By: Dave Cheng, YawkeyTalkies Staff Writer

It’s been over a month since the mini craze over Asian basketball player, Jeremy Lin.  After being featured in Time and Slam magazines and on ESPN, the 6′3 senior point guard from Harvard has receded to the back of most people’s minds, if he hasn’t disappeared completely.  However, for others like me, his name will remain prominent in my consciousness, well beyond his playing days.

Though not a Harvard supporter myself,  I’ve become a huge Jeremy Lin fan.  In case you’ve been living under a rock, Lin, from Palo Alto, California, is the star point guard and leading scorer on the Harvard basketball team.  No, that was not a misprint and yes, I said Harvard and star in the same sentence.  He’s the player that has led the Crimson to wins over Boston College two years in a row, scoring 25 against the Eagles this season.  Lin followed that performance, with an even better one against an even tougher opponent; he put up 30 points against the University of Connecticut.  It was just another day at the office for him, so to speak.  As of February 3, he was averaging over 17 points per game, and over  four assists and four rebounds per game.

Those numbers may not seem amazing at first glance, especially compared to players with better numbers, who play outside the Ivy League.  What is amazing and a bit disappointing, after the election of a minority President, is that Lin has become another reminder that ignorance is still present.  It’s hard to imagine an athlete in this day and age having to experience the hardships Jackie Robinson once faced.  Don’t get me wrong because I’m positive Lin does not have it nearly as hard as some minority athletes had it, but he’s the closest living thing to it.  The most impressive part of his game is that he is able to ignore the bigoted taunts and focus on something less important, basketball.  Something, not everyone could do.

“It’s everything you can imagine.  Racial slurs, racial jokes, all having to do with being Asian,” Lin said in the Time article.  ”I’ve heard it at most of the Ivies if not all of them.”

Lin never cites any specific incident in the article.  Maybe it really doesn’t bother him or maybe he’s able to block it out.  It’s more likely that he just doesn’t want to talk about it.  It’s even more likely that the things that were said are now in the past and there’s just no point in fanning old flames.  According to teammate, Oliver McNally, a fellow Ivy League player once called Lin a “chink,” the equivalent of a white player calling a black opponent a “nigger.”  After the Georgetown game this year, McNally says one spectator yelled “sweet-and-sour pork!” from the stands, the equivalent of someone yelling “fried chicken and watermelon” to an African-American player.  I will never understand how anybody could ever think this kind of talk is okay.

Yes, Lin is a fellow Asian-American.  A basketball breed so rare that it would be like finding Napoleon Dynamite’s favorite animal, the liger (a cross between a lion and a tiger, for those that aren’t aware).  In many of the articles featuring Lin is talk about how there aren’t many of his kind, a player of Asian descent, who is this good at basketball.  I have to wonder sometimes, though, if this man would still be getting this attention if it weren’t for the way he looks.  If he were any other race, besides maybe Indian (no offense), it’s hard to imagine he would be such a big deal.  Lin might be virtually unknown nationally, except for those who follow college basketball.

He puts on a jersey, laces up his sneakers and walks out of the locker room and onto the court, just like everyone else.  He is a good basketball player, nothing more.  Not good for an Asian-American, or good for an Ivy-League player, just simply good.

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