Jeremy Lin’s Success With Knicks Surprises Everyone (original) (raw)
Basketball|Lin’s Success Surprising to Everyone
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Lin’s Success Surprising to Everyone
In Jeremy Lin's first N.B.A. start on Monday against the Jazz, he set a personal scoring record for the second straight game, with 28 points.Credit...Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency
- Feb. 9, 2012
Mike D’Antoni can recall exactly how he felt the first time Jeremy Lin played meaningful minutes for the Knicks.
“Kinda neutral,” D’Antoni said. “I wasn’t excited.”
It is hard to conceive of it now, but there was a time when Jeremy Lin’s name was spoken without exclamation points, when he was fourth on the Knicks’ depth chart at point guard, when the word “Linsanity” had not entered the N.B.A. lexicon and Knicks fans were praying for Baron Davis’s herniated disk to heal quickly.
It was another time, another era. Seventeen days ago, to be precise.
The Knicks were in Houston and struggling against the Rockets. Carmelo Anthony was out. D’Antoni needed a spark, and he turned to Lin in the third quarter — the earliest Lin had appeared with a game on the line. He played 20 minutes and produced a solid 9 points and 6 assists.
Teammates quietly marveled at how Lin was able to penetrate and make timely passes, unlike the Knicks’ other guards. But the offense never quite sparked that night, and the Knicks lost their third game in a row.
“I just thought that he has a point-guard mentality,” D’Antoni said, looking back. “He can get to the basket. He didn’t finish well. But you could see the pick-and-roll, or at least penetration, getting the ball into the paint. It was kind of like, ‘We’ll see.’ ”
Lin played in two of the next three games, sparingly and without fanfare. No one anointed him a savior, or made T-shirts with entertaining puns.
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