to play basketball at the highest level is going to do more than words themselves can say.

On working with the G League to handle the incident internally without naming the player who directed the slur at him — and Lin’s talks with the player:

 

Everything’s good. It was a really cool conversation. I felt like it was handled the best way. At the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. We were able to just discuss everything.

I wanted to share that everybody is susceptible to these types of things and to racism, but to me that’s not the main focus. The goal isn’t like: “Woe is me. Look at this situation.” The real issues right now are the people that are dying, the people that are getting spit on, the people that are getting robbed, the people that are getting burned, the people that are getting stabbed. That’s where the attention needs to be.

 

Lin won a championship with the Raptors in the 2018-19 season, though he hardly played during the finals.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

On his time in Toronto and winning a championship — but playing only one minute in the 2019 N.B.A. finals:

 

On one hand, I came out of it with a ring. I was the first Asian-American to win an N.B.A. championship, so there’s something super special about that. Even just being in Toronto, to see how the city, how the country, rallied around that team, to go to a parade with two million people — it was incredible, man.

At the same time, honestly, it’s what I needed. I had a 10- to 12-game stretch where I could try to break into the rotation. I didn’t play the way I needed to play, but I learned what I needed to learn. I came off two years of injury and I realized after that stretch that I had to get surgery on my shooting arm that nobody knew about. I never said anything to anybody.

 

It was already starting when I first got to Toronto where something didn’t feel right. It got to the point where, in the playoffs, I couldn’t even shoot a 3-pointer because there was a small bone spur in my shooting elbow. During the playoffs, no one knew, but by the end of the finals I could only shoot out to the free-throw line.

So I had to do the surgery and I was struggling with that a lot, but also mentally I had a lot of trauma and fears from my prior injuries that I hadn’t appropriately resolved. And that’s what Toronto and part of the season in China last year really showed me: You’ve been approaching the injuries like it’s physical rehab that you need. You are already physically beyond where you were before you got hurt. You have to rehab the mental side.

 

On his confidence that one more N.B.A. call will come:

I’ve done what I needed to do. I took on the challenge. I went to the G League when some people thought it was crazy for me to go. I think it’s just a matter of time, and I believe it’s going to happen. We’ll see. I know I belong.

 

The Scoop @TheSteinLine

 

Jalen Green of the G League Ignite team averaged 17.9 points per game in the shortened season.Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

March 13

 

Walnut Creek facilities and resources remain available to the team, but players on the @nbagleague Ignite roster have essentially gone their separate ways now that play in the G League bubble is complete, sources say.

The various star prospects on the roster — Jalen Green, Jonathan Kuminga, Isaiah Todd and Daishen Nix — are expected to train separately now in advance of the NBA Draft.

Veterans on the Ignite roster under contract until April 30 are free to sign elsewhere, sources say.

March 10

 

The Magic are sending strong signals they have no interest in trading All-Star center Nikola Vucevic before the March 25 trade deadline, league sources say.

 

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Corner Three

The Malice at the Palace on Nov. 19, 2004, left the Indiana Pacers especially shorthanded the next night against Orlando.Getty Images

 

You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.

(Responses may be lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)

 

Q: Is there anything the league can do to encourage more stars to participate in the dunk contest? It stinks for fans that the biggest stars refuse to even try. — Andrew Brotherton (Atlanta)

Stein: The reflex answer here has always been for the league and its sponsors to arrange a seven-figure, winner-take-all prize for the dunk champion to persuade the biggest names to risk whatever street cred they think they’d lose by competing. I’m so pessimistic in general about the state of the dunk contest that I’m not even sure that would do it at this point.

 

Would the fallout from a dunk contest flop really be so long-lasting in our short attention span world? It’s evident that many more players than not think that participating comes with some sort of grave risk if they perform poorly.

I got my hopes up when New Orleans’s Zion Williamson was so cryptic about joining the dunk field. I thought he was just trying to build up the suspense before he entered — especially since this All-Star Game was so dependent on this year’s All-Stars filling up the individual skills competitions to reduce the number of players traveling to Atlanta. Gullible me.

 

I think I’ve mentioned before that in my high school days, no annual event was bigger in my circle than the Saturday night every February commandeered by the dunk contest. What’s so frustrating for dunk devotees is that the 3-point contest field only seems to get stronger every year. The prospect of a poor shooting performance and the potential embarrassment apparently doesn’t trouble vaunted shooters as it does dunkers.

Q: The league has been postponing games all season if a team has fewer than eight players available to suit up, but I seem to remember Indiana playing a game after the brawl in Detroit with only six players. This has probably happened on other occasions besides my Pacers example, right? — Jeff Moye (Bogota, N.J.)

 

Stein: Even in the game you’re thinking of, Indiana had eight players in uniform. Two of them (Scot Pollard and Jamaal Tinsley) were injured and couldn’t play, but the Pacers still had to have them dressed to avoid forfeiting the game.

It was Indiana’s first game after the brawl that spilled into the stands at Detroit’s Palace of Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, 2004. The Pacers had a home game against Orlando the next night — without the suspended players Metta World Peace (then known as Ron Artest), Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson. With Reggie Miller sidelined by a broken hand and facing suspension for leaving the bench, Fred Jones and Eddie Gill each played 48 minutes as the Pacers’ lone available guards.

 

There have been other games in which an N.B.A. team used only six players: According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Portland was the last to do so in a win over Sacramento on April 10, 2019. But the league’s requirement to have eight players has been in place for decades.

Leave it to my tireless historian pal Todd Spehr from Australia to inform me that the New Orleans Jazz may have been the last team to play a game with fewer than eight players in uniform on March 18, 1977. Elgin Baylor, then the coach of the Jazz, was granted special permission to dress seven players rather than the required eight because five of his players had been injured in a taxi accident that afternoon. Led by 51 points from Pete Maravich, the seven-man New Orleans Jazz beat Phoenix.

 

Q: Has there ever been a team that had three of the league’s top 20 scorers, as the Nets do? — Meet Kachly (Mumbai, India)

Stein: It’s rare, but it has happened in the modern era. Some examples are provided here even though Kevin Durant has dropped out of the top 20 because he doesn’t qualify for the league leaders now that he has played in just 19 of the Nets’ 40 games.

 

  • 2018-19: Golden State’s Stephen Curry (No. 5 at 27.3 points per game), Durant (No. 8 at 26) and Klay Thompson (No. 18 at 21.5).
  • 2013-14: Rudy Gay did not start the season in Sacramento, but his arrival in a December 2013 trade from Toronto gave those Kings a third top-20 scorer alongside No. 9 DeMarcus Cousins (22.7 points per game) and No. 17 Isaiah Thomas (20.3). Gay was 19th at 20 points per game.
  • 1990-91: The “Run DMC” Warriors had three players among the league’s top 11 scorers: No. 8 Chris Mullin (25.7 points per game), No. 10 Mitch Richmond (23.9) and No. 11 Tim Hardaway (22.9).
  • 1986-87: Seattle had No. 8 Dale Ellis (24.9 points per game), No. 13 Tom Chambers (23.3) and No. 15 Xavier McDaniel (23).
  • 1982-83: Denver had the league’s top two scorers — Alex English at 28.4 points per game and Kiki Vandeweghe at 26.7 points per game — with Dan Issel (21.6) at No. 18.

 

Numbers Game

Carmelo Anthony is averaging 14.2 points per game this season with Portland as he climbs toward the top 10 in career scoring.Steve Dykes/Associated Press

 

6

Only six teams have winning records against teams that are .500 or better. Philadelphia (13-6) and the Nets (17-3) are the lone East teams that qualify; Utah (17-8), Phoenix (13-5), the Los Angeles Clippers (11-10) and Denver (11-10) represent the West.

 

40

The Houston Rockets have not won a game for 40 days, dating to their Feb. 4 victory at Memphis. That was also the last time Christian Wood played for the Rockets before injuring his ankle. He’s averaging 22 points and 10.2 rebounds per game.

 

343

Portland’s Carmelo Anthony needs 343 more points to pass Elvin Hayes (27,313 points) for 10th place in N.B.A. regular-season scoring. The only players above Anthony on the league’s scoring charts who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame are not yet eligible: No. 3 LeBron James (35,211) and No. 6 Dirk Nowitzki (31,560).

 

28.8

With his recent Most Valuable Player Award-winning performance in Atlanta, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo improved his scoring average in the All-Star Game to a record 28.8 points per game.

 

11

Another interesting history reminder from the aforementioned @ToddSpehr35: Active rosters were reduced to 11 players from 12 for the 1977-78 season through 1980-81. The league voted to go back to 12 for the 1981-82 season. Including two slots for two-way players, teams can have rosters of 17 players and, in this pandemic season, list 15 as active for each game.

 

Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.

 

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Lin Tells Why He Chose G League for Comeback

For years after the three-week stretch that made him an international phenomenon, Jeremy Lin went out of his way to avoid saying “Linsanity.” The word, which he trademarked in 2012 to prevent strangers from profiting off his image, carried too much trauma. It had been coined by Knicks fans to describe their excitement for an unheralded reserve who blossomed — seemingly overnight — into a franchise hero, but it took on a less complimentary meaning when Lin failed to recapture the greatness he exhibited during those 18 days in February. As Lin ping-ponged among six franchises in seven years before heading to China in August 2019 when no NBA team signed him in free agency, he came to view Linsanity as a painful reminder of his unfulfilled promise. His legacy was seemingly distilled to less than a month’s worth of games when he couldn’t do enough to be remembered for more. But over the past year, therapy sessions and a memorable season in his maternal grandmother’s home country helped Lin come to terms with his place in basketball history. His recent decision to forgo a seven-figure contract in China and sign with Golden State’s G League affiliate, the Santa Cruz Warriors, for less than the average elementary school teacher’s salary was rooted in little more than a desire to prove to himself that he still belongs in the NBA. Next Tuesday, Lin will report to Santa Cruz for physicals and onboarding ahead of the team’s Jan. 26 arrival at Orlando’s Disney campus for the G League bubble. A 15-game season, which begins Feb. 8, offers Lin a chance to ease NBA front offices’ concerns about his health and efficiency. As one of the faces of the Chinese Basketball Association, Lin lived in a penthouse apartment in downtown Beijing, rode to practices in the backseat of a luxury sedan and often navigated throngs of autograph-seekers to reach the hotel elevator. Now, nine years removed from his last G League game, he is back in a level he remembers best for the time he and his Erie BayHawks teammates ate saltine crackers all day before a game in Portland, Maine, because the team bus had broken down during a snowstorm. “In China, I had so much fan support and so many amazing things going on,” said Lin, who paced the Beijing Ducks last season in scoring (22.3 points per game), assists (5.6 per game) and steals (1.8 per game). “To surrender all of that and to come here, honestly, some people think I’m crazy.” After his Ducks were beaten in the CBA’s semifinals in early August, Lin returned to his parents’ house in Palo Alto. Each morning, around 4 or 5, he awoke as questions about his future raced through his mind: Would he be comfortable finishing his career in front of adoring fans in China? Would he always have a gnawing regret that he hadn’t given the NBA another shot? Lin had heard from his agent that NBA teams weren’t impressed by gaudy stats against inferior competition in the CBA. His quickest route back to the sport’s top level would be through the G League, from where 35 players were called up to the NBA last season. At age 32, Lin recognizes that he can’t afford to waste time. His hope is that, after a dozen or so games with Santa Cruz at the Orlando bubble, he’ll land an NBA contract and show that he should never have had to leave the league in the first place. In Lin’s mind, he is better than he was when he averaged 25 points and 9.2 assists in a nine-game span for the Knicks in February 2012, landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated for consecutive weeks and briefly boasted the league’s top-selling jersey. The string of injuries that hastened his NBA exit — most notably a ruptured patella tendon in the 2017-18 opener with Brooklyn — are no longer an issue. For the first time in half a decade, Lin believes he has regained the killer instinct that was a driving force behind his star-dusted rise to international prominence. The self-doubt that plagued him during inconsistent stints two seasons ago with the Hawks and Raptors has given way to a desire to face the world’s best competition. This transformation started when, after turning down offers to play in Russia, Israel and the EuroLeague, Lin signed a $3 million contract with one of China’s most storied franchises. Though fresh off becoming the first Asian American to lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy, he had felt uneasy about the discrepancy between the media attention he received in the wake of Toronto’s title and the tiny on-court role he played in making it happen. It came as somewhat of a relief, then, when few in China cared that poor shooting had relegated Lin to less than a minute of playing time in the 2019 NBA Finals. When he arrived in Beijing that November, fans swarmed him at the airport. Some supporters, having read about his love for stuffed animals, tossed teddy bears at him. Others gave Lin even more personal gifts, such as a bottle of moisturizing lotion for his apparently dry hands or a scrapbook of his toddler nephew. By mid-January, he had received more All-Star fan votes than any CBA player other than Guangdong Southern Tigers center and Chinese national team captain Yi Jianlian. A couple of months later, when Lin landed in Beijing to resume the Ducks’ season after a coronavirus shutdown, he had his hoodie raised high, ballcap tugged low and face hidden behind a mask when an airport employee asked Lin to sign his white hazmat suit. “They treated me like a rock star out there,” Lin said. “It was a pretty surreal experience.” Weeks before that autograph, when quarantining at the family home in Palo Alto prompted self-reflection, Lin decided he needed help processing the lingering trauma from Linsanity. Mano Watsa — a life coach and owner of a company with which Lin’s foundation has partnered — flew from Toronto to provide intensive therapy sessions. For hours at a time, Lin talked with Watsa about the pressures of superstardom, the disappointment of not giving Linsanity a worthy encore and the fear that he’d forever be defined by less than a month of his life. Even after Watsa returned to Canada, Lin continued to chat with him over FaceTime at least once every two weeks in hopes of again feeling comfortable in his own skin. Along the way, Lin began to embrace Linsanity as a special period in his journey that made Asians, Asian Americans and other overlooked minorities across the world believe that they, too, can aspire for greatness. During his less than 30-minute interview for this story, Lin went out of his way to mention“Linsanity four times. That is important personal growth, but he isn’t content stopping there. Instead of returning to China, where he could revel in being one of the biggest celebrities in a basketball-crazed country of nearly 1.4 billion people, Lin figures he owes it to himself and his fans to see whether he can author another inspirational story. At the start of NBA free agency in late November, he called childhood friend and Warriors assistant general manager Kirk Lacob to request an in-person meeting. A phone call wouldn’t have allowed Lacob, the son of Golden State majority owner Joe Lacob, to see the conviction in Lin’s face when Lin told him how ready he was for an NBA comeback. Over lunch in San Francisco, Lin asked Lacob for a training-camp invite with the Warriors — the same team that gave him his first professional opportunity as an undrafted free agent out of Harvard in 2010. Lacob later informed him that, though the franchise didn’t have a training-camp spot available, it was willing to let him play with Santa Cruz at the G League bubble. Golden State initially planned to sign Lin so that it could waive him and assign him to its G League affiliate. But less than three weeks after that fell through because the Warriors were unable to receive his letter of clearance from FIBA — basketball’s world governing body — in time, Santa Cruz finally inked him last Saturday. “I truly believe that I’m an NBA player, but I’m not in it for the money, the clout, the fame or any of that,” Lin said. “I want to be able to make a difference. I want to bring glory to God through basketball.” 

Connor Letourneau covers the Warriors for The San Francisco

FIRST THREE CHAPTERS...

The Fixers Game

 

 

Chapter 1

New York City

Reggie James was in the right place at the right time.

He was sitting in front of a window in his second-floor apartment smoking weed and staring down at the alley next to his building. He had the window open and had placed a small fan on the sill to blow the smoke out. His mama would kill him if she found out he was doing weed in the house.

Reggie was texting his girlfriend when he noticed a man wearing a suit walk into the alley. Nobody in this crappy neighborhood of Bed-Stuy wore suits, and they sure as hell didn’t walk into an alley alone dressed in one.

Reggie’s curiosity was aroused.

As the man stopped to light a cigarette, Reggie sent the text, turned on his iPhone’s video app, and began recording. The suit was standing with his back to him, but the alley was well lit. He figured when the guy turned around he’d be able to see his face real good.

After glancing at his watch, the man took out a cellphone and made a call. He was still on the phone when Reggie saw a tough kid from the hood named DeMarre walk into the alley, pull a gun, and move with purpose toward the suit.

Reggie knew what was gonna go down and was excited to be recording it on his phone.  When he uploaded this to YouTube, it might go viral.

DeMarre stopped ten feet from the suit and said, “Put the phone away and don’t turn around or I’ll shoot.”

The suit stole a quick glance behind him, saw DeMarre with the gun, and did as he was told.

“Now reach into your pocket, like, real slow, and bring out your wallet.”

 After the suit pulled the wallet out, DeMarre said, “Toss it behind you and step forward away from it.”

Keeping his gun trained on the suit, DeMarre picked up the wallet, stuffed it in a front pocket of his jeans, and then sprinted out of the alley.

Reggie had recorded the whole thing.

Now he trained his camera back on the suit. The guy waited a minute and then turned around. Reggie zoomed in on the face. He was maybe in his forties, had a crooked nose that looked like it had been busted a few times, and dark, mean eyes. Suit or no suit, this guy was a badass.

The man happened to glance up, saw Reggie recording him on his iPhone, and frowned.

Reggie kept filming.

He figured the dude would thank him later when the cops used his video to put DeMarre in jail.

The suit took out his phone again. He was only on it a few seconds. Then he put it away and jogged toward the street. The minute he reached the sidewalk, a dark blue ride pulled up to the curb. As soon as the suit climbed in, the car sped off.

Reggie felt like he was tripping. This was dope, he thought. Way cool. He wanted to send the video to his girlfriend, but figured he’d better call the cops first. His mom always preached to him to do the right thing.

As he punched in 911, Reggie thought it was strange that the suit had dashed out of the alley and this car just, like, pulled right up for him. He stopped thinking about it when the cops answered his call.

Nine-One-One, what’s your emergency?

Chapter 2

 Two days later.

Emily Lynch fired the last five bullets in her Beretta 92FS at a silhouette target in the Woodland Shooting Range in Brooklyn. Then she ejected the cartridge and slapped in another one with fifteen nine mills.

She had hit the target’s face and chest so many times it was shredded.  No surprise there. During her two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lynch had qualified for her Army Marksmanship Badge as an “expert” by hitting the required count of at least twenty-six out of thirty shots.

Every once in a while, men at the Brooklyn range stopped behind her to watch. She suspected they were more interested in admiring her sweet butt than her shooting.

Lynch pressed a button and the target moved electronically along a pulley until it reached her stall. She removed it, replaced it with a fresh one, and then let it go out the maximum range distance, twenty-five yards. After stifling a yawn, she began blistering the head again.

Emily Lynch was bored.

She was a private investigator, and her partner, Frank Boff, was in Los Angeles vacationing with his wife. As a result, she didn’t have an active case to work on.

Lynch wasn’t good at dealing with down time.

She didn’t go to movies, museums, or sports events. And although she was a statuesque six-foot-tall and had the looks of a runway model, she didn’t like shopping for clothes, either. The majority of her wardrobe consisted of jeans, T-shirts, and white blouses. The only clothing indulgence she allowed herself was the black lace bras she bought from Victoria’s Secret size 34d, which barely contained her ample breasts. She usually left her blouses open three or four buttons on the top to expose her cleavage and make men stare. Lynch got a kick out of that. She was a look-don’t-touch kinda girl. It was the rare guy she allowed within hands reach of her body, and nobody since her last boyfriend turned out to be a stone-cold killer.

The only thing Lynch liked doing during down time, besides shooting up targets, was drinking Jameson whiskey at one of her favorite dive bars. Back when she was with the NYPD she had trouble keeping the cap on the bottle, even on duty. She had been warned by her supervisor several times to lay off the booze. She tried and failed miserably. Eventually she was suspended. When she showed up drunk to one of her required AA meetings, she was fired.

Without a job and nothing to do, Lynch lost all self-control. She spent so much money drinking Jameson at bars she couldn’t pay her rent and wound up homeless for a while. She slept in shelters, subways, and sometimes picked up a drunk at a bar and stayed the night at his place. She didn’t like to think about all that.

Just when she was at her lowest, Boff entered her life. He was close friends with her uncle, Mike Cassidy, a retired star columnist for the Daily News. Uncle Mike hooked her up with Boff on a couple of cold case murder investigations. Although they didn’t particularly like each other, she did well enough that eventually he offered to partner with her. As part of their deal, she had to promise to keep her drinking reasonably under control. For the most part, she did.

As she aimed at the target, she felt her phone vibrate in her jeans pocket. Phone usage is not allowed on shooting ranges, so she slid her gun into her ankle holster, took off her earmuffs, and walked out into the lobby to answer it. She recognized the caller’s number and smiled. It was her Army buddy.

“Hey, what’s up, Kelly?” she said.

You still got my back, right?

“Now and forever. Where you been, girl? We haven’t spoken since last week.”

I know. My bad.

“How’s life as a public defender?”

About as good as life was in Iraq.

Lynch laughed. “Come on Kell, nobody’s shooting at you in Brooklyn. It’s gotta be better.”

It is, but sometimes it gets me down.

“Why?”

Public defenders are the pack mules of the court system. I’m juggling about a hundred cases right now. I mean, some days I’m in court with as many as ten clients.

“Then I guess you don’t have much of a social life.”

About as much as you do. Kelly laughed. Anyway, reason I’m calling is I need some help from a private investigator on a case.

“You got it. What’s it’s about?”

 I was handed this armed robbery involving a kid who was caught on a phone cam mugging some suit in an alley at gunpoint. He stole the guy’s wallet and ran off.

“So just plead him out, Kell. I don’t get why you need an investigator for something like that.”

Normally I wouldn’t. But when my client opened the wallet to remove the cash and plastic, he told me there was a badge in the wallet.

“NYPD?”

Negative. He said the badge had a circle with ‘US’ in the center of it and under it ‘Special Agent.’

“That’s not a FBI badge,” Lynch said. “They look totally different. Did it say ‘CIA’ in big letters above the circle?”

No. My client said there was something written around the edges of the circle, but he was so freaked out at seeing the badge he didn’t bother to read what it said. He just took the cash and plastic, wiped off his prints with his hoodie, and dropped the wallet in a wire trash can.

“That was a DEA badge. Did your client look at the dude’s driver’s license and get his name?”

Nope. Like I said, the badge spooked him. What’s really strange is the video shows that when the suit saw that my client had left the alley, he made a quick phone call and then ran out to the sidewalk.

“That’s not unusual for someone who just got mugged.”

Yeah, but the second this guy reached the sidewalk a dark blue car pulled up to the curb. The dude hopped in and the car sped off.

“So, he called somebody to pick him up.”

Emily, the video shows that this guy was on the phone maybe five seconds. That car had to be waiting really close to the alley in order to get there as fast as it did. It may be just me, but something seems strange about that.

“Do you have a copy of the video?”

“Yes. On my computer and my cellphone.”

“Where’s your office?”

I’ve got a luxury suite in Bed-Stuy on the second floor above a Popeyes, with a McDonald’s next door. She laughed again. I’ve put on ten pounds eating that junk. But on my salary, it’s affordable food and sure as hell is convenient when you’re working round the clock with a heavy case load.

“Give me your address. It’s four o’clock. I should be there by four thirty.”

Chapter 3

During their tours of duty in Iraq, Lynch and Kelly Hyland had been best of friends and inseparable. They had first met at a martial arts tournament on the base camp. Lynch was an Army kickboxing champ, and Kelly had her black belt in karate. Those tools came in handy for them when fending off attacks, not from enemy insurgents, but their own male soldiers. Rape was a big problem in Iraq that the Army hushed up. Lynch remembers the anger she and Kelly had felt when her supervisor told a group of women personnel not to go to the latrine or take a shower alone in order to avoid the risk of rape. She and Kelly defiantly went solo.

The first time three men tried to mess with Lynch she put all of them in a hospital. Kelly did the same for some muscle-bound bozo who thought he was a swinging dick. After that, no men tried to harass them.

When their tours of duty were up, Kelly used the Post 9/11 GI Bill to help pay her way through Stony Brook University, and then was accepted at Brooklyn Law School. Lynch chose a different profession. She had never liked high school and had barely graduated. College wasn’t for her. She joined the NYPD and got her gold detective shield when she was thirty-one. She and Kelly remained pals in New York. They tried to have dinner together once or twice a week and texted or called each other almost every day.

Lynch took a cab to the Bed-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Boff always bitched when she invoiced taxi costs to him. He was something of a tightwad and kept insisting she take the subway. He warned her that if she didn’t use the subway, he’d stop reimbursing her for the cabs. But when it came to her, Boff’s bark was worse than his bite, and he kept paying.

As Lynch stepped out of the taxi, she noticed a few homies hanging on a corner brazenly check her out. A couple whistled. One even started to pimp walk her way. She pulled up her pants leg to show her ankle-holstered Beretta, smiled at the homie, and then quickly covered the gun up. The dude put both hands over his broken heart and rejoined his buddies.

There was a plaque on the downstairs door to Kelly’s building:

LAW OFFICES OF

Kelly S. Hyland, Esq.

www.khattorney.net

Lynch smiled at that and took the stairs to the second landing. There was only one door on the floor and it was half open.

“Hey, Kell, it’s me,” Lynch called out and then stepped into the office. What she saw sent a chill down her spine. Kelly was lying face down on the floor with blood pooled around her head.

Lynch pulled her gun and knelt down to feel her friend’s neck for a pulse. There wasn’t any. She stood up and walked in a crouch out the door to see if the killer was lurking. Satisfied he wasn’t, she took out her phone and called the cops. After she had given them a quick rundown of what she had found, she hung up.

Although Lynch felt devastated, she kept her wits about her. As an ex-detective and now a private eye, she knew she had to survey the crime scene before the cops got there and locked it down.

After holstering her gun, she put on latex gloves and looked around the one-room office for four things: the customized leather shoulder bag she had given Kelly as a present when she was accepted at law school. Her computer. Her cellphone, and the licensed Glock 43 handgun she kept in her top desk drawer.

 Lynch spotted the shoulder bag hooked over a wooden chair near her desk. Kelly’s wallet was in the bag. Inside it she found five twenty-dollar bills, two tens, three singles, and four credit cards.

This wasn’t a robbery gone south.

In the distance Lynch heard sirens heading her way. She didn’t have much time. There was a wireless mouse on Kelly’s desk but no computer or cellphone. She saw a computer bag hanging on a hook behind Kelly’s desk. Inside it there was a charger cable for a phone, sunglasses in a case, keys on a chain, a plastic storage bag with toothbrush, dental floss, and toothpaste, and a large bottle of Advil.

She opened the desk top drawer. The Glock 43 was still there. As she closed the drawer, she heard the cop cars pull up on the street below with their sirens still on. She made one last observation. Kelly was not killed at her desk. In all likelihood she had walked out from behind it, either to greet someone, or to try to defend herself. With her gloves still on, Lynch checked Kelly’s hands for defensive wounds. There weren’t any. Her attacker had shot her before she could get close to him.

As she heard footsteps charging up the stairs, Lynch took off her gloves, shoved them in a pocket, and made a silent vow that whoever had killed her friend, that person would be properly punished.


Frank Boff was having dinner at the Napa Valley Grille in Westwood near the UCLA campus with his wife Jenny, daughter Sharon, and her ex-mobster boyfriend, Aaron. Jenny had picked the pricey restaurant to celebrate Sharon and Aaron having made the Dean’s Honors list at UCLA. Boff had suggested they dine at a great hot dog place he had discovered called “Hot Dog on a Stick,” but as usual, Jenny ruled.

Boff cringed when he opened the menu and saw the prices. He ordered the cheapest main course he could find. Something called oven roasted Jidori chicken breast, which the waiter explained was a mixed-breed free-range chicken known for its robust flavor. It came breaded. Boff didn’t think the fancy-ass bird tasted as good as Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the damn dish set him back twenty-seven bucks. To his chagrin, everybody else ordered without regard to price. Jenny took the cast iron seared sea scallops, which cost thirty-eight dollars. Sharon ordered a similarly-priced wild pacific jumbo shrimp dish. Aaron, the nephew of Boff’s friend, Moshe Rosen, the Los Angeles-based Israeli mob boss, ordered filet mignon, the most expensive thing on the menu.

To make matters worse, the restaurant didn’t carry his favorite wine, boxed Almaden Chablis. When Boff had asked for a glass of it, the waiter acted like he had ordered sewer water. He was forced to get a glass of the house white wine, which ran him fourteen bucks. For that kind of money, he could’ve gotten a five-liter box of Almaden and had enough cash left over for two pushcart hot dogs with all the trimmings.

As the waiter cleared away their dinner plates and handed out dessert menus, Boff felt his old flip-top cellphone vibrate in his pocket. He checked the caller ID. It was Lynch.

“Jenny, I’ve got to take this call.”

His wife shot him a disapproving look as he stood up and walked out the front door.

“What is it, Emily?”

She’s dead! She’s fuckin’ dead!

Boff could tell she had been drinking.

“Who’s dead?”

Kelly! My best friend! Some scumbag shot her in the head. Gonna rip his fuckin’ heart out!

“Slow down. Tell me what happened.”

Boff listened while his drunken partner ran down everything, beginning with the call from Kelly. She was somewhat incoherent and slurred words, but he got the gist of it. Boff’s interest picked up when she told him Kelly’s client had mugged some guy carrying a DEA badge, and that the robbery had been caught on a phone video. Then she explained about finding her friend murdered in her office, the missing computer and cellphone, and the cash and plastic in Kelly’s wallet.

“It doesn’t sound like a robbery,” Boff said.

No shit, Sherlock. I think it had something to do with one of her cases.

“Why do you say that?”

 Cause the perp took her computer and cellphone. Hold on second. Gotta throw up.

He heard her retching. When she came back on Boff said, “Stop drinking, Emily.”

Can’t. I’m hurtin’ bad.

“If you want to help your friend, you need to cut out the drinking.”

Easy for you to say. You didn’t see Kelly’s head blown open.

“Did you call the cops?”

Yeah. Two yo-yo detectives questioned me an hour. He heard her throw up again. Boff, while I was being questioned by the dicks a uniform came in…He told the dicks a client of Kelly’s had been killed that same day at Riker’s Island. Guess who that client was?

“The one charged with mugging the guy with the badge.”

Bingo. Boff, I couldn’t a made it through Iraq without Kelly. I loved her. I want to work this case.

“I’ll get on a red eye tonight and be in New York in the morning. I don’t want you handling what appears to be a dangerous investigation by yourself.”

But you’re on vacation.

“You’re my partner.”

Your wife gonna be pissed at you.

“Yeah, well, it won’t be the first time or the last. After twenty-two years of marriage, ten in the DEA and twelve representing felons, Jenny getting pissed off at me comes with the territory.”

If you gonna hate on me for ruining your vacation, just stay the hell in L.A.

Boff sighed. “Look, Emily, I’m happy for the diversion. I’ve been bored to death here. I should get in to New York in the late morning. Right now, I want you to take a cab to my mother’s store.”

Ya gonna pay for it?

“Yeah, yeah. And have my mom make you a pot of coffee.”

Don’t want no coffee. More whiskey.

He lost his temper. “Godammit, Emily! Sober the hell up!”

Boff knew Lynch had rarely seen him lose his temper. It had the desired effect. After a long pause, she said in a low voice, Okay, boss.  

“And don’t do a thing on this case until I get there. I’d hate for you to get killed and have to break in a new partner.”

He heard her spit out a laugh before hanging up.

Boff speed-dialed Lynch’s uncle, Mike Cassidy.

“Mike. Emily’s drunk. But she’s on her way to my mother’s apartment. Get her sober.

What happened?

Boff quickly explained it to him.

Damn. Kelly was my niece’s closest friend.

“I know. Emily wants to work the case. I’m taking a red eye tonight. I’ll hook up with you guys in the late morning and we’ll tackle it together. And Mike, don’t let her out of the apartment tonight.”

Not a chance. She’s sleeping here on our couch, even if I have to tie her down. See ya tomorrow.

 

My Earthquake Story

Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ)

'RUMBLING' RECOUNTED

 NAT GOTTLIEB  
Published: October 18, 1989

One minute I was killing time in the press room waiting for the game to begin. The next moment I thought I was going to be killed.

First the table I was sitting at began to tremble and shake. Then a 10- foot-wide corrugated door attached to the press room shook as if a hundred subway trains were rumbling into Grand Central Station at once.

For 15 seconds Candlestick Park trembled on its foundation. Writers in the press room stared ashen-faced at each other and then one ran to stand underneath a concrete beam. Suddenly, everybody rushed to get under it.

 

Outside in the stands, it was worse. "It felt like I was riding a surfboard," said Bob Blanche, a musician from nearby Pacifica. "I was standing in a soda line when it happened."

 

John Moller, who flew in from Union City, N.J., for the game, tried to find his sense of humor.

 

"I came out here from Jersey just for the earthquake," quipped Moller, who said he sells carpets.

 

From all early indications, there was no panic in the stands.

In fact, hardened Californians, who made up the bulk of the 60,000-plus crowd, seemed to relish what they almost considered a pre-game ceremony.

"People let out a roar right after it, like a cheer for the Giants," said Dave Planka of Southern Hills, Calif. "This will be great for the Giants. It's an omen."

 

For fans in center field, it was not as amusing.

 

One fan who had been in the center-field bleachers, Steve Pressey of San Francisco, was walking around with a huge brick in his hands.

"The whole staircase is littered with these," Pressey said. "We thought the overhead rafter was going to fall right on us."

As Pressey talked to reporters, a fan walked by, saw the brick and quipped, "Have Mitchell sign it, it will be worth money some day," referring to San Francisco left fielder Kevin Mitchell.

 

The quake seemed to last about 15 seconds. Minutes later, people were seen getting in the beer lines.

 

The general feeling was, "Let the game begin."

 

Marty Gaewhiler, a construction worker from San Francisco, even blamed the earthquake on the invasion of Candlestick Park by Oakland Athletics fans.

"That's what happens when you have too many (Oakland) A's fans coming to the Stick (Candlestick)," Gaewhiler said. "The Stick reacted. It's all fun."

 

Among those who were badly shaken by the event was Todd Develbiss.

"I was in the Los Angeles quake in 1933," said Develbiss, 73. "This was much worse. This quake rocked. The other one was more of a roller. I've never been so scared in my whole life."

 

Fans in the upper decks and skyboxes seemed the most shaken.

 

"We were in a skybox and the whole thing was shaking," said Kim Clanton, a bookkeeper from San Francisco. "I've lived through quakes where you had tremors that maybe break things on the shelves, but we were swaying (in the box)."

 

When the game was finally canceled due to lack of electricity, fans filed calmly out of the stadium.

 

Traffic on access roads outside the stadium was hopelessly snarled.

Many people remained in the stadium, drinking beer at the concession stands, which remained open.

 

Meanwhile, in downtown San Francisco, people quickly recovered from the initial shock and remained in good spirits as they waited for power to be restored.

 

Hundreds of people gathered in Union Square to get away from the threat of falling buildings, though there was little apparent damage in the area.

 

Nobody panicked after the quake, and people quickly and quietly left downtown buildings for the relative safety of the streets.

 

Although traffic lights were knocked out, traffic in the Union Square vicinity was moving smoothly.

 

The most obvious damage occurred at the I. Magnin department store on the square, which lost about half its windows from eight floors. Some passers-by were injured by the falling glass.

 

At the supposedly "earthquake-proof" Hilton Hotel, emergency power was on and the staff was dispensing refreshments to guests, who chatted merrily in the lobby.

 

Within 10 minutes of the earthquake, wags on the street were already referring to "the World Series that shook the world." 

NETS SELF-SERVING CONE OF SILENCE ABOUT LIN

My "editorial" on Lin, Nets front office. Make of it what you will.

Nets front office thinks REAL injury updates are not something to share with fans.

But IMO, if you're gonna exploit Lin in marketing, you owe it to Lin/Nets fans to be more upfront about injuries.

For example, does anybody know when debut of what I think is future All-Star Caris LeVert is? No

Nets love using Lin to gain Taiwan/China sponsorships and to sell tickets.

But Lin fans who've never been Nets fans want to know SOME idea of when he will be back. Some Lin fans haven't yet embraced the team. So many Lin fans wanna go to a Nets game when Lin is playing. That's just reality for Lin fan-based nomads who've followed him with 4 prior teams and now Nets. 

But here's what Lin fans are forced to accept as "info", via Newsday's very good beat writer Greg Logan:

"Ok, .@JLin7 fans, update is no update. #KennyAtkinson sd #Lin has been re-evaluated & is "progressing on schedule." What schedule? Dont ask."

"Watched .@JLin7 stretch & go through rehab exercises for hammy after shootaround. Had to leave as he was beginning to shoot. Getting closer."

"But since .@JLin7 is not required to talk to media again until he practices fully, that tells you he's not part of team practices."

When has Lin EVER not talked to media. He isn't talking because super secretive Nets front office has told him not to talk because they know HE will talk about his injury.

I'm not one to advocate that team front offices are required to reveal everything. But this front office, which by the way I GREATLY admire for it's vision and it's signing of players, is way more secretive than need be.

The cynic in me, call him #EvilNathan, thinks Nets withhold Lin info to sell tickets. And I know many Lin followers of me on Twitter want to buy, and have bought, tickets for up and coming games because they want to see Lin.

But again, Nets are not obligated by NBA to provide more than the absolute minimum of info on player injuries.

While I admire virtually everything the Nets front office has done, I feel they're doing Lin fans a disservice by refusing to even given parameters of a time frame when Lin returns, so Lin fans who want to buy tickets to see him have no reasonable info.

I'm 100% behind Nets training staff waiting until Lin is healthy to play him. Lin is HUGE part of this team's chance not only  to make playoffs--however faint writers give them a chance--but also to be big part of helping in developing young players through his great PG skills.

I've said many times, I believe this young developing team with many new faces, including veterans, will start to gel in January and be the kind of high risk low reward team nobody wants to face. 

Am I asking too much to get better insight into when Lin will return? 






LIN LATEST PRAYER REQUEST

Jeremy's full Prayer Request #25: 


Prayer Warriors!!

Here's an update and some more prayer requests:

  • Praise God that we've been growing as a team in chemistry and understanding of each other. It won't always mean wins right away and it isn't always as obvious, but being with the team everyday I can tell we are growing in the right direction!
  • Praise God that He has blessed me with the resources and platform to be able to launch a campaign with One Day's Wages for girls' empowerment. This is a very under-the-radar but crucial issue for the world.
  • Praise God that Ava's scans came back clean. Please pray for her as she heads towards transplant to continue fighting leukemia.
  • Please pray that our team would continue growing as a team in terms of learning to play with each other and in Coach Kenny's system, as well as for our team to further depend on God for peace during times of uncertainty, security during times of trial, strength during times of weakness and joy in every circumstance. Players are interested in Christ, so please pray that Jesus would take over the locker room!!
  • Please pray for the U.S. election that amongst all the negativity and accusations both between presidential candidates and amongst friends, God would bring our nation together under humble leaders in this upcoming election at all levels of government.
  • Please pray for my hamstring to heal quickly and for me to pour my energy into loving and serving my teammates while I'm hurt!
  • Also please pray that I learn, during my time being injured, how to truly rest in God's presence and further surrender this season to Him. It's hard when I can't be out there!!

LIN HIGH SCHOOL COACH TALKS ABOUT "MR. CLUTCH"

Peter Diepenbrock Lin's Palo Alto coach talks about how Lin was key to winning state title his senior year.

"It was uncanny," Diepenbrock said. "You could bank on him every time."

*In Santa Cruz Dad's Tournament semifinals..."We're down a bucket in the final minute of overtime. Jeremy hits a 25-footer. We win (57-55)."

* In consolation title game of Mission Prep Classic against Bakersfield - "We're down three with five seconds left. (Lin) catches inbounds pass, penetrates, kicks and Steven Brown drills a 3-pointer at the buzzer. We win 80-74"

* In semifinals of St. Francis Tournament against San Ramon Valley - "We're up two, their stud (Brandon Adams) gets the ball underneath in the final seconds. Jeremy rips the ball out of his hands, gets fouled, hits free throw. We win (54-51)."

In NorCal semifinals at home against Laguna Creek - "We're tied with 50 seconds to go, (Lin) buries a 3-pointer  from the wing. After a stop, he penetrates, feeds Brown who ices the win (52-46)."

* In NorCal finals against Mitty at Arco Arena - down one with 24.1 seconds to play, Lin draws two defenders and finds Brad Lehman, who drills 3-pointer from the corner. Palo Alto 45, Mitty 43. "(Lin) makes it look easy."

* In state title game - "We're up two in final 30 seconds. (Lin) decides to drive to the basket. He takes on their star (Taylor King) goes over him and makes a layup to ice it."


MIKE D'ANTONI THINKS LIN/MELO/AMARE CONFLICT FACTORED IN HIS GOING TO ROCKETS

NY Post take on MDA podcast with the Vertical with quotes: 

“It was there, it’s real,” said D’Antoni, who was recently hired as the Rockets’ new head coach. “The problem that we had was that for Jeremy to be really good, which he was, he had to play a certain way. It was hard for him to adapt.

“Amar’e, Melo, whatever, kinda had their way they had to play a certain way to be really, really good. So there was that inherent conflict of: What’s better for the team? What isn’t? Can they co-exist? Can they not? And again, they could co-exist if Melo went to the 4, which he really didn’t want to, and if Amar’e came to the backup [center], like the Tyson [Chandler], which he didn’t want to.”

According to D’Antoni, that Knicks team became split as well, as to which brand of basketball would work better.

“So it’s now, ‘What are we gonna do?’ and so, we see how to go and I didn’t know how to get there,” D’Antoni said. “With losing again and you try to prod them and ‘you gotta play harder’ and all the coaches-speak … and communications like deteriorated.

“And then you would see the faces of guys that went through Linsanity and they’re looking at you … they see what we can do, we’re not doing it, they get frustrated.”

This past season, Stoudemire accepted no responsibility for his role in the end of Linsanity, but alluded to Anthony having issues with the rising star at that time.

“If [Lin] stayed, it would’ve been cool,’’ Stoudemire said in February. “But everyone wasn’t a fan of him being a new star. So he didn’t stay long. Jeremy was a great, great guy, great with teammates, worked hard. He put the work in. We were proud of him having his moment. A lot of times you got to enjoy somebody else’s success. That wasn’t the case for us during that stretch. You got to enjoy that and let that player enjoy himself and cherish those moments. He was becoming a star and I didn’t think everyone was pleased with that.’’

Yet D’Antoni’s final comment about his Knicks tenure seemed directed at those “frustrated” role players “that went through Linsanity” — likely excluding Anthony and Stoudemire.

“There’s some guys in the league that I really want to respect me,” D’Antoni said on the podcast. “I respect the way they play, I respect the way they look at the game, and their respect is more important instead of having a job. [If] everybody else is killing me, I’d rather be killed and those guys respect me.

“Relationships deteriorated where I couldn’t get the most out of people. Take me away and they’ll up their game.”

MYTHS AND LIES ABOUT LINSANITY

Linsanity seemingly came out of nowhere, but it was always there waiting to happen, waiting for ONE coach to unleash it.

Lin was capable of doing what he did for Knicks for long time. But no coach recognized it and enabled him

Linsanity was there at Palo Alto HS, but college coaches ignored it. It was there at Harvard but no NBA GM saw it & he went undrafted.

Linsanity was there in D-League, but Lin had to bounce around, tossed away like dirty laundry before MDA, who in reality didn't recognize it, either, but just ran out of healthy guards one night and unchained Linsanity from the bench. Once MDA saw what he'd let out of bottle, he ran with it. Give credit to MDA for sticking with Lin.

Linsanity was put back in the evil Genie's bottle after he left NY by three straight coaches who refused to recognize what he could give them, sometimes out of stupidity, other times out of spite. 

As a result, writers locked into a negative Lin narrative that said Linsanity was over & Lin was just a backup PG who got lucky for couple weeks.

But, nothing could be further from the truth. Linsanity was STILL there. It never went away.

And now Lin comes full circle, back not only to NYC but to the MDA asst coach who helped shape Linsanity, Kenny Atkinson. 

With Lin as starting PG for a coach who'll enable him to do what he always could do since Palo Alto, a better more mature Lin will explode in Brook-Lin.

Linsanity was a word invented by the media to describe the incredible things Lin has been doing all his life on the basketball court. 

Linsanity is just Jeremy Lin. Allowed to be at his best. Period.

CONFESSIONS OF A KNICKS' JUNKIE TURNED JEREMY LIN FAN

After all these years, I still read Knicks' news everyday.

There I said it. I'm outta the closet. And I'm so embarrassed. I  definitely need a support group's help. "Hi, I'm Nathan, and I'm a Knickaholic."

The roots of this addiction were planted in New Jersey, where I grew up cheering passionately for two teams: the Knicks and the NY Giants. If there were other teams in the universe, I was not aware of them.

When I was in my twenties I used to sit in the $5 nosebleed seats at the Garden, drink the piss-warm beer from vendors, and act like every other normal idiotic fan who has no real life.

When I was made Knicks beat writer for The Newark Star-Ledger in my early thirties, I quit rooting for the team cold turkey. You can't root and write about a team. Or at least I couldn't.

I have no idea how I broke my rooting addiction. Maybe it had something to do with having locker room access and traveling all over America with the team. I learned in that period that while many Knicks were smart, wonderful people, a lot of others were arrogant, abrasive jerks. It also didn't help that for six months I had to look up to talk to people who were anywhere from three inches to a foot taller than me (I'm 6'0). I swear I felt short for the whole season.

Bearing in mind that I used to watch the team from the nosebleed seats, my first day of Knicks practice was a huge shock to my nervous system. I mean, gee, I was on the same court as the players AND interviewing them! Holy cow! My virgin practice session was held in the gym at Manhattan's Pace College. I remember trying to pretend like I really belonged there, like Bob McAdoo and I had been buddies for years. Yo, Bob!

But the biggest shock came after all the interviews that day were done and the other NY writers had left. There I was, alone on the court interviewing (gulp) Knicks' coach  Willis Reed, the legendary champion and future HOF. When the interview was done, Willis said: "You want to shoot a game of H-O-R-S-E?

I swear I nearly peed my pants when he said that. I mean, I used to need binoculars to see Reed's face from the nosebleed seats. And NOW I'M SHOOTING H-O-R-S-E  WITH HIM?

(Lin's coming, don't be impatient)

Thus began nine crazy years of sitting court side at games, going on the road with the team, sitting on team buses, flying on Knicks charter airplanes, and staying at the same hotel they did. My life was deadlines, airports, buses, arenas, and first class hotels that eventually all came to look like one big dreaded Hotel Room.

Oh the stories I could tell of those days. I hung out with Hubie Brown's assistant coaches Rick Pitino, Mike Fratello, and many others. Some of the assistants--without naming names--were borderline crazy. If I told you about some of my after hour exploits on the road with assistant coaches they'd all put a contract hit out on me.

Long story short, after nine years of this I was burnt out. And while I still covered many Knicks games at the Garden for 10 more years, I branched out into covering the Yanks, Mets, Nets, NCAA tournament, World Series, NBA playoffs, and local college hoops teams like Princeton.

In 1997 I couldn't stomach sportswriting anymore, quit the paper, took up hanging in coffee bars writing movies and plays, and taking acting lessons. Nathan the Bohemian. And Nathan the Bartender, who served beer and booze from smoky pits crammed with yuppies who were raving drunks stoked on weird stuff like Jaggermeister, Buttery Nipples, and Kamikazies, .

And this is true:

I did not read a sports section, watch a single game on TV, or care about sports until 2007. Ten long years of bliss. No rooting, no agony of gut-wrenching defeats, no nothing. But that year I started watching the NY Giants. And, yup, I was rooting like a fan again. I had exorcised most of the sportswriter shtick from my brain. That being said, I still watch games in schizoid mode: cheer as a fan, analyze as a writer.

While I did root for the Giants, I still shied away from watching or reading about the Knicks. They were dead to me.

Until 2011, when I started taking a peek at a Knick game every so often. Like an alcoholic who says, "I'm just gonna drink a few and then stop." LOL.

Watching the Knicks in "moderation" radically changed when one person came into my sports world. Some kid from Harvard. Harvard? Are you kidding? Harvard guys score points on Wall Street. Become Presidents. They don't play in the NBA. 

I knew nothing about Lin until February 4, when my friend who had watched Lin play with the Warriors, said to me as Lin was called into a game against the Nets, "Watch this kid, he's good."

And oh boy was he good! And FUN to watch!

After that, I traded my old Knicks addiction for Lin Addiction. When he played for the Knicks, I found I could finally go all-in for them again.

My love affair with the Knicks, however, was brief. That summer when Knicks maniac owner James Dolan let Lin go to Houston, Nathan the Lin Nomad was born.

The Rockets were my new team. OK. Got it. Learn about players. Get outraged when McHale benched Lin for Pat who? Scream at Harden to pass the damn ball to Lin when he's standing all alone in the corner. It was two years in Harden-McHale Hell.

Then came the trade to LA. New players to learn about, right? Wrong. I took one look at the coach and the team and said, "I ain't gonna root for this group of misfits, certainly not for Kobe, who was just another Hog version of Melo and Harden.

In LA I began rooting for a one man team named Lin.

Today, me and all of you other Lin Nomads find ourselves with yet another franchise  to learn about. Sigh.

And so I find myself rooting like hell for Lin, and I, uh, hmm, well, yeah, I sorta keep up with the Knicks. 

Being a fan sucks.