Slick Southpaw wrote:texasholdem wrote:do you dispute his claim that was the case? if not him, who was supposed to be the leader? Kevin Martin? Chandler Parsons?
Did you even watch the video? Lin seems incredibly humble and not complaining at all about Harden's arrival.
Incredibly humble?
Are you people blind?
-non stop social media look at me videos
-a movie about himself (hell lebron james doesnt even have a movie about him. neither does chris paul, tony parker, russell westbrook, kryie irving, or steph curry)
-he has commercials
-he does non stop interviews complaining about racism (60minutes) or about losing his "main guy" "cornerstone" label after the harden trade
-non stop asia tours where he is being filmed playing pick up ball by a camera crew
Nothing lin does is humble. He is a fake phony person pretending to be a nice humble kid. His actions tell you that but people what to be forcefully ignorant about the situation.
Anybody with a modicum honesty and intelligence can see that and right through his fake persona.
Anyone with a modicum _of_ honesty and self awareness knows that he's milking it gently so that there's plenty more to come. Unlike all the other guys you've listed, none of them were extreme underdog stories. Stephen Curry had endorsements by Lebron James come his sophomore year, and he was a mid major player because of his height. But his dad was in the NBA, his mom played college volley. The biggest underdog of your list had a 3 star recruit rater on rivals and scout.
Guess how many stars Lin had? I don't recall a time since these ratings were published that a no star recruit became an NBA starter. If you know of one, please enlighten me. Furthermore, there are a lot of people who this board who think Lin didn't get a D1 scholarship because of his race. I'm not in the majority. I think he had some fault of his own to play there. But nonetheless, as late boomers go, he cracked the sound barrier and then some.
Lin is a global icon not only because of his race, but because his race ties into a silly stereotype that makes him more of an underdog than others in the past. Further more, unlike Yao, his 6-3 stature makes him far easier to identify with in Mandarin and Cantonese speaking countries. Culturally speaking, the Chinese have always prized the crafty and the wise over someone who is physically imposing. So he has done something to deserve fame. His background makes his story more compelling, and last but not least, there are literally several billion people on this planet willing to eat it all up.
Exposure, in the right way, makes money and increases cultural longevity, both of which could be flipped for something else down the road. Bill Bradley's basketball playing career helped him get into political office. The same can be said of Kevin Johnson in Sacremento. Not to attain some control over ones public persona would literally be throwing money and status away. Money and status that can be flipped for to ones kids, even if they aren't successful sportspersons.
Using social media can be a very savvy way of getting control of spin. Before he lit it up on New York, Lin's social media presence was pretty much how Asian Americans of of 19-25 demographic got to know him. Many Asian youtube personalities invite him to do something over the summer. Those whom have worked with him during and after Linsanity worked with him before his fame. Again, he's shown savvy time and again with the people he works with, without which he would've burned up before Stephon Marbury could say 'I'm a barbie girl'.
Since becoming famous, he has accrued three endorsement deals, one with Volvo, one with Gatorade and a small one with Nike. He did several interview about his rise to success on television. The CBS 60 minutes was a 13ish minute long interview, and the racism question lasted about 2 minutes. He gracefully handled the race issue on the most part on his ABC interview during the Linsanity run. He participated in a print based story on GQ. He successfully trademarked Linsanity. He actually has two documentaries out, three if you count the one that will be released soon. There was a guy who was basically following Lin around before the Linsanity run, and he was just at the right place at the right time. Lin and co agreed to his presence without really knowing what everyone was in for. Then there is a game day Lin video on youtube about how he prepares, and there's one coming out in October. There are other snippets, but they are numerous and it's mostly Lin playing the straight man in a comic setup.
I don't think he's dishonest with what he is doing. He's talking about exactly what he wants to talk about, the bulk of which have nothing to do with making a quick buck. He came unto fame for doing something very well, in a time and place where nobody expected him to, and the media basically bestowed him this exposure as a reward. Whereby he uses it to craft a message about race, money, fame and God.
What I think is interesting is why sports fans like you care about what people do with their reward, especially when they are simply reinvesting it for a bigger aggregate payout down the road? Why hate someone for being smart with their lives?
