Yesterday, championship boxer Floyd Mayweather caused a minor stir when he took to Twitter and posted this:
Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise..
Is Mayweather right? Well, yes and no. First of all, Lin's fame is far from unwarranted. Lin's produced better in his first four career starts than any player since the NBA/ABA merger twenty years ago, including Lebron James. Secondly, while the Knicks have one of the most star studded and expensive rosters in the NBA, it wasn't until Lin started at the point that the Knicks experienced any kind of sustained success. With Lin logging significant minutes, the Knicks have won five games in a row, all without star players Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudamire. Lin's success in moving the Knicks forward has even made fans hesitant about Carmelo's return from injury.
But has Lin's ethnicity gifted a good player (in the most talent rich era in NBA history) with the hype usually associated with the very best? Well yes, obviously. But attention and fame has never been decided solely on talent. Look at David Beckham, whose looks have had as much to do with his success as his skill on the pitch. Or Chad Ochocinco, whose best days have been behind him for years, but still attracts regular attention from football teams because of his ability to attract headlines and sell tickets.
And while Lin's ethnicity definitely plays a part, there are a lot of other factors creating the hurricane of attention Lin has received. First and foremost Lin plays in New York, the sports capital of the world. Any athlete will receive inflated attention playing for any New York team, especially the Knicks. Baseball loyalties are divided between the Yankees and the Mets, football between the Jets and the Giants, and even the Rangers have to complete with the Islanders (sort of). But if you're a basketball fan in New York, it's the Knicks or nothing. Being a Knicks player means automatically playing for the biggest team, in the biggest market, with the biggest celebrity fans. (Spike Lee has devoted his Twitter-feed to praising Lin for the past week.)
Secondly, Lin's personal narrative is so compelling that it can't help but attract attention. Compare Lin to other Asian stars like Yao Ming and Ichiro Suzuki. Ichiro, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, has flown almost completely under the radar in the past few years, toiling away in the wastelands of Seattle. Yao, certainly received big press during his career, but the attention Yao received was more akin to the other superstars in the league, not like the adoration that Lin seems to receive now. What accounts for the discrepancy? First and foremost, Yao and Ichiro were expected to succeed. Yao, a 7'6 centre had been groomed to play high level basketball from his youth. Ichiro was a monster in the Japanese leagues before moving over to America where he continued his tear. Their careers were expected.
Lin, on the other hand, had none of the pedigree of Yao or Ichiro. Lin didn't receive any athletic scholarships coming out of high school, despite leading his basketball team to a championship. After graduating Harvard (not exactly Duke or UNC in regards to its basketball prowess) Lin toiled on the Golden State Warriors' bench for a season, before starting this year in the D-League.
And for all the positive attention Lin has received because of his ethnicity, there remains obvious public prejudices in regards to how his game is perceived. When scouts describe how Lin, they often point to his 'intelligence' and 'court vision', while neglecting to mention his size and strength (6'3, 200 pounds), and explosive first step. It was assumed that Lin wouldn't be able to play defence, even though he's proven himself to be a decent defender, and that he'd be a better distributor than scorer, even though his stats suggest he's more of a Monta Ellis type point guard than Steve Nash. (The media of course do the same to Black athletes. When MMA fighter Rashad Evans began his career, commentators inevitably described him as athletic, despite the fact that he was one of the more cerebral fighters in the game, and not all that athletic.)
So was Mayweather right? Yes, he was. And is there anything wrong with that? No, there isn't.
