Will a touch of Linsanity return to NY?
It seems such a long time ago, as if it occurred in a different era to a different player.
There were those six magical weeks of 2012 when Jeremy Lin and the basketball world was swept up in Linsanity.
The phenomenon virtually owned New York with Lin’s sudden star turn when thrust into the lineup by then-Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni. He almost swallowed the NBA with nightly heroics and highlights that rolled around the globe like a driving, jump-shooting tsunami.
A Harvard graduate and a son of Taiwanese immigrants, Mr. Lin became an empowering figure not only for Asians, but also for underdogs, long-suffering Knicks fans and New Yorkers mired in the doldrums in February 2012. The team’s leader, Carmelo Anthony, was injured when Mr. Lin was igniting a turnaround.
Enter Mr. Lin, a journeyman who had been cut by two teams. Linsanity, in all its glorious euphoria, erupted.
And then, several weeks later, Mr. Lin’s run was over, cut short by a season-ending knee injury, combined with the resignation of his coach, Mike D’Antoni. After the season, the Knicks allowed Mr. Lin to depart to the Houston Rockets via free agency.
“As soon as he took off that New York uniform, that magic was gone,” said Andrew Kuo, 38, a New York-born artist and ardent Lin fan.
The Lin-related artifacts of that time, like the sandwiches once named for him, grew stale. The puns faded from the lexicon.
“The Lin memes are done, it’s O.K., it’s extinct now,” Mr. Kuo said.
There is, however, the matter of that “Linsanity No. 17” tattoo on his left forearm. Mr. Kuo laughed and said that it might have been dumb. “But it’s nice to look down and remember it all,” he added.
Mr. Lin recalled how he wished he had stopped to enjoy that heady time more while it was swirling around him. As for Linsanity, he may have won the trademark, but he has mixed feelings about it; he does not intend to revive it.