Feb

21

The question everybody asks but is not willing to answer is "why did nobody recognize Jeremy Lin's talent until it was obvious?"

Well a basketball counter did:

"Truck Driver’s Analysis Predicted Lin’s Potential as a Professional"

However, the obvious answer is prejudice. Not just racial prejudice, that would be too easy and would let the NBA, NCAA coaches and the media off too easy. These groups have learned to destroy racial stereotypes and marginalization.

There is a bigger prejudice that seems to be ignored. If you do not need others to help you but can lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, often those in the business to help, colleges, coaches, professors, and the media do not want to help you.

Jeremy was smart, male, Asian, had a close supportive family, and was a person of strong faith and beliefs. He was going to make it, with or without basketball.

I believe much of the mystery of why people believe, what to an outsider appear to be crazy things, is explained by considering the Amish.

For the Amish, you either chose to believe and live like the community tells you to, or you are ostracized by your family and your community. While most modern Christians and Jews do not usually go to that negative extreme, it is still a statement of trust and a heavy reliance on your family and your family's community to be a person of faith.

They don't trust or rely on the establishment, the government and experts for answers. They believe in the individual rather than making the individual small to build the system up.

Perhaps nobody wanted to take a chance on him because it is obvious that he made himself… not some coach or some college minority scholarship program. Nor was it because he was casting his family aside to follow some enlightened professor's political agenda. The reason nobody saw Jeremy Lin was because nobody was going to get the credit for making him… except himself.

T.K Marks writes:

Meanwhile, over there Milan way, the cognoscenti are apparently are asking the same of "Il Baffo" — The Mustache."

Previous to this Continental information I had always thought that he was just a guy that didn't coach a whole lot of defense. The John Wayne thing was lost on my Stateside ways.

Il Baffo…Now I've heard it all:

"If you are remaking a classic Western, say Stagecoach or The Wild Bunch, how do you NOT cast Mike D'Antoni as Sheriff? That 'stache!!!" — Miles C.

"It truly is majestic. (I like this old ode by Rob Peterson.) I would be proud as an American to watch D'Antoni draw pistols while on horseback in Cheyenne.

"However, you have to be careful not to start typecasting the Knicks coach as a pure Westerns guy, because then you're missing out on one of the best things about him: his international flava.

"D'Antoni remains a beloved hoops figure in Italy, where he played for most of the '80s and won four league titles, all while sporting the same duster (in cut, if not color) that remains today. Marc Berman wrote in the New York Post last season that D'Antoni is still referred to in Milan as "Il Baffo" — The Mustache. Or, says Google Translate, The Whisker, which I think we can all agree is superior. "Contento per Lin, ma sopratutto per il baffo … il tanto vituperato mike d'antoni," wrote one commenter, named Luigi, on an Italian basketball blog after the Knicks beat the Sacramento Kings last week. Translated roughly, that meant: "Happy for Lin, but especially for the much-maligned mustache … Mike D'Antoni."

On that, Luigi and I are speaking the same language…"


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