After Jeremy signed with the Golden State Warriors but before the start of training camp, he was talking with a female friend who was a member of the Stanford tennis team. They were chatting about life when she mentioned she knew Amber Liu, an Asian-American athlete from San Diego who had a spectacular career playing tennis for Stanford. Amber won the NCAA singles championship twice and was a four-time All-American.
Amber had married the greatest — and most famous — Asian-American athlete ever: Michael Chang, who in 1989 became the youngest male to win a Grand Slam tournament when he captured the French Open at the age of seventeen. No player of Asian ancestry had ever won one of tennis’s coveted major tournaments.
Michael’s unprecedented victory in Paris electrified the Asian-American community and was a source of pride. Here was one of their own standing atop the sporting world. A picture of him falling into the salmon-colored terre battue of Roland Garros at his moment of triumph was plastered across the front page of many newspapers around the world. Michael then proved that he wasn’t a one-Slam wonder by fashioning a fourteen-year Hall of Fame career that saw him rise to No. 2 in the tennis world.
Jeremy was nine months old — not even dunking Nerf balls yet — when Michael made history in Paris. One can only imagine what Gie-Ming and Shirley were thinking, but Michael’s success certainly opened a mental door that had been closed up to that point. Anything was possible in America if you worked hard enough.
Jeremy asked his Stanford friend if she would help him reach Michael because he wanted to ask him some questions. Jeremy’s rookie season with the Golden State Warriors was beginning, and this whole professional athlete thing was new to him. Who better to know what he was going through than Michael Chang — someone who was a hero to the Asian-American community?
“I talked with Michael before the season started and asked him about being a Christian in professional sports,” Jeremy told me. “I picked up some good ideas, like having a consistent devotional time and a prayer team behind you. So I formed a small team that I sent e-mails to every once in a while with prayer requests and praise reports.”
The fact that Jeremy reached out to Michael Chang for advice on athletic and spiritual matters reveals a lot about Jeremy’s character, so I called Michael just before the NBA All-Star break this year to find out more. We had the following conversation:
What do you remember about Jeremy’s phone call to you before the start of his rookie season? Were you surprised that he found you? Or that he even knew that you played tennis, since there is such an age difference between the two of you? (Michael is forty years old; Jeremy is seventeen years younger.)
Michael Chang: When we spoke on the phone, I tried to be a source of encouragement for Jeremy. I don’t want to go into exact detail about what we talked about, but I knew Jeremy had done very well at Harvard. He asked me what it’s like to play professionally, what were some of the things he could expect in dealing with players who had been out there, what it was like dealing with coaches — stuff like that.
From a spiritual perspective, we talked about how to deal with pressures and expectations and managing our walk in Christ. Obviously, with the way the schedule is in the NBA, it’s very difficult to go to church on Sunday because you’re either traveling or playing. In my case, when I was playing overseas, it was even more difficult because a lot of churches don’t have services in English.
Jeremy said that you talked to him about having a consistent devotional time, a prayer team behind him. Can you talk more about that?
Michael Chang: I think having a prayer team behind you is really, really important. When I was going through difficult things in my career, knowing I had a few hundred people praying for me was huge. That kind of support goes a long way, especially when we sent out prayer requests so people knew where I was and what I was going through. For instance, if I was dealing with an injury or dealing with a difficult circumstance or had a tough match coming up, it was good to know I had my brothers and sisters in Christ on their knees praying for me.
I believe Jeremy has done that. I think he has a team that he sends an e-mail out to and shares prayer requests with. I think it’s very important to do that. In addition, your daily walk — the time you yourself spend with the Lord — becomes instrumental in staying grounded, knowing what’s right and wrong and being able to recognize the difference.
Discernment is important because sometimes you don’t know a person’s intentions until you really get to know them a little bit. The tough thing is that when you’re doing well, everybody is your friend. It’s not easy to distinguish sometimes between friends and those who don’t have your best interests in mind.
With all this sudden fame that happened overnight, what does Jeremy need to pay attention to? After all, the same experience of overnight success happened to you when you won the French Open at the age of seventeen.
Michael Chang: I think Jeremy right now needs to be able to manage his time well. Physically speaking, he’s playing really tough games, many of them back-to-back. He has to physically take care of himself, keep himself fresh, and allow himself to eat well, drink well, and get enough rest.
All of that becomes more difficult now because of the demands placed on him at this time. He’s got a lot more press to manage. A lot more interviews to do. Certainly a lot more autograph signing and pictures. I’m sure he’s dealing with agents and possible endorsements.
He’s got a lot of things on his plate now. I think they’re all good things, but he needs to be able to manage everything well, keeping a proper perspective and having his priorities straight. Certainly some adjustments will have to be made. I think one of the best ways to deal with everything is to have a good support team around him and certainly to stay close to the Lord because you can’t do everything and you can’t please everybody.
Talk to those of us who have never been to the Far East about how famous Jeremy is in China and Taiwan.
Michael Chang: I mean, for him, honestly speaking, it’s going to be crazier in Asia than in the United States. It’s different in Asia because there aren’t as many famous people, as many superstars, so the media attention and paparazzi don’t get dispensed so much.
Here in the United States, it’s like, “Oh, there’s so and so, and there’s so and so.” But in Asia, when you see someone famous, it’s like, “WOW!”
The attention and the photographers and people following you around — let’s face it, it can get intense. I know his family back in Taiwan is being bombarded by press wherever they go. It’s harder to hide over there. When you go to a place like Taiwan or Hong Kong, people will watch your every move; they will follow you everywhere, and it becomes very, very difficult to step out of your hotel room. It’s going to be tough for him when he goes to Asia, for sure, without question.
Did you see Linsanity coming? Because nobody could have predicted this …
Michael Chang: No, I don’t think anybody did. I know that Jeremy had worked really, really hard in the off-season. Obviously he didn’t really have the opportunity to go out and play for Golden State or Houston. He got a couple of minutes here and a couple of minutes there, but he never got the opportunity to start. Houston was particularly tough because they had so many great point guards.
I think his opportunity in New York was a God thing. You know, with Carmelo Anthony unfortunately getting hurt and Amar’e’s brother passing away — my understanding is that Carmelo actually went to the coach during the New Jersey game and said, “Hey, I think you should play Jeremy in the second half.” To hear that from your star player means something. The coach heard that and put him in, and in the second half Jeremy scored something like 24 points in that first game.
Obviously he was ready to play, and I was excited for him and really happy that he played his heart out and didn’t worry about all the other things going on around him.
I’m impressed that you know his story so well. It seems you’ve been following Jeremy pretty closely.
Michael Chang: I have. It’s been exciting. I have been able to watch some of his games on TV, and it’s been nice to be able to see someone with a similar background play basketball in the NBA. He was born and raised in the United States like me, he’s an Asian-American, and he came from humble beginnings. On top of that, he’s a brother in Christ.
I would love to see him do well. For me that would be very exciting because I can’t say there are a whole lot of people I can put in that category. There have been a few young women like Michelle Kwan, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Michelle Wie, but as far as the men’s side goes, I can’t say there have been a lot of top Asian-American athletes. For the most part, I have a fair amount of things in common with Jeremy.
Did you play much basketball when you were a kid, or were you too short?
Michael Chang: I played a lot of basketball. There is one misnomer that maybe people don’t understand: Asians love to play basketball. We’ve had our Christian sports leagues in Seattle and Orange County [organized by the Chang Family Foundation] and pickup games at church, and man, it’s packed with Asian-American players.
We’ve never had anybody break through in the NBA, and up until now, the most famous Asian player has been Yao Ming, but I think it’s a little bit easier to relate to Jeremy since he’s six foot three. Obviously, that is still pretty tall for someone of Asian descent, but not like Yao Ming at seven foot six. But Asians love to play basketball, and I count myself among that group.
How much basketball did you play growing up in Southern California?
Michael Chang: Yeah, I played quite a bit when it was basketball season. I wouldn’t drive to the basket like Jeremy does because I didn’t want to get elbowed or get hurt before a tournament. I’d stay outside and try to play good defense and shoot from the outside.
Have you ever seen Jeremy play in person? If not, will you go see him play when he’s in Los Angeles playing against the Lakers or the Clippers?
Michael Chang: I would love to have the opportunity to go see him play in person. I have never met Jeremy, but I have met his mom and his brother. They came out to talk with Carl and me when I had a speaking engagement in the Bay Area. [Carl is Michael’s older brother, a fine tennis player, who was Michael’s coach during his career.] This was just after he had signed with Golden State. Mrs. Lin wanted some of our thoughts on Jeremy’s career, and I got a chance to talk with her. But no, I’ve never met Jeremy.
Have you been sending him any texts?
Michael Chang: Yes, I have been sending him some encouragement through texts.
Have your parents spoken with his parents? Since they are all from Taiwan, I would imagine they have a lot in common.
Michael Chang: They never actually met, but I think that my dad has been on some phone calls with his mom when she called Carl. From a sports perspective, we have a fair amount of experience dealing with agents and sponsors, which we were happy to share.
For us to have the opportunity to encourage the younger generation, whether it is Jeremy or another tennis player or young junior coming up — we try to take advantage of that. I feel that the Lord has given us a fair amount of knowledge, and there is no reason to hold any of that back. We want to just encourage this next generation to get the most out of the talent that God has given each one of them.
I envision that with Jeremy’s success, a number of temptations will come his way. What can he expect? How can he best deal with this?
Michael Chang: I think it’s important for him to stay grounded in the Word, to spend a lot of good quality time with the Lord.
Unfortunately, the way I understand it, things can get a little bit crazy in the NBA. We have obviously heard a lot of different stories about players in the past and some of the challenges they had to deal with.
When I was on the pro tour, A. C. Green was playing for the Lakers. He often talked about how he was willing to wait for marriage before having sex and how difficult it was to keep that commitment when you’re a Christian who is playing in the NBA. Hopefully, players will respect that Jeremy has certain values and morals that he is not willing to compromise. That is really, really important, but I also think it’s great he is so outspoken about his faith. When someone is that outspoken about his faith, it sets a certain precedence. People are a little less likely to ask you to do something or to be a part of something, knowing that your faith takes first precedence in your life.
I think Jeremy has a good head on his shoulders. You can see it in the way he gives his interviews. He is very humble and gives a lot of credit to the Knicks’ staff and is very complimentary toward his fellow players.
Hopefully, he’ll be a great influence on them, not only on the basketball court but off it as well.
I’ve never been west of Hawaii, and the vast majority of Americans haven’t been past the International Date Line either, so Michael Chang is right: we have no idea what awaits Jeremy when he makes his next trip to Asia. I imagine he and his family will be undertaking a major expedition to China and Taiwan after the NBA season is over. When that happens, get ready for Linsanity 2.0.
Jeremy’s Asian heritage has triggered a fan frenzy throughout Asia, but in China, the reaction has been particularly intense. He’s a hot topic on television sports talk shows, and his Chinese name, Lin Shuhao — the surname is said first in the Chinese cultural sphere — ranks among the most searched items on Baidu, China’s largest search engine.
Jeremy’s ascendency is great timing for Chinese basketball and for the NBA, whose largest overseas market is China. A void was created when Yao Ming, the seven-foot-six center, retired in the summer of 2011 following two seasons of nagging foot and ankle problems that were severely limiting his play.
The heir apparent to the Ming dynasty is now Jeremy, and you can bet your last yuan that NBA league officials are at work right now to position Jeremy as the new face of the NBA’s global empire. He speaks Mandarin but is not fluent, having learned the tonal language from his parents while growing up. They spoke to him in Mandarin, but he replied in English — as kids often do when they speak nothing but English outside the front door.
“I’m a lot better listening to it than I am speaking it,” Jeremy said. “My Mandarin could definitely use some work.”37 He took a few classes at Harvard University to improve his reading and writing skills.
After Jeremy signed his rookie contract with Golden State in the summer of 2010, he received a phone call from Yao Ming, who invited Jeremy to join the Yao Foundation in Taiwan for a goodwill trip that included helping out at children’s basketball camps and playing in a charity basketball game in Taipei. Jeremy, his parents, and his two brothers jumped at the chance to be involved.
Yao Ming: The Jeremy Connection
When American basketball fans think of Asians who play the game, their first thought is Yao Ming, the skyscraper-tall center for the Houston Rockets who retired last year.
Yao wasn’t the tallest player ever to play in the NBA — seven-foot-seven centers Manute Bol and Gheorghe Muresan share that distinction — but he was almost half a foot taller than Pau Gasol, Dirk Nowitzki, and Shaquille O’Neal, as well as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain, for that matter. Throughout his eight-year injury-plagued career, Yao was the face of basketball in Asia.
His background is a fascinating story. There are indications that Chinese athletic officials strongly “encouraged” the marriage of two of their basketball stars — a six-foot-nine man, Yao Zhiyuan, and a six-foot-three woman, Fang Fengdi — with the hope that they would successfully produce a basketball center the likes of which the world had never seen.
Fang Fengdi, the captain of China’s women’s basketball team, readily agreed to the grand experiment proposed by Chinese sports officials. The pairing of two very tall people produced only one child, however, and one can surmise Mama Fang must have had second thoughts about going through childbirth a second time after the excruciatingly difficult delivery of an eleven-pound baby boy.
As far as the Chinese basketball federation was concerned, Yao Ming’s birth was just the beginning. When Yao was eight years old, government officials placed him in a sports school, where he would practice five afternoons a week and on Saturdays. Yao hated being forced to play basketball, but he resigned himself to practice out of respect for his parents.
Although he loathed the game for a long time and wasn’t a very good player until his late teens, Yao Ming eventually discovered his game and became an international star. But his brittle body couldn’t withstand the pounding underneath the basket, so we’ll never get a chance to see an NBA matchup featuring Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin.
In Taipei, Jeremy scored 17 points for “Team Love,” which was comprised of NBA players that included Brandon Jennings of the Milwaukee Bucks, Amir Johnson of the Toronto Raptors, and Hasheem Thabeet of the Memphis Grizzlies. Jeremy’s paternal grandmother, Lin Chu A-muen — who still lives in Taiwan — cheered on her grandson. Their competition was Team Heart, made up of players from the Shanghai Sharks and All-Stars from the local Super Basketball League.
The Shanghai Sharks were owned by none other than Yao Ming. Yao and Jeremy bonded during the goodwill trip and have stayed in touch since then. In fact, during the NBA lockout, Yao attempted to sign Jeremy to play for the Shanghai Sharks, a team Yao once played for, but Jeremy turned down his new friend because leaving American soil to play in China probably would have snuffed out his dream of making his mark in the NBA.
Jeremy also received strong interest from Euroleague powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel — it would have been fascinating for Jeremy to play a season in the Holy Land — and from Teramo Basket, a club in the Italian League.
Many Americans don’t realize that ever since James Naismith invented basketball 120 years ago, this team sport has evolved into a game played worldwide, in more than 200 countries, by men and women, young and old, able-bodied and physically challenged.
The “Dream Team” that assembled during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics took the world by storm, setting the stage for an explosion of interest in basketball beyond our nation’s borders. Players like Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls, Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics, Charles Barkley of the Philadelphia 76ers, Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks, and Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers were treated like basketball royalty. “It was like Elvis and the Beatles put together,” remarked Chuck Daly, the Team USA coach.
It’s no coincidence that the globalization of the NBA picked up like a fast break after the Dream Team exited Barcelona with gold medals draped over their U.S. Olympic team outfits. NBA teams toured Europe and played exhibition games against top national teams, as well as against “friendlies” in Asia and South America.
Thanks to these trailblazing efforts, kids in South America, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia — especially China and Taiwan — became passionate about basketball. They play and practice the game and proudly wear NBA jerseys featuring their favorite players. The NBA estimates that 300 million people in China play basketball.
Jeremy earned a boatload of frequent flier miles traveling to the Far East after his rookie season with Golden State. He visited China for the first time in May 2011, playing in a friendly match at a middle school in Pinghu and visiting his family’s ancestral home in northern China’s Zhejiang province. Camera crews and photographers followed him everywhere, and he became immensely popular because of the prominent media coverage. Some authorities in mainland China tried to claim him as one of their own since his maternal grandmother had grown up in China, but Jeremy and his family have identified themselves as Taiwanese, which creates an interesting dynamic since mainland China views the island of Taiwan as a renegade province.
Foreign Players in the NBA
When the “Dream Team” captured the gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, there were only twenty foreign-born players in the NBA at the start of the 1992 – 93 season — just 6 percent of the total number of players in the league.
That number has changed quickly in the last two decades as players like Yao Ming of China, Dirk Nowitzki of Germany, Steve Nash of Canada, Andrew Bogut of Australia, Tony Parker of France, Omri Casspi of Israel, and Pau Gasol of Spain brought their sterling A games to the NBA. General managers have undertaken full-blown international scouting efforts, a tacit acknowledgment that the big gap between the NBA game and the rest of the world has virtually disappeared.
Here’s where we are today: at the start the 2011 – 12 season, there were seventy-nine international players from thirty-seven countries, or 20 percent of the total number of players. Some say we’re seeing more foreign-born participants in the NBA because they are fundamentals-driven players known for their pinpoint passes, surefire shooting, and team-first attitudes.
While Jeremy was in China, the state news media was careful not to talk too much about Taiwan or mention his faith, which is a taboo topic since China is an atheist state. Internet searches related to Jeremy’s faith have been blocked in China. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future.
Jeremy made a second visit to China a few months later, in September, during the lockout. He played in a few games for the Dongguan Leopards, a team in the Chinese Basketball Association that was competing in the ABA Club Championship in Guangzhou, China. Jeremy was named Most Valuable Player, and once again, he was big news in the Chinese media.
I hope things don’t get too crazy if and when Jeremy and his family travel to the Far East to visit his legion of new fans.
But I have a feeling they will.