Jeremy Lin

 ( Official Website ) 

On February 10, 2012, in the middle of a Knicks-Lakers game in which Lin scored 38 points, Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock posted the following on Twitter regarding Lin's sexual prowess: "Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight". Hyphen wrote that Whitlock had "reinforced the insipid and insidious 'small Asian penis' stereotype". The Asian American Journalists Association demanded an apology. "I debased a feel-good sports moment. For that, I'm truly sorry," apologized Whitlock.

Also in February 2012, boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. wrote on his Twitter page, "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." In response to Mayweather, NBC New York noted that "no one of any skin color in the history of basketball has done in their first four starts what Lin pulled off for the Knicks last week."

On February 17, 2012, ESPN used a racial slur in relation to Lin. After Lin had nine turnovers in a loss to the Hornets, ESPN posted a headline that read, "Chink in the Armor". The headline was removed 35 minutes later, and ESPN apologized. The ESPN editor who wrote the headline said it had no racial meaning, but was fired. Lin later reached out to the editor and met with him for lunch, and Lin told him he did not think the headline was meant to be racially charged. Knicks radio announcer Spero Dedes also used the phrase on 1050 ESPN New York.

On November 14, 2013, ESPN SportsCenter anchor Jorge Andres apologized on-air after commenting that Lin "was cooking with some hot peanut oil" after Lin's 21-point performance helped Houston to a win over the Knicks.

There has been speculation that Lin's career has been adversely affected by stereotypes about the athletic prowess of Asian-Americans. In 2009, Sean Gregory of Time wrote the following in regard to Lin not having received Division I basketball scholarship offers: "Lin was scrawny, but don't doubt that a little racial profiling, intentional or otherwise, contributed to his underrecruitment." In 2008, Lin said: "I'm not saying top-5 state automatically gets you offers, but I do think my did affect the way coaches recruited me. I think if I were a different race, I would've been treated differently." During Lin's college career, fewer than 0.5% of men's Division 1 basketball players were Asian-American. Peter Diepenbrock, Lin's high school basketball coach, stated in 2012 that he did not think Lin's race affected his recruiting until later seeing 10 Division I coaches express interest in a black student who Diepenbrock assessed as "a nice junior college player". Based on comments that his talents were "deceptive", Lin stated in a 2013 60 Minutes interview that he had a "gut feeling" that his ethnicity contributed to his being undrafted. NBA commissioner David Stern also believed Lin was not drafted due to discrimination. "I don't know whether he was discriminated against because he was at Harvard. Or because he was Asian," said Stern in 2013. Some fans and commentators wrote off his Warriors signing as a publicity stunt. Larry Riley, the team's general manager, denied catering to the Bay Area's large Asian population. He understood that some people would see it that way. "We evaluated him throughout summer league," Riley said. "All that had to happen was for him to confirm what we already believed." While the team created a campaign around him, Riley said it would not have been advisable if Lin was not a basketball player first. Former player and coach Rex Walters, a fellow Asian American, added, "People who don't think stereotypes exist are crazy. If Lin's white, he's either a good shooter or heady. If he's Asian, he's good at math. We're not taking him."

Lin's experience in the NBA draft was used as an example in the nonfiction psychology book The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, which details how stereotypes can overwhelmingly influence a person's decision making, even in the face of contradictory evidence. In the book, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey stated that Lin did very well in pre-draft testing. "He lit up our statistical model," said Morey. "Our model said take him with, like, the 15th pick in the draft."Lewis, Michael (2016). The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. p. 19. A year after the Rockets failed to draft Lin, they began to measure the speed of a player's first two steps; Lin had the quickest first move of any player measured, and he was able to change direction far more quickly than most NBA players. "He's incredibly athletic," said Morey. "But the reality is that every fucking person, including me, thought he was unathletic. And I can't think of any reason for it other than he was Asian."Lewis, p. 20.

The first time Lin went to a Pro-Am game in Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco, a security guard told him: "Sorry, sir, there's no volleyball here tonight. It's basketball." Early in his stint with the Knicks, a security guard at Madison Square Garden stopped Lin from entering the players' entrance, mistaking him as a trainer. After signing with the Hornets, the five-year NBA veteran had to convince security at Charlotte's Time Warner Cable Arena that he was a player.

In a 2015 interview with Pablo S. Torre in ESPN The Magazine, Lin expressed the belief that perceptions of Asians had affected his reputation as a player who was turnover-prone or unable to use both hands, despite statistics that suggested he had improved in both areas. He also noted his reputation as a poor defender who lacked speed, while D'Antoni stated that Lin "was one of the quickest athletes we've ever worked out". Lin also opined that his performance with the Knicks may have gained excessive publicity due to his ethnicity. "People just aren't used to seeing Asians do certain things, so it creates a very polarizing effect," Lin stated. In 2015, Lin said, "I feel like Asians in general don't get the respect that we may deserve whether it comes to sports, basketball, or whatever it might be". Reflecting on the subject of race after he returned to the New York City area in 2016 to play for the Brooklyn Nets, Lin stated, "In some ways, Linsanity wouldn't have been Linsanity if I was a different skin color, most likely, it wouldn't have been as big of a deal, and that went to my advantage, too, but if you look prior to that, a lot of the obstacles to even get to that point where I could get to a position of getting on the floor, those were definitely obstacles that were very much stereotypes that I had to fight along the way. So I've always understood that there's good and there's bad and you have to take them together and just be thankful for it all."

J. A. Adande of ESPN.com wrote that heightened ethnic sensitivity toward Asian Americans was "another way Lin's impact resonates far beyond Madison Square Garden". The AAJA released a set of guidelines to the media in response to what it termed as "factual inaccuracies about Lin's background as well as an alarming number of references that rely on stereotypes about Asians or Asian Americans".

In February 2021, Lin was called "coronavirus" by a fellow G League player, which prompted Lin to speak out against the prevailing Asian hate sentiment following the COVID-19 pandemic. Lin spoke out on social media and to various reporters, emphasizing the importance of continued self-education.

In July 2011, the overseas Chinese Vivid Magazine named Lin one of its top eight influential Chinese-Americans. In April 2012, Lin was named to the Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world. On June 18, 2012, NBA TV announced that Lin was the first-ever winner of the "Social Breakout Player of the Year" Award. He was also the winner of "The EPIC Award". In July 2012, Lin won the ESPY Award for Breakthrough Athlete of the Year. Lin Wins ESPN's "ESPY Award for Breakthrough Athlete of the Year", espn.go.com, July 2012; accessed August 24, 2014. The New York Times wrote: "Jeremy Lin has given Asian-Americans a popular sports figure to relate to". Bleacher Report called Lin an "American icon", explained: "To the rest of the world, Jeremy Lin may be that Asian basketball player from Harvard who was really famous for two weeks or an average NBA point guard who has bounced around from team to team. But for Asian-Americans, Jeremy Lin is our Brad Pitt, our second-most famous person in the world".

In 2014, Madame Tussauds unveiled a wax figure of his likeness at its San Francisco branch. In 2016, Lin starred in an episode of the Comedy Central series Viralocity, playing a heightened version of himself. On May 26, 2021, Jeremy Lin addressed the graduating class of Harvard College as their Class Day speaker.

Hall of Fame player Magic Johnson said, "The excitement Lin has caused in [Madison Garden]], man, I hadn't seen that in a long time". The Associated Press compared Linsanity to Tebowing. Lin appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline "Against All Odds", which the Times called "the greatest tribute". He also made the cover of Time in Asia; Forbes wrote, "Congratulations Jeremy. You have now made the cover of Time the same number of times as Michael Jordan. Linsanity reigns on". Lin's story was also on the front-page of many Taipei newspapers. "I haven't done a computation, but it's fair to say that no player has created the interest and the frenzy in this short period of time, in any sport, that I'm aware of like Jeremy Lin has," said NBA commissioner David Stern.

The Knicks' success due to Lin's play reportedly contributed to the end of a dispute that had for 48 days prevented Time Warner Cable customers from watching Knicks games and other MSG Network programs. The market capitalization of the Madison Square Garden Company, the team's owner, rose by $250 million in February and $600 million by July 2012. The Knicks quickly began selling replicas of Lin's No. 17 jerseys and T-shirts, and the sales and traffic for its online store increased more than 3,000%. Lin's jersey became the best-selling online in the league in the week of February 4, 2012, and the Knicks the best-selling team; the team began selling Lin merchandise on February 10, and one souvenir stand at Madison Square Garden sold out before the game started. His merchandise dominated the displays at Knicks stores, while those for the team's high-priced stars—Anthony, Stoudemire, and Chandler—were moved to the sale racks. He had the best selling jersey in the NBA in February and March. For the one-year period ending April 2012, Lin had the second highest selling jersey in the league behind Derrick Rose. Both Nike and Adidas introduced Lin-related athletic apparel, and expected that his fame would help sales in China. His popularity was attributed with growing the NBA's popularity there since Yao Ming's retirement in the offseason; the audience for NBA games on television and online in China rose 39 percent over the previous season.

Within three weeks of his first game as a starter, at least seven were being published on Lin. He appeared on a second consecutive Sports Illustrated cover, the first New York-based team athlete and the third NBA player in the magazine's history to do so. New York City restaurants introduced new food and bar items in honor of Lin, and sales of Yanjing Beer rose. The city has about 450,000 residents of Chinese or Taiwanese descent—larger than the entire populations of NBA cities like Miami, Atlanta or Cleveland—and viewing parties to watch Lin play flourished in Manhattan's Chinatown. An airline advertised "Linsanely low prices", bids for his rookie card exceeded $21,000 on eBay, and the press circulated rumors—denied by Lin—that he was dating Kim Kardashian. Foreign Policy speculated on his potential impact on Sino-American relations, and Jack Welch and Suzy Welch wrote that Lin's rise was a lesson to business leaders to not let bureaucracy stifle unproven talent. Despite Lin's sudden fame, Sacramento Kings coach Keith Smart stated, "I knew Lin before he was Linmania. He's still the same humble guy. The guy has not changed a bit, which is real special for a young man."

Lin the word Linsanity in 2012 to preempt strangers from profiting from his likeness. Two others had attempted to trademark the term in the first week of February, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office ultimately registered the term to Lin. A documentary film about Lin, titled Linsanity, premiered on January 20, 2013, at the Sundance Film Festival. It was shown at numerous before making its way into .

Ben & Jerry's created a frozen yogurt in honor of Lin named "Taste the Lin-Sanity". It contained lychee honey swirls and fortune cookie pieces. The company later replaced the fortune cookies with waffle cookies and apologized to anyone offended by their Lin-Sanity flavor.

In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the Knicks re-broadcast a week of Linsanity games on the MSG Network. Lin stated: "When I first got the call from my agent like, 'Hey, the want to do this,' I was floored. Because with COVID, right now, New York is going through one of the toughest times that it has seen in decades. It is a very, very tragic time. And the Knicks were like, 'Hey, we need to do something to uplift everybody.'"