While Jeremy was in Toronto, I received a phone call from Pat Williams, the senior vice president of the Orlando Magic. Since Pat came into the NBA in 1968, he has been the general manager of four NBA teams and has written seventy-five books, mainly on the topics of leadership, teamwork, good business practices, being a better parent, and living a successful and rewarding life.
He has also carved out a successful career as one of America’s top motivational and inspirational speakers, speaking 150 times a year to Fortune 500 companies such as Allstate, American Express, Disney, Nike, and Tyson Foods, as well as to national associations and nonprofit organizations. Pat had been a huge help to me with Playing with Purpose, opening doors and offering insights on what the National Basketball Association and many of the players were like.
During our conversation, Pat told me that during his forty-four-year career with the NBA, he thought he’d seen it all — until the arrival of Linsanity.
“I don’t remember anything happening quite like this before,” he said. “You know, a player undrafted from the Ivy League, of all places. Gets cut a couple of times, and then out of desperation, with the Knicks floundering terribly, everything going down the tubes, they throw him into the game. And the next thing you know, he embarks on a five-game rant that the league has never seen before. It’s just an amazing story. Unprecedented, really.”
I asked Pat to put on his general manager hat and lay out a scouting report. “He’s good,” he began. “If you look at him, he’s big at six foot three and 200 pounds. He has some great quickness and intelligence, obviously. He understands the game, sees the big picture. Teams now know you’ve got to really pay attention to him. He’s no longer a secret. He seems comfortable in his own skin spiritually. I think he has an infectious faith, and it’s real. That’s my sense.”
But what really caught Pat’s trained eye was something he has written and spoken about to millions of people over the years — leadership. It is Pat’s belief that the best leaders not only have vision, communicate well, have great relational skills, exhibit strong character, and act boldly, but they also pursue their roles, not for power, but to serve.
Jeremy Lin, he said, had all of these attributes in spades.
“Here is this kid who has been batted around as a young pro basketball player, trying to make it on the big stage, and he comes into New York, and when he gets his chance, he takes the team over. It’s like he said, I am your leader! You have been waiting for me, and I am going to lead. Usually players like this are very sensitive and timid. They wait their turn, and maybe five years later, when they feel more accepted, they’ll step up and lead, but this kid seems to have leadership written all over him. And he isn’t afraid to demonstrate it.”
Pat said that coaches long to see leadership exhibited both on the floor and in the locker room. Many fans are unaware that issues crop up among teammates, if for no other reason than they see each other every single day for months at a time and can get on each other’s nerves. Since people are people, even in the NBA world, irritations, slights, and constant teasing can result in angry words, dirty looks, and disunity.
“Coaches can’t get down in the trenches with these sorts of things, so the guys who can clean up a lot of this stuff in the locker room are invaluable to a team,” Pat pointed out. “That was Michael Jordan’s great strength. He wasn’t just a great player, but he was also a great leader. His coach in Chicago, Phil Jackson, never had to deal with a lot of these issues because they never got to him. Michael would get them resolved. I think we’ll see the same thing with Jeremy because this guy doesn’t look like he’s afraid to lead.”
John Gabriel, the Knicks’ director of pro scouting and free agency and Pat’s coworker for eighteen seasons with the Orlando Magic, said not every great player is a great leader. “I think, number one, that Jeremy has the confidence and the ability to articulate what he sees on the court and communicate it to his teammates and with the coaches. Remember, he’s a rookie for the most part, and yet he’s shown he has natural leadership qualities, a desired attribute that can take many years to develop,” Gabriel said.
Where Are the Tats?
You know what I find to be one of the most interesting things about Jeremy Lin? The fact that he doesn’t have any tattoos. (If he does have any, they would have to be on skin covered by his team shorts.)
It almost seems you have to get inked up to join the NBA players union these days. Tattoos fill fleshy biceps, cover the back, occupy the chest, and run up and down the arms, wrists, and legs of just about every player in the league.
But Jeremy’s skin appears to be a tattoo-free zone, which is refreshing. Tim Tebow doesn’t have tattoos either, at least from what I’ve observed in the pictures taken of him with his shirt off.
I get it that tattoos are cool and a way of making a statement about what’s important to you. But the last time I checked, tats are permanent, which means they’ll remain on your skin until the day you die. Sure, you can get them removed with painful laser treatments, but your skin is never the same after these procedures.
“I think Jeremy’s philosophy is quite simple: How can I help us win this game?” Gabriel continued. “From there, he does whatever he needs to every time he crosses the half-court line. If that means taking and making big shots, he can and he will. But his strongest contribution may be seen in his desire to get others engaged and involved, an attribute felt by every player on our team and witnessed by so many who have enjoyed watching him play.
Can you have a tattoo and still be a Christian? Of course you can. But players seem to forget that life changes. You grow out of your tats. You move on. What’s popular now will be old, old news in five or ten years.
So, it seems that Jeremy and Tim are taking the long view. It’s like they heard stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco’s line in a recent performance: “Why would you put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari?”
Jeremy does make a “body” statement, however, with the sport wristbands that he wears on both wrists. The orange wristbands are manufactured by a Christian company called Active Faith, started by former NBA player Lanny Smith and current Minnesota Timberwolves forward Anthony Toliver. Former D-League teammate Patrick Ewing Jr. introduced Jeremy to Active Faith.
Jeremy’s pastel orange rubber wristbands, which cost $3, read, In Jesus’ Name I Play.
Now that’s a great message — a pretty good bumper sticker, if you will. And Jeremy can change them any time he wants.
“He’s making shots, which is a major component of our team’s offense, and our coaching staff does a great job of instilling confidence in players. If you’re on the court with Jeremy Lin and you’re open, trust that he will find you.”
Risk-Reward Basketball
Throughout February and leading up to the 2012 All-Star Game in Orlando, Florida, Jeremy continued to play at a high level. He logged a lot of minutes — 37.6 minutes over the course of the twelve games — and averaged 22.5 points per game.
If analysts had a bone to pick with Jeremy’s play, it was his turnovers, committing an eyebrow-raising 68 TOs in that twelve-game stretch — an average of 5.6 per game.
The Knicks’ seven-game win streak that marked the start of Linsanity was snapped against the New Orleans Hornets when Jeremy struggled to protect the ball and connect with passes. Eight first-half turnovers — and poor team shooting — put the Knicks in a hole they couldn’t overcome, despite a team-high 28 points, 5 assists, and 4 steals from Jeremy.
Jeremy owned up to what happened on the floor. My bad. But he did clean things up in the second half by turning the ball over only once.
“It was just a lackluster effort on my part coming out and [being] careless with the ball,” he said after the game. “Nine turnovers is obviously never going to get it done from your primary ball handler. It’s on me in terms of taking care of the ball, and also the game in general.”35
He also had a couple of “snowmen” on the stat card — 8 turnovers in the memorable Toronto Raptors’ victory and an ugly 8 against the Miami Heat, when a swarming defense turned up the heat in the forecourt.
A turnover can happen in a variety of ways — the ball is stolen by the opponent, either through stripping away the ball off the dribble or intercepting a pass; a player can mistime a cutting teammate and throw the ball out of bounds, travel with the ball, or commit an offensive foul. Turnovers drive coaches crazy because they are often mental mistakes stemming from a lack of concentration. When the opposing team takes the ball back down the floor and scores quickly, that’s often known as a “four-point switch” on the scoreboard. Instead of your team picking up two points, the other team scores a deuce.
Point guards are especially susceptible to committing turnovers, if for no other reason than that the transitional offense and set pieces both start with the ball in their hands probably 80 percent of the time. It’s rare for a point guard to go an entire game without making a turnover. Coaches are more forgiving of aggressive turnovers — turnovers made when a guard drives fearlessly into the lane to make a play — because he is trying to create a play, to make something happen. Passive turnovers caused by a tentative player — the product of hesitation or uncertainty — are not viewed so kindly.
Jeremy’s turnovers have generally been of the aggressive variety. When Jeremy dribbles the ball past the half-court line, he’s looking to create something new. This may mean working the pick-and-roll with Carmelo Anthony, advancing toward the top of key and tossing an alley-oop pass to a streaking Tyson Chandler for a slam dunk, or drawing a double-team off the right side and hitting Landry Fields for an open look at a 3-point shot in the corner.
But his greatest attribute is his penetration into the lane, where things can get, well, crowded. Three players often collapse on him, and in the tangle of taller, more muscular arms grabbing at the ball, they will sometimes pry the ball away from him.
Turnover.
Forays into the lane are risk-reward efforts. More often than not good things happen — Jeremy either floats in a one-hander or kicks the ball out to one of his open teammates on the wings. This type of penetration is why the Knicks won so many games prior to the All-Star break, when Jerry took the team on a 9 – 3 run.
To counter this line of attack, we’re seeing more teams spring a double-team on Jeremy as soon as he crosses the half-court stripe. Their goal is to disrupt the Knicks’ offensive flow and push Jeremy into one of the corners near half-court, where they can trap him. With two large guys hounding him, passes to teammates can be intercepted. But if Jeremy can get the ball to an open teammate, the Knicks may have a three-on-two break for the basket.
Some clubs try to stop Jeremy by “jumping” the pick-and-roll or applying relentless defensive pressure to take away his passing lanes. A case in point was when the star-studded Miami Heat team, sporting the league’s best record, put the clamps on Linsanity just before the All-Star break — 8 turnovers, 1 for 11 from the floor, and only 3 assists. The Heat did a great job of making Jeremy feel uncomfortable on the floor.
“They were all geeked up for him,” Knicks’ coach Mike D’Antoni said after the game. “They took the challenge and did a great job. It’s hard to be Peter Pan every day.”36
The All-Star Break
Jeremy stayed in the state of Florida following the Miami Heat game because he was a last-second addition to the NBA’s Rising Stars Challenge, a game that was played two nights before the All-Star game. A pool of eighteen players had been selected before Linsanity, but NBA Commissioner David Stern — with a wet finger raised into the wind — called an audible and added Jeremy to the roster of players just before “coaches” Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley began drafting their teams.
Shaq grabbed Jeremy after selecting monster dunker Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers as his first pick. The Rising Stars game was a supercasual lark, about as serious as an after-practice shootaround. Jeremy played a handful of minutes during the exhibition, which was an evening when defense took the night off. Jeremy scored one basket, but he did a great job not expending any energy. After back-to-back games, he needed a break.
Jeremy was supposed to be part of the 2012 Sprite Slam Dunk contest the following night, where the NBA’s best elevators play a dunkathon version of “Can You Top This?” Blake “The Quake” Griffin won the Slam Dunk event the year before when he leaped over a Kia Optima SX parked in the three-second lane. After taking an alley-oop pass from Baron Davis, who was peeking out through the sunroof of the Kia — a choir singing R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” in the background — Griffin slammed home another of his patented one-handed monster jams. (And now you know why Blake Griffin is starring in those Kia car commercials in regular rotation these days.)
For the 2012 Slam Dunk contest, Jeremy wasn’t going to attempt any acrobatic dunks himself, but his teammate Iman Shumpert had been toying with an idea. Teammate Landry Fields would roll into the three-second lane a large brown couch covered with a white sheet. Jeremy would be “sleeping” underneath the sheet. Then at the right moment, Landry would pull off the cover, and Jeremy would pop up and toss an alley-oop to Iman, who would jump over the couch on his way to the rim (a riff on Blake Griffin’s leap over the hood of a Kia). Iman would then windmill a monster jam and come back and sit on the couch with Jeremy. Landry would hand Iman a can of Sprite as his reward for throwing down a great dunk. (Good product placement, guys. Might get you an ad campaign as well.)
At least, that’s how they drew it up, Jeremy told TNT’s Craig Sager, who interviewed Jeremy while he sat on the bench during the second half of the Rising Stars game. “We won’t get a chance to do that [dunk],” Jeremy smiled, referring to a last-minute injury to Iman. “But it was an awesome and creative idea.”
“Are you still sleeping on a couch?” Sager asked, referring to the brown sofa in teammate Landry Fields’s apartment. During the height of Linsanity, Landry tweeted a photo of the most famous couch in the world — the brown velour sofa in his living room. “Let the bidding begin,” he joked.
After hearing Sager’s question, Jeremy laughed. “I have my own place,” he said with a grin.
Jeremy could finally get off Landry’s couch and into an apartment of his own because the Knicks, to no one’s great surprise, stepped up and guaranteed his $762,195 salary for the rest of the year. (Actually, he only receives 80 percent of that amount, or $609,756, because of the shortened season.) His paycheck squarely places him in the 1 percenters, but in NBA terms, it’s chump change and the league minimum for second-year players.
Jeremy is the second lowest-paid Knick, but expect this to change in a big way after the season, when he becomes a restricted free agent, meaning the Knicks can match any contract offer he receives. Because of the intricacies of the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement and the salary cap, Jeremy figures to see an upgrade to $5 million next season. That princely amount, however, will be dwarfed by what he will make off the court in endorsements.
This all seems like Monopoly money when you consider that Jeremy didn’t have many belongings to gather up when he moved from Landry Fields’s apartment into a two-bedroom rental in the 38th-floor residences at the W New York Downtown Hotel. His new crib has a great view of the Statue of Liberty and the new World Trade Center currently under construction. The Manhattan bachelor pad was originally listed at $13,000 a month, but No. 17 reportedly received a steep discount.
It’s a good thing his new place came fully furnished because Jeremy doesn’t have much time to shop at HomeGoods these days. As this book went to press, coach Mike D’Antoni had resigned and the Knicks were fighting to hang on to the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, but a post-All-Star-break string of losses may have doomed those chances. There’s certainly enough incentive for the Knicks to make a late-season push to make the playoffs, even though they’d have to face the Derrick Rose – led Chicago Bulls or the Miami Heat’s triumvirate of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh in the first round.
Once the 2011 – 12 season is over, you can be sure that Jeremy will be headed west — toward his hometown in Palo Alto — and even further west to Asia.
You see, Jeremy is even more popular in his ancestral home than here in America.
Someone Had a Brain Freeze
Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont-based ice cream maker, really stepped into it when they attempted to cash in by producing a limited-edition flavor known as “Taste the Lin-Sanity.”
The ingredients were vanilla frozen yogurt with honey swirls and crumbled fortune cookies. The addition of the last ingredient left a bad taste in people’s mouths, as some complained about the racial overtones.
Ben & Jerry’s apologized and announced that crumbled waffle cookies would replace the offending ingredient.