Linsanity was a crazy couple of weeks for the NBA. Out of nowhere, Jeremy Lin helped turn the New York Knicks into must-see television with his historic run of becoming a starter in the NBA. Essentially taken off the scrap heap of potential fringe basketball players, Lin all of a sudden was producing and becoming an international sports icon. He took the city of New York by storm and turned that run into a lucrative NBA career.
Now he's returning to the New York area after signing a three-year deal for $36 million with the Brooklyn Nets. So is there pressure to make Linsanity happen again and dazzle the Big Apple? Not necessarily for Lin. He says he's "far past that" and won't let the pressure of comments, stories, and possible attention get in the way of concentrating on his play on the court.
Lin also said he will not be driven by others expectations, particularly those associated with LinSanity.
"I'm so far past that," he said of his 2012 run as a New York Knick. "From the outside, really during the season, I don't read anything, tweets or comments or articles or what this commentator said. So expectations are going to be the same for me.and i'm going to go in and keep my mind right. play for God and I think the last couple of years, I've been able to live with the results.
"I played, I think, the right way and that's the way I want to play in Brooklyn."
In 35 games (25 starts) for the Knicks, Lin averaged 14.6 points and 6.2 assists in 26.9 minutes. In a 10-game stretch when Lin truly began to break out, he averaged 24.6 points, 9.2 assists, 4.1 rebounds, and 2.4 steals while playing 38.5 minutes. He had a breakout game off the bench with 25 points to begin that stretch and then Mike D'Antoni put him in the starting lineup for the rest of the season.
Lin was becoming such a big name in a short amount of time that when the Knicks played the Miami Heat in Lin's 11th start, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Shane Battier all argued over which player would get to shut him down. The game went very poorly for Lin, who scored eight points on 1-of-11 shooting.
Since then, things have cooled off a bit. Lin went to the Houston Rockets for two years and was a solid point guard. He went to the Los Angeles Lakers for a season and then helped the Charlotte Hornets get back to the playoffs in 2015-16. Now for the Nets, he'll be asked to just make them competitive as the starting point guard under new coach Kenny Atkinson.
