Jeremy Lin’s been a basketball player for most of his 31 years. But that descriptor doesn’t quite explain everything he’s been.
“When I was growing up in the U.S. playing basketball, all anybody ever wanted to talk about was, ‘Oh, that dude’s Chinese. That’s a Chinese basketball player,’” Lin said in a recent interview with the Chinese website RADII. “It was never ‘a basketball player’ growing up. I was never ‘an American basketball player.’ I was never just a basketball player. I was always, ‘That’s a Chinese dude. That’s a Chinese basketball player.’ So for me, I’ve always known that my journey in some ways would end in China.”
Whether or not this is the end of his career remains to be seen, but Lin made it official on Tuesday that his journey will continue in China, signing a contract to join the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association, as first reported by Emiliano Carchia of Sportando.
The deal had been rumored for weeks after Lin found a frosty market for his services during the NBA’s free-agency period. Beijing reportedly offered Lin $3 million—about $750,000 more than he could earn on a minimum salary as a nine-year NBA veteran—to sign on for a CBA regular season that ends in March, potentially leaving the door open for Lin to head back and catch on with an NBA team before the end of the season.
That call might not come. Lin fared well enough to begin last season in Atlanta, averaging 10.7 points and 3.5 assists in 19.7 minutes per game backing up prized rookie Trae Young. But after a February buyout and a move to playoff-bound Toronto, Lin struggled to crack a Raptors point guard rotation that already featured Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet. He got just 27 total minutes of floor time during the Raptors’ postseason run, and only 51 seconds of mop-up work during Toronto’s six-game NBA Finals win over the Warriors. Lin became the first Asian American to win an NBA championship, but struggled to make peace with his limited role in the process, calling it “a championship that I don’t feel like I really earned.” Those feelings only intensified when Lin hit the free-agent market, and didn’t hear the phone ring.
“In English, there’s a saying, and it says once you hit rock bottom, the only way is up,” a teary-eyed Lin said during a motivational speech on Taiwanese Christian media outlet GOOD TV. “But rock bottom just seems to keep getting more and more rock bottom for me. So, free agency has been tough, because I feel like in some ways the NBA’s kind of given up on me.”
“Given up” might be an overstatement. As Tom Ziller of SB Nation wrote, Lin’s chilly market might be more about teams choosing to use their end-of-the-roster spots on younger players with the potential to develop into significant contributors instead of known-quantity vets with injury histories; this might not really be a leaguewide vote of no confidence in Lin’s game. There’s a bitter irony, since eight years ago, Lin was that younger player with potential, hanging around until an opportunity presented itself. And then it did, and the result was a phenomenon not quite like anything the NBA has ever seen, before or since.
We remember the rush of Linsanity—how unbelievable it was in the moment that this out-of-nowhere nobody, undrafted out of Harvard, dumped by the Warriors, hanging on by a thread and praying for survival, was all of a sudden slicing and dicing the Nets, hanging 38 on Kobe’s Lakers, and drilling superhero-ball game-winners on Valentine’s Day in Toronto. What’s also worth remembering, though, are the circumstances that led to the revelation.
The sputtering Knicks team that put Lin on the floor had only Toney Douglas, Iman Shumpert, and what my colleague Jason Concepcion once called “a totally washed Mike Bibby” available at point guard. With Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony both injured, there really wasn’t anybody else on the roster who could create shots. So head coach Mike D’Antoni tossed Lin the keys to his offense. Suddenly, Lin had the freedom to be a ball-dominant, spread-pick-and-roll, every-play engine. It worked out well—like, really, really well—until it didn’t, and until Lin got hurt, and until James Dolan decided that Daryl Morey’s poison pill was too bitter to swallow.
So off Lin went to Houston, where he now had to fit in alongside an ascendant James Harden. That worked OK, too: Lin started all 82 games of the 2012-13 season for the Rockets, averaging 13.4 points, 6.1 assists, and three rebounds per game for a team that won 45 games and made the playoffs. But then Patrick Beverley emerged as Harden’s ideal running buddy—much lower-usage, a much better defender, better equipped to contribute without the ball in his hands. So off Lin went to L.A. ... where he had to fit in alongside a waning Kobe Bryant.
That worked OK, too. Lin put up better per-minute numbers than he had in Houston, and shot a career-high 36.9 percent from 3-point range. But—and this was certainly not Lin’s fault, but it’s true all the same—it didn’t work out well enough for the Lakers to be any good. Before long, he was coming off the bench, first behind veteran Ronnie Price, then behind rookie prospect Jordan Clarkson, on a dreadful team sputtering its way to a 21-61 finish.
So off Lin went to Charlotte, where he had to fit in behind and alongside an ascendant Kemba Walker. That worked out great: The Hornets won 48 games and lost a seven-game grind of a first-round series against Miami, and Lin shined as a complementary piece, finishing seventh in Sixth Man of the Year voting. Lin seemed comfortable, confident. But just fitting into a role isn’t any ballplayer’s dream; you don’t grow up fantasizing about being a sixth man, and you damn sure don’t do it after you’ve become an international sensation.
So off Lin went to Brooklyn, where everything seemed set to give him the second shot at stardom he’d spent years seeking: a return to the New York market, this time as the confirmed starting point guard for a coach, Kenny Atkinson, who’d been an assistant with the Knicks during Linsanity, and who fully believed in what he could do. Then a series of hamstring issues limited him to 36 games in his first year with the Nets, and on opening night of the 2017-18 season, he ruptured his left patellar tendon, knocking him out for the rest of the season. Lin wouldn’t play in Brooklyn again, and spent last season working to recover the step he’d lost—the one he needed to blow by defenders to get into the paint and hold up on defense.
Whether or not Lin should have gotten to be the go-to player at the other stops in his NBA career, when he was playing alongside current or future All-Stars, will always be a matter of some debate. (Given how ardently fans of Carmelo, Kobe, Harden, and Lin tend to express their opinions on social media, it’ll likely remain a spirited one.) But the fact remains that, outside of Lin’s brief healthy stint in Brooklyn, post-Linsanity circumstances never really conspired to allow Lin to play his best and most comfortable role—primary ball handler, shot creator, and high-usage facilitator—when he was most capable of playing it. In China, that won’t be a problem.
Lin will be the unquestioned no. 1 option for the Ducks—the team that, in a neat dramatic turn, famously hosted the redemption of another former Knicks point guard whose NBA career had petered out. He will play alongside a pair of roughly-NBA-caliber big men—Ekpe Udoh, formerly of the Jazz, and Justin Hamilton, who played with Lin on the 2016-17 Nets—in a league that basically rolls out the red carpet for playmaking guards. Ex-Sixers second-round pick Pierre Jackson averaged a league-high 39.8 points and 9.3 assists per game in China last season. Former Pacers reserve Joe Young averaged 36.1 and 5.2. Jimmer Fredette averaged 36 and 5.3. If you can create a shot and make it with any sort of consistency, and beat a defender around a screen to get into the paint, you’ll get plenty of chances to do so; Lin’s going to walk into the highest-usage role he’s seen since Linsanity.
He’ll also do so as, by far, the biggest star in the league. When Lin said in the RADII interview that he’s never been “just a basketball player,” that he’s always been “a Chinese basketball player,” it was an indication that the distinction had been an impediment to overcome. Now, though, it will be his crowning glory—the most decorated Asian American basketball player ever, the perception-altering point guard who captivated a sport and will “never stop reppin Asians with everything I have,” will be welcomed as a conquering hero and a megawatt marquee superstar the second he sets foot in the CBA. He’ll still bear burdens; as an import player, he’ll be expected to lift the Ducks back to title-contending form after a fifth-place regular-season finish and a loss in the quarterfinals of the CBA playoffs last season, and the spotlight on him should be even brighter and more concentrated as the focal point of the league rather than one star in the NBA’s constellation. But perhaps, in this context and at this time, those burdens will be easier for Lin to bear.
Maybe, after a frustrating half-decade of fits and starts, Lin’s found the best opportunity he’s likely to get at this stage of his career—the chance to play his game his way, to show what he can still do on the court when given the green light, even if it’s not on the grandest stage the sport has to offer. This might not be the happiest ending, the one so many hoped for back in 2012 when it looked like Lin was set to explode into the stratosphere. There are worse ones, though.