The Real Jeremy Lin Story

I feel dumb talking about Lin because I've only seen highlights and read about him, as opposed to watching him in real time in a real game. But something struck me today listening to sports radio and all this discussion of what an amazing story it is because how close Lin came to being out of the league and how he just barely made it and how the NBA is biased and they missed this great basketball player because he went to Harvard, is too slow, is Asian, or whatever.

But it struck me: this isn't the story at all. In fact, the amazing thing about the story is that the NBA did find him and that the system DOES work, somehow. Think about this: Harvard, 6'2.5"-slow footed 2 guard. Brought a bad team to the tournament, where they didn't do anything particularly special. How many guys like this come through college each year? Say 10? So in a 10 year span you get, say 100 of these guys that just in basketball terms are roughly the level of Jeremy Lin. How many make the NBA? 5%? Maybe? Think about this - Stef Curry is an undersized point guard/two guard kind of like Lin. This guy brought a school smaller than Harvard to the elite 8 twice. Steve Blake - an undersized, not very athletic point guard - got his team to the final four a couple times, I think. Granted, maybe he had better support, but still, out of college wouldn't it seem like Steve Blake was a better prospect than Jeremy Lin? My point is this - take away the NBA. Say you just started a basketball league from scratch. You need to choose players. Some system develops for evaluating players and assigning them teams. There are about 400 players in the NBA, right? 12 x 32 plus injured reserve, something like that. What system could possibly find Jeremy Lin? Any system finds Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Dwight Howard. A mentally handicapped kid could tell you those guys were making it. How could any system pick a Jeremy Lin out of all the guys in the world to succeed? No single D1 school offered this guy a scholarship. He wasn't drafted by an NBA team.

But somehow he made it. That's the amazing story. Somehow the NBA has a system where a guy like Lin got a chance and he crushed it. Isn't that all we can really expect of any system?