The Fine Line

Question: In what universe can a Harvard graduate with an economics degree and a budding second career in professional sports still have to preface his resume with the fact that he's Asian-American?

Answer: This one.

I stay up late at night, drinking scotch, worrying about the future of Jeremy Lin. Okay, I would probably stay up and drink scotch anyways but that's beside the point. I wished I smoked cigarettes then I wouldn't have to drink as much.

As simplistic and narrow-minded as you can get, Jeremy Lin is an Asian, playing a black man's game, in a white man's world. Isn't that right, nutcases?

I stand here on my little soap box and vaunt over how there are good people in American media and how proud I was to once associate myself with them.

And for a while they didn't let me down. Jeremy Lin was a great story because he came from nowhere in the NBA stratosphere. He was cut by TWO teams, two really shitty teams actually, got scooped up by the Knicks as bench fodder, found his way into the starting lineup due to injury, and started lighting it up.

The guy's been in the D-league three times. That's essentially basketball purgatory and he's been there thrice. Now he's the starting point guard in Madison Square Garden.

On top of all that, he seems like a completely good-natured man, humbled by his success, but still goes out there and has fun on the court every night. He'll celebrate a big shot, showboat a little bit, and chest-bump his teammates. You know, things that EVERY basketball player does.

I found myself in a weird situation. I was on eggshells waiting for this train to crash. You see, I've been here too long and I'm very cynical and still very disappointed most of the time. Scotch helps.

Jeremy Lin is three years younger than me and he is on a much bigger stage right now, for the first time in his life.

So I stay up late at night wondering if Jeremy Lin knows that the grass hides snakes. Then I thought harder and realized that it wouldn't be long for someone as high as him to notice the snakes.

I was right.

When I first saw the "Chink in the Armor" headline--I thought it was a really tasteless joke. Hell, that still might have been what it was, but it was still real.

For about five minutes, I still clung onto the thought of good in the world. "This can't be real." "There is absolutely no way that this would happen." "It's ESPN, the pinnacle of sports journalism integrity."

That's when it hit me. ESPN is a huge company and there's bound to be a few screws loose. There's editors, and watchdogs, and ombudsmen but if everybody shares the same view point it gets passed all the way through. I'm sure the Ku Klux Klan has a newsletter or something, right?

I jumped off my soap box, kicked it over, and walked off in disgust. I know better than to associate the acts of a few nutcases with the rest of American media, but it was still really depressing.

It was premeditated. Someone was waiting for this opportunity. Doesn't that depress you?

It depresses me. Still, the pendulum swings both ways. For every person that wants him to fail because of the color of his skin there's one that wants him to succeed because of it. And some people like their toast butter side up and some like it butter side down.

It's all the same.

I want Jeremy Lin to succeed because he shouldn't. He should have dropped out of the NBA and gone and taught economics at a university after the Golden State Warriors said, "No thanks, you're not talented enough for us." He shouldn't be sinking game-winning threes at buzzers or leading the Knicks on seven game win streaks.

I love that shit. That's the kind of stuff that I loved writing about and the stuff that made me love sports journalism in the first place.

American media isn't bad, there's just bad people in American media. They haven't stopped me and I certainly hope they don't stop Jeremy Lin. I'm not sure there would be enough scotch to drink on that day.