Jeremy Lin is No Tim Tebow

May 21, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple Leave a Comment

At the end of last week, I published the first installment and the second installment in the Introduction to “Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity.”  Please consider whether anyone you know might enjoy receiving this book and hearing the story.

* INTRODUCTION – THIRD INSTALLMENT *

The objective of this book is to understand the Linsanity phenomenon. In order to understand the Linsanity, however, one must understand Jeremy Lin. Where did he come from? What made him the player and the person he is today? And what accounts for his extraordinary connection with fans?

Make no mistake: Jeremy Lin’s fame is about more than basketball. His basketball accomplishments alone would have made him a sensation. But it’s the potent combination of his humble heroism on the court, his powerful ethnic heritage, and his profound faith that has made him an icon. Pastors around the country would not be referring to Jeremy Lin in their sermons, and the sports bars in Taipei would not be opening at nine in the morning when the Knicks have a game on the other side of the globe, if Jeremy were not about more than basketball. He emerged at a particular historical-cultural moment that needed him.

Three things will become abundantly clear in the following pages:

  • How easily it might never have happened. As Jeremy told Knicks’ radio announcer Spero Dedes after the seven-game winning streak, “Looking back, I can see why everything happened the way it did.” The better you understand Jeremy’s story–and the story of the Lin family as a whole–the more you will agree. An astronomically unlikely series of events and conditions had to fit together in precisely the right order at precisely the right time to create the conditions for Jeremy’s emergence. Looking back, it’s as though someone were assembling a time bomb for explosion at a later date. If the ingredients had not been fine-tuned, then the Seven Games of Linsanity would never have come to pass. Some of Jeremy’s greatest disappointments turned out to be his greatest blessings.
  • How Jeremy’s cultural inheritance as the son of Taiwanese immigrants has made him a better and more compelling athlete. Prior to Lin’s emergence, if five thousand people had been asked to imagine a 6’3″ NBA guard who produces 24 points and 9 assists per game in his second season, not a single one of those five thousand people would have imagined an Asian American player. Even today, of the 150 top high school seniors ranked by Rivals.com, not a single one of them is of Asian descent. This formed a kind of soft bigotry of low expectations that made it easy for coaches and recruiters to assume that Jeremy Lin could not reach the highest echelons of the sport. The implicit assumption has been that Asian Americans are not athletic enough, or not athletic in the right way, ro not genetically predisposed toward the right physical qualities, for success in the NBA. Jeremy does more, however, than shatter stereotypes. He also points to the plight of Asian Americans and particularly of the Asian American male. Many Asian American men have spoken openly of weeping at the sight of one of their own flourishing in the arena and then receiving the embrace and approval of the world. What’s unique about Jeremy is the way he explodes the negative images of the weak and timid Asian American, even as he embodies much of what is best in Asian American culture and brings that with him into his success. It’s not that Jeremy is a great basketball player in spite of his Asian American heritage. It’s that his Asian American heritage makes him a better player. The community and culture in which he was raised equipped him to strive and persevere and overcome through diligence and smarts. And when Asian Americans see the world embracing Jeremy, they feel the world embracing them.
  • How Jeremy’s particular kind of Christian faith has made him a better and more compelling athlete. As he would tell you himself, the Jeremy Lin story is not really about Jeremy Lin. It’s about something much larger. As athletically gifted as he is, Jeremy has never been able to rely on overpowering physical advantages. Jeremy has not prevailed against all odds on the basis of gargantuan height or Herculean strength or lightning quickness (though he is just as fast and agile as other NBA guards). He has prevailed in large measure because of the courage and persistence and power that his Asian American evangelical faith formed in him–and because of the providential opportunities he was given. Ultimately, he would say, the Seven Games of Linsanity can only be explained as an act of God.

In the memoir Through my Eyes, Tim Tebow tells the story of attending, in the summer before ninth grade, a men’s church retreat where the men and boys competed in contests of strength. The men made a fifty-five-pound curl bar and tested who could pull off the most repetitions. The numbers climbed higher as more men came to the contest. Thirty-five reps, forty, forty-five, fifty, and finally fifty-five. Near the end of the line, Tebow took his turn and won the contest–with 315 repetitions of a fifty-five-pound bar. He was not even in high school yet.

Jeremy cannot tell stories like that. He can tell a better one. He can tell a story of a mere mortal who persisted and persevered, who honed his skills and bettered his game and who made the most of his opportunities and saw his dream come true. As he sees it, this is not the story of an extraordinary person, but of an extraordinary God who accomplishes extraordinary things through ordinary people.

* * *

“Honestly, I see my basketball career as a miracle.”

Jeremy Lin spoke those words to me in his Harvard dorm room in February 2010–almost exactly two years before the Seven Games of Linsanity convinced the world of the same thing. It’s worth pondering. Jeremy thought his career was a miracle before he exploded into the firmament of professional sports stars, before he dropped 38 points on Kobe and the Los Angeles Lakers, before he even entered the NBA.

He had good reason. The story of Jeremy Lin’s rise to the NBA is just as improbable as the story of what he did once he got there.

*

I’ll reflect on Jeremy, his career, and the process of writing the book in the weeks to come. If you have not already done so, please buy the book–it’s great for sports fans, for young athletes, for Christians, and for underdogs everywhere.


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The Only Person Who Could Bring Obama and Palin Together

May 18, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple Leave a Comment

Yesterday I posted the first portion of the Introduction to Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity (now available at Amazon in print and digital versions). Below is the second, middle installment.

* INTRODUCTION – SECOND INSTALLMENT *

The seven-game winning streak was a vision to behold.

Jeremy entered the game and the momentum slowly started to build. The buzz at Madison Square Garden became a roar, and the roar became a riot. By the fourth quarter, Jeremy was punctuating every point with pumping fists and barbaric yawps. His teammates were leaping from their seats with silly grins on their faces, like they were watching a high school kid embarrass Shaquille O’Neal. The chants of “Jeremy!” were thunderous, and the formerly skeptical Knicks announcer Mike Breen exclaimed in disbelief, “It’s the Jeremy Lin show here at the Madison Square Garden!” After the win, the fans were euphoric as they flowed out into the streets of Manhattan. Surely it had been a one-night miracle, but they were glad they had seen something so completely, wonderfully bizarre.

Yet the show went on. Two days later, after the Knicks beat the Utah Jazz without their biggest stars on the strength of Jeremy’s 28-point performance, Jeremy said in a postgame interview, “I definitely couldn’t have imagined this.” He gave thanks “to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” because “I can’t tell you how many different things had to happen for me to be here.” Coach Mike D’Antoni painted a less appealing image. For as long as Jeremy has the hot hand, he said, “I’m riding him like freakin’ Secretariat.” Magic Johnson marveled that he had not seen such excitement at Madison Square Garden for a very long time.

At the end of the third victory, Michael Lee of the Washington Post reported that the Washington Wizards fans, who usually leave a trouncing early, stayed to the end to applaud Lin’s 23-points, 10-assist effort. It was like Rocky Balboa winning over the Soviet spectators in his bout with Ivan Drago. The Knicks had now won three straight, and the world was taking note of this Asian-American Jesus-lover who was resurrecting the hopes of the New York faithful. One sportswriter called him “the toast of the NBA, a 6’3″ David among Goliaths, and an inspiration to millions of Asian fans both here and abroad.” His following on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, had leapt from 190,000 to over a million.

So it went. He ran up 38 points against Kobe Bryant. As they waited for Lin to come to the microphone for a press conference, one sportswriter said to another, “I said Lin was a fluke. I should be fired. We all should be fired.” Jeremy said, “This is my dream being lived out.” A writer for David Letterman tweeted, “If Jeremy Lin got down on one knee and Tebowed, the world would implode.” After the victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, USA Today reported that Minnesota had seen the largest crowd in eight seasons and that traffic to the Knicks’ online store had increased 3000 percent. And after Jeremy’s last-minute heroics against Toronto, the most celebrated players in the league were tweeting their congratulations like starry-eyed fans.

Finally, after the Lin-led Knicks scored an impressive win against the Sacramento Kings on February 15, here were the metrics. Seven games, six starts, seven wins. Jeremy Lin had scored 89 points in his first three career starts, 109 in his first four, and 136 in his first five–all records since the merger of the ABA and the NBA in 1976-77. All in all, across the seven-game streak, he had amassed 171 points in 263 minutes of play. His average of 24.4 points and 9.1 assists help up favorably against the averages for LeBron James and Kobe Bryant in the same time span.

This was not a highly touted draft pick. It was an undrafted, twice-waived bench-master who was setting records for the most points scored in his first games as a starter. It was the first Chinese American in the NBA and the first Harvard graduate to play in the league in half a century. It was someone who had been, a week earlier, still getting stopped by security and mistaken for the team’s physical therapist.

Palinsanity

At the height of the Linsanity, there were more Google searches for Jeremy Lin than there were for Jesus Christ and Justin Bieber combined. He appeared on the covers of Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Time in Asia. New York Times columnists were writing about him. President Barack Obama let it be known that he was watching Lin, and Sarah Palin made sure she was photographed with a “Linsanity” T-shirt.

John Schuhmann at NBA.com summed it up: “There is no predicting where this is going, because there is no precedent. All we know is that Jeremy Lin has revived the New York Knicks, has gone from scrub to star like no other player in NBA history, and has captured the attention of basketball fans near and fear…We really have never seen anything like this before.”

How will Jeremy fare without Coach Mike D’Antoni, who resigned March 15? Can Jeremy and Carmelo Anthony find a way to flourish together in the same offense? Time will tell.

Yet those Seven Games of Linsanity will never fade from the annals of professional basketball history. Whatever else may happen in the future, Jeremy has already accomplished something historic, something worth remembering and understanding. Those seven games will always stand as an expression of extraordinary courage and grace under pressure and the miraculous confluence of opportunity and talent and heart. Jeremy, in those games, gave the world a witness to his beliefs, his values, his character.

All of New York City–contentious, anxious, gloomy, dyspeptic New York City–was enthralled. The nation was enthralled. Asia was enthralled. In a season that was never supposed to happen, a player who was never supposed to play accomplished what no benchwarmer was supposed to accomplish. It was dazzling, astounding, and riveting to watch–and it gave hope to benchwarmers and underdogs around the world.

*

Come back tomorrow for the third and final installment in the Introduction, or purchase the book.

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When Jeremy Lin’s Life Was Poised on a Pivot

May 16, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple Leave a Comment

Over the next several days, I am going to publish the Introduction to Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity (available in paperback and Kindle editions) in installments. If you’re a follower of this blog, a friend, or a fan of Jeremy’s, or even if you just love an inspiring story of overcoming against impossible odds or want to show your children a true role model, please consider purchasing the book for yourself or as a gift.

* INTRODUCTION – FIRST INSTALLMENT *

When the New York Knicks’ #17 came off the bench late in the first quarter against the New Jersey Nets on the first Saturday of February 2012, not a single person in Madison Square Garden could have predicted what was about to happen.

Jeremy Lin had a small but faithful following. Some supported him because they were fellow Harvard survivors, some because of his outspoken faith, some because of his ethnicity, some just because they loved his scrappy and fearless style of play. But they did not see this coming. No one did.

Even Jeremy himself had been tempted to despair of his NBA career. In his torturous rookie year with the Golden State Warriors, he had lost the joy of the game. In front of his hometown Bay Area crowd, it had seemed that the only times he left the bench were for demotions to the Developmental League. He wrote in his journal after Christmas in 2010 that he had lost his confidence and felt ashamed of his failure and humiliation. He even wrote on New Years Day, 2011, that he wished he had never signed with the Warriors. Perhaps, he thought, it had been a mistake to believe in the first place that he could succeed in the NBA.

Yet here he stood in a Knicks uniform. He had managed to bear up under the pressure. He had managed to believe for another day. Unrecruited out of high school, undrafted out of college, unretained by the Warriors, unwanted by the Houston Rockets, unguaranteed with the Knicks, Jeremy was due in a couple days to be unloaded from the roster. Yet still he stood. He had survived–through the broken ankle, through the insulting disinterest of the Division I college coaches, through the racial epithets that greeted him at away games, through the stereotype that Asians are not athletic enough, through the draft that never was, through the hardships of his rookie year, and through the anguish when he was cut by the Rockets on the day before Christmas.

He had persevered. He refused to believe that he was destined for a nasty, brutish and short career as the worst player on the worst teams in the league.

Jeremy had been raised in a Chinese American evangelical church in California. His favorite New Testament passage, from chapter five of Romans, describes how suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. He knew the Knicks might cut him within the week–teams had to cut their players or guarantee their contracts by February 10. But Jeremy had learned much from the school of suffering. All the things he had endured had shaped his character, and his strength of character gave him hope. He told himself before the game, If I go down, I’m going to go down fighting.

Yet neither Jeremy nor his fans, his family or coaches, the experts and analysts and professional opinion-mongers–nobody watching that game would have guessed what was about to happen. They could not have foreseen it because it was simply unprecedented. That’s not hyperbole. It’s a mathematical fact.

In that indivisible particle of time–that moment when he stood on the sideline with 3:35 remaining in the first quarter–Jeremy Lin’s fate was poised on a pivot. Everything was about to change. He was about to skyrocket from the lower ranks of the perpetually underappreciated to the pantheon of the most admired athletes in the world. His name was about to spill from the newspaper presses throughout New York City onto magazine covers around the globe and to the top of the world’s largest search engines. His images was about to fly to the farthest corners of the Internet, to shirts and posters and printouts on popsicle sticks in Madison Square Garden and onto television sets from the Bronx to Beijing. Jeremy adjusted the orange “In Jesus’ Name I Play” bands around his wrists–and stood on the precipice of a mind-boggling, stereotype-smashing, season-saving, record-breaking, God-glorifying eruption that would capture the imagination of the world.

*

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment, or go ahead and buy the book.

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LOTD: The Reason Michael J. Fox Agreed to Star in “Teen Wolf”

May 15, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple 3 Comments

Michael J. Fox, Air Guitarring Under the Influence

Matt Drudge has made me (through his frequent links) a regular reader of the Daily Mail, from whence comes this story about a truly disturbing Colombian drug nicknamed “Devil’s Breath.”  Apparently Scopolamine keeps you conscious but effectively renders your inhibitions mute:

Demencia Black, a drug dealer in the capital of Bogota, said the drug is frightening for the simplicity in which it can be administered.

He told Vice that Scopolamine can be blown in the face of a passer-by on the street, and within minutes, that person is under the drug’s effect – scopolamine is odourless and tasteless.

‘You can guide them wherever you want,’ he explained. ‘It’s like they’re a child.’

Black said that one gram of Scopolamine is similar to a gram of cocaine, but later called it ‘worse than anthrax.’

In high doses, it is lethal.

Visit your LINK OF THE DAY for more.  This may seem like a lowbrow link, and perhaps it is, but it raises interesting questions regarding free will and the ability to manipulate it chemically.  Is this a case of eliminating free will, or simply eliminating the obstacles and inhibitions that would normally preclude you from (freely) choosing certain actions?  If I were still teaching philosophy classes, I would bring up Scopolamine and see what the college kids think.  Because they, of course, know everything.

Now, though, we have convenient explanations for many things, including Angelina Jolie’s marriage to Billy Bob Thornton and my decision to crimp my hair in junior high school.  I swear, the Devil’s Breath made me do it.

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Chuck Colson and Prison Fellowship

April 23, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple

Note: This is a special essay in memory of Chuck Colson, not the usual “fragment.”

* * *

The first time I was invited to preach at “Trenton State” (the max-security New Jersey State Prison in Trenton), I was asked if I would tell the story of my broken neck and how God shaped and provided for me through the experience.  So I prepared a twenty-minute sermon and arrived early Sunday and went through the security process to enter the large room where the services were held before the inmates arrived.  I sat with the chaplain and shook the inmates’ hands as they entered (it was, essentially, a “black church” with some of those traditions).

Some of the inmates came because their lives had been transformed by the power of the gospel; some came to get out of their cells.  Those who were serious about spiritual things sat up front, near the pulpit.  The rest sat at the back — hulking, tattooed men serving twenty-to-life, looking angry or sullen.  The chaplain told me, “You have 45 minutes for the sermon.”  But I only prepared a twenty-minute sermon, I told him.  ”Well, we can’t let the inmates mill around; we have to use the whole time.  So…well, just keep talking!”

Great.

Right before the service started, after everyone was seated, the ushers took the pulpit from the front of the room to the back, and told everyone to turn around their chairs.  This only seemed to make the inmates at the back angrier; they’d been duped.  Now they’d be right in front of the pulpit — and now I’d be right in front of them, right in front of the most indifferent and the most hostile, giving a twenty-minute sermon for forty-five minutes.

Really great.

So I started telling my story and reflecting on it.  And you know what?  It was really great.  The congregation was essentially pentecostal; they shouted out Bible verses or phrases or even single words, and those served as seeds of insight that I could unfold.  I followed where the Spirit led, and it was beautiful and astonishing how it all wove together.  I had been asked to give an altar call at the end of the sermon, so after about forty minutes I invited any inmates who wished to give their lives to service to God to come to the front and speak with the chaplain and the deacons.  I don’t remember how many there were — but a handful responded.  What God had created within those four walls was a thriving and growing congregation.  I could not help but think of Thomas Merton’s phrase (in his autobiography, The Seven-Storey Mountain) upon entering the monastic life.  As the gate was locked behind him, he was “enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom.”   Some men found within the walls of that prison a greater freedom than they had ever known — freedom not to travel as they pleased, but freedom from the bondage of sin, freedom from addictions and manipulations and the terror and guilt of unredeemed sin.  Freedom to be who God made them to be.

If prison ministry taught me anything, it’s that there is a profound, unique and undeniable transformative power in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I saw men whose stories of suffering and sin were devastating and horrifying, with lives and souls transformed, dancing and singing for all their might in praise to their creator-savior.  Men who were not only redeemed and repented but refined and matured.

Chuck Colson, I believe, understood this.  He had sinned on a massive scale.  He was brought from the loftiest of heights to the most profound depths.  And in the midst of his humiliation, he found a community of believers who had nowhere else to go but to the gospel.  When I think of Chuck Colson’s legacy, I will think of a living parable of how Christ’s grace redeems even those the world called unredeemable.  I will think of a man who found his vocation in the pit.  And I will think of a congregation in Trenton, New Jersey, and countless others like it scattered around the nation and around the world, inspired by a man who found his calling — and his new freedom — behind bars.

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