Jeremy Linvigoration

It’s common knowledge now that more than half of the world is #Linsane.

V_V!!! #Linsanity RT @JohnSupernova Yup.. Kim K tryna get at him too smh RT @BRUTUSIDOTHIS: Hoes gonna be hoes twitpic.com/8m4zrf

— Sean Bishop (@Sean_Bishop) February 19, 2012

For the past two weeks, it seems like the talk of not just the city, [but] the world, has been Jeremy Lin, the linvigorating new starting point guard for the New York Knicks. His name and story have dominated everything from NBA on TNT, to NBATV, to ESPN & their tasteless employees cracking racially-fueled jokes in their article headlines, to the NFL (3 articles on the main page of nfl.com and constant mentions on NFLNetwork). That’s right—the lintense coverage continues to captivate everyone.

This mass coverage has drawn hate and love from everyone. We’ve all spoken our piece on the 2^nd year pro out of Harvard. Most people refuse to speak with any rudimentary understanding of exactly how impressive he has been. [BTW, “linpressive” does not work.]

The media has made a mockery of Jeremy Lin, and they have exploited him beyond levels of recovery in many people. That doesn’t change the fact that what he has done over the past two weeks is play some of the finest basketball anyone has played over the same two-week course, any two-week course this season, and perhaps any two-week course ever.

Sure, you can bring up his turnovers all you want. Breaking down film of his turnovers, you’ll find that there’s a few of them every game that are legitimate great plays by the defense. However, the turnovers are skewed more by the simple fact that defenses show him the sort of attention no other player receives right now… the sort of attention Steve Nash is thanking God for not having seen night-in and night-out in this same exact offense. Add that to the fact that he is supposed to hold the ball, pass a lot, and try to make plays while drawing an extra defender (or three) and it’s easy to forgive him more than half of his turnovers, unless you’re a die-hard Knicks fan of 13 days.

The most amazing stat though, is his Linning percentage since becoming the Knicks’ starter at Point Guard. He’s 8-2 by my count, and has hit 2 game winners, and piled on points in the 4^th quarter alone in every game.

If you’re sick of the media coverage and exploitation of Lin, turn it off. I’m not here to add to the Linsanity, I’m simply asking you all to be reasonable in your judgment of the guy and consider being honest to the significant impact he has made on the Knicks, the NBA, Asian-Americans, and basketball fans in general. He will get better, and it’s not fair of us to hate on him because ESPN doesn’t know how to not make a comparison to him via every sport on the planet.

So we here at Don’t Laugh salute you, Jeremy Lin. Keep balling and winning games and captivating the world.