With the Golden State Warriors signing Harvard grad and Bay Area product Jeremy Lin, the Internet has been buzzing with news and blog postings about Jeremy. The news outlets have been going with the "hometown boy does good" story line. There has been many blog postings (including your truly) talking what Jeremy means to the Asian American, Harvard and Palo Alto communities.
However, with all of the focus on Jeremy these days, I feel I should take a step back and talk about when I first heard of Jeremy Lin.
The first time I was aware of Jeremy Lin was sometime during the 2005-2006 high school basketball season (Jeremy's senior year). I can't pinpoint an exact date. However, as a huge basketball fan, I follow a lot of basketball at all levels including youth, high school, college and NBA.
My main recollection is that the San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate mentioning Jeremy Lin and his Palo Alto team being a favorite to get to the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Championship game in Division II. Up to this point, I had not heard of Jeremy Lin or his Palo Alto team. After all, living in San Francisco, I'm usually more focused on how the San Francisco public and private high schools do at the state tournaments than other teams in the Bay Area.
However, I was intrigued about who this Jeremy Lin kid was. As someone who lives here in the Bay Area, it's not unusual to see a ton of Asian kids play basketball at the youth and high school levels. There are some solid players too but they play in obscurity because their teams aren't that good. Not that many of them are Division I or pro material but there's some talent and skill there, even if they aren't the biggest or tallest players around.
However, it was a rare thing to see an Asian kid be the primary focal point of a team that had STATE CHAMPIONSHIP aspirations. From then on, I followed Jeremy and his Palo Alto team through their league playoffs, Central Coast Section (CCS) playoffs, the Northern California playoffs and finally the televised State Championship game between Palo Alto and Mater Dei.
Having never seen Jeremy play before, watching him play on TV for the first time was interesting. He didn't look physically intimidating and I thought his jumper looked a little awkward. However, just as those in the Ivy League and the NBA Summer League found out, Jeremy could play and Palo Alto knocked off mighty Mater Dei to claim the CIF Division II State Championship.
From there, I was curious about Jeremy's future plans. For many of the Asian basketball players I had seen in the past, they might go to play at junior college or small college to continue playing competitively. Many of the same players also played in the various Asian adult leagues and tournaments that are prevalent around the Bay Area and California.
In doing my research, I saw notes that Jeremy wasn't heavily recruited though he might walk on to the local Pac-10 schools. It wasn't until later that I found out that Jeremy was going to Harvard.
The rest, as you might say, is history. I heavily followed Jeremy Lin's career at Harvard through the Internet. Many people don't know that during Jeremy's sophomore year at Harvard, the Harvard team came to play in a tournament at Stanford. Unfortunately, Stanford blew out Harvard and Jeremy didn't score though he did bounce back with better games in the next two games in the tournament. I'm sure Jeremy would have loved to do well in front of the home crowd.
All in all, outside of Jeremy's family, friends, coaches and others from Palo Alto and Harvard, I believe I am may be one of Jeremy Lin's earliest fans (in fact someone pointed out to me they were following him before me....COOL!) . I didn't know if he could make it to the NBA but I was glad to see he had a great career at Harvard.
The fact that the Golden State Warriors have signed Jeremy is an added bonus. Good luck to Jeremy as the 2010-2011 NBA season slowly approaches. Many fans are eagerly awaiting this!
COUPLE OF SIDE NOTES:
1.
An interesting story line that doesn't get mentioned anymore is that Palo Alto was also a favorite to represent Northern California in the state championship during Jeremy's junior season. However, Jeremy decide to play pick up ball a few days before the CIF Northern California championship game and injured himself. Palo Alto would go on to lose in the Northern California championship game. I believe Jeremy himself mentioned this incident motivated him to work hard to get his team back to the State Championship his senior year.
2.
There was an article today in a local newspaper that was discussing how many people in his circle of friends and coaches that believed that Jeremy could make the NBA. Among the people who was interviewed was one Thomas Fang.
Fang was a 6'5" forward who played for Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose and later walked on to the Cal basketball team. Jeremy's Palo Alto team defeated Fang's Mitty team in the Northern California championship game prior to playing Mater Dei.
When Palo Alto and Mitty played for the Northern California championship in 2006, I thought it was great that TWO ASIAN-AMERICAN kids played an integral part in each of their team's success. Jeremy was obviously the star of Palo Alto. Mitty's star was 6'9" Drew Gordon who would later go to UCLA and now New Mexico. However, Fang was a starter and an all league player in his own right.
Though Fang didn't play much at Cal, he plays in intramurals and other leagues around the area.
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