Jeremy Lin has bounced around the NBA his entire career.
You would have thought his storybook run with the New York Knicks during the 2011-12 campaign would have bought him protracted stability somewhere. It hasn’t. He has since played for the Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Charlotte Hornets and, now, Brooklyn Nets, with whom he finally hopes to put down some roots over the next three years.
Returning to New York is kind of a big deal. He played for the Golden State Warriors (briefly) before joining the Knicks, but his career was jump-started in the Big Apple. And now he’s back, just with a different team.
As for his first New York team, Lin left as a free agent in 2012, sort of controversially. The Rockets’ poison-pill contract offer gave the Knicks all the justification they needed to let him walk, but it certainly didn’t help that neither Carmelo Anthony nor Amar’e Stoudemire was especially supportive of the point guard’s meteoric rise.
Still, in a recent interview with the New York Post‘s Steve Serby, Jeremy Lin admits he was nonetheless sad to leave for Houston:
Q: When you knew your Knicks days were ending, how sad was that for you?
A: I was really, really sad. I was sad the way everything went down, ’cause nothing happened the way I thought it was going to. I had wished that they had offered me a contract just in the beginning, and that didn’t even happen. And then, when I found out that they weren’t gonna match, I was even more sad, ’cause honestly, I wanted to finish my career there.
I mean, this is hardly surprising. Lin made a name for himself with the Knicks. Why wouldn’t he want to stay there, where he knew he could contribute, for as long as he could?
Jeremy Lin’s feelings are the 2012 equivalent of Hassan Whiteside leaving the Miami Heat. The money he got could have been equal or better elsewhere, with the promise of a larger role, specifically in the offense. But Whiteside knows he works in Miami. He has played like a borderline star there for 1.5 seasons. Leaving would have been a major risk.
It was the same story for Lin, though he did have the safety net that came with landing significantly more guaranteed money than the Knicks were probably comfortable with paying. His career has turned out just fine in the aftermath. He is no All-Star, but the fleeting run of brilliance in New York was never the bar to which he should have been forever held.
Had he re-signed in New York, it’s not clear how long it would have taken for those expectations to fade. So, in a way, maybe leaving the Knicks, especially after Mike D’Antoni’s exit, was good for him.
