Speaking Up
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By Marc Stein
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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.
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“I
know where the scratch marks on the wall are,” Lin said. “I know where
the spider webs were.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Lin
spoke about his N.B.A. comeback bid and his activism in a wide-ranging
phone conversation on Monday.
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(The highlights of the interview have been
lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)
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On his
willingness to play in the G League as a nine-year N.B.A. veteran:
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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.
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Lin, with
Santa Cruz, going against the Toronto Raptors’ G League team.Juan Ocampo/NBAE, via Getty Images
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On how
he was received by fellow G Leaguers:
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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.”
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On
facing younger players still trying to establish an N.B.A. foothold:
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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On revealing the on-court incident in which he was called “coronavirus” and speaking out to support the #StopAsianHate
campaign:
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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Lin won a
championship with the Raptors in the 2018-19 season, though he hardly
played during the finals.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
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On his
time in Toronto and winning a championship — but playing only one minute in the 2019
N.B.A. finals:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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On his confidence that one more N.B.A.
call will come:
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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.
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Jalen Green
of the G League Ignite team averaged 17.9 points per game in the
shortened season.Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
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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.
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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
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The Malice
at the Palace on Nov. 19, 2004, left the Indiana Pacers especially
shorthanded the next night against Orlando.Getty Images
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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.
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(Responses
may be lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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).
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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).
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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.
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Numbers Game
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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
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40
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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.
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343
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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).
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28.8
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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.
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11
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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.
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