Jeremy Lin Better Off Playing in Houston?
The latest chapter of the Jeremy Lin story turned into such a New York Knicks-based story that we forgot to ask the most fundamental question of all: Was this development good for Jeremy Lin? The answer, of course, is yes. It’s very good for Jeremy Lin.
Lin is with a team that is willing to pay him $25.1 million over three years. The fact it’s the same Houston Rockets team that cut him before the start of last season makes it even better. He played on a contract worth less than $800,000 last season. He’ll play for more than six times that amount in each of the next two years, and then you can take that new number and triple it for the third year. Jeremy Lin came up.
New Yorkers would have you believe his marketing prowess will vanish now that he’s no longer playing at Madison Square Garden. It’s an old perspective that these days is as antiquated as the outright sexism and racism displayed on “Mad Men.” Playing in New York helped ignite the Linsanity phenomenon, no doubt. In 2003, when Ronald “Flip” Murray went from 27 points in his NBA career to scoring 20 or more in 10 of the first 11 games of the season, he received nowhere near as much attention as Lin, in part because Murray was playing in Seattle. Playing in New York made Lin so big that the speculation about his next move even interrupted DwightWatch, like a local TV affiliate breaking into prime-time shows to deliver news of severe weather. The 38 points Lin dropped on the Lakers in the Garden were enhanced because, as Kobe Bryant noted, “It’s the last historical building” in the league. All of that was good.
Loading ...
