I'm very humbled and honored. I'm very thankful to the Asian-American Community for all their support!
Jeremy Lin
It seems like everybody's perception of me is very bipolar. To one group, it's overpaid, overrated; to another group, it's underpaid, underrated, underdog. It's funny to me because there's no real balance.
My first dunk ever was in middle school. We were playing, me and my church friends, and I dunked it, and I swear I could not sleep that night.
I would be a pastor. It is something I think about doing when my playing days are over.
I grew up in the church, and I always kind of knew Bible stories and knew the Sunday school answers, but when I was a freshman in high school I joined youth group, and that's when I started to see radical love; that's when I started to see what Christian community is supposed to look like and what fellowship is supposed to look like.
I think I've always been a player who's done better in the second half, who's done better in the fourth quarter. That's the fun time to play, when everything you've worked for the whole game boils down to those last few possessions.
You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive.
I'm not playing to prove anything to anybody.
I was shocked cause I didn't even know that they made my jersey. I didn't know that they made it so fast, so when I saw it I was like, I had to look three times and I was like, 'Did they customize that?' And then I saw a couple of other ones and I was like, ok, they must've made them overnight or something.
I'm not like the next Michael Jordan, but I'm also not what everyone saw me as before I started playing in the NBA, either.
I've learned that social media and our private lives, you know, our private lives are not so private anymore, so it takes a little bit of getting used to.
I was a big Michael Jordan fan growing up. I don't feel my game resembles his though.
If I had a day to myself I would just play video games with my brothers.
Not sure if that will benefit me or hurt me, but I know I have the skills and am ready to play in the NBA regardless of my ethnicity.
I love eating junk food. I'm a huge snacker, chips and candy.
When I'm on the court, I try to play with all my emotion and heart.
From the sense of being an ambassador for Jesus Christ, hopefully, through my story and through all the improbables and the miracles that happened in my life, people are inspired or at least a little bit warmer to the idea of exploring who Jesus is.
New York is fast paced, with enthusiastic fans and lots of media attention. Houston's slower paced, and there's more of a southern culture to the city. But both cities have unbelievable food.
Coming out of college into the draft, being Asian-American and being from Harvard, that's not going to be an advantage because of stereotypes.
My family used to call me an oversized kid and I think that's pretty accurate in some ways.
Stuff about me dating Kim Kardashian - I have no idea where that came from and all these other rumors. I don't think I'm that type.
The first time I went to Taiwan, there were cameras, paparazzi, TV stations outside my hotel twenty-four hours a day nonstop.
My best career decision was probably not giving up when I wanted to. God as well as my family and friends were there for me during my toughest times.
I won't let any of my friends become a fan. To me, you're either a friend or you're a fan. That doesn't mean my friends can't support me, because they all do, but they can't treat me differently than they would treat someone else. None of my friends are in awe of me.
My audience is God.
With all the media attention, all the love from the fans, I felt I needed to prove myself. Prove that I'm not a marketing tool, I'm not a ploy to improve attendance. Prove I can play in this league. But I've surrendered that to God. I'm not in a battle with what everybody else thinks anymore.
I think right now the way society's going, I think role models are important, and kids need direction. If I didn't have that direction growing up, who knows what I could be doing, because I've been lost many times in my life, and I've had to have someone guide me back on the right path.
I absolutely would not have liked playing in Spain or somewhere like that, so I was just gonna do it a year. Then I was gonna be done.
Everyone looks me and says, 'I'm not going to let that Asian kid embarrass me. I'm going to go at him.' That's how it's been my whole life.
I agreed to film after my rookie year in Golden State. I was more used to cameras and felt that my journey to the NBA was a story worth sharing. Little did we know how much bigger the platform and documentary would become after Linsanity.
I'm a playmaker. I'm always attacking the rim and have somewhat of a reckless style. I try to be everywhere at once.
And people are always saying he deceptively quick, deceptively athletic, and I don't know if that's just because I'm Asian or what it is, but obviously there's going to be stereotypes that you have to fight.
It's the off-the-court spotlight in terms of having people look at you in terms of analyzing every little thing you do in your life, or having less privacy in your day-to-day activities, that's an area I need to get more accustomed to.
I just try to play as hard as I can every possession. If you're aware and you're high-energy, the ball will eventually bounce your way and you'll be able to make plays.
I just really, really, really hate to lose. Really.
Tim Tebow is one of my biggest inspirations. I actually want to be able to do some of the things that he does in terms of the amount of charity work and the non-profit work, and the way he impacts people off the field. I think that is what is most inspiring to me about him.
When you think about your relationship with Christ, it really just affects every aspect of your life. I think a lot of people try to segment off, like, 'This is church, so this is God, this is my daily life, this is my job,' but I think true faith is when it manifests itself in every single aspect of your life.
There is so much temptation to hold on to my career even more now. To try to micromanage and dictate every little aspect. But that's not how I want to do things anymore. I'm thinking about how can I trust God more. How can I surrender more? How can I bring him more glory? It's a fight. But it's one I'm going to keep fighting.
I want to be a representative and be a role model for the Asian American community.
I get scared of a lot of attention. I get scared of the spotlight. And I'm not talking about on the basketball court.
Faith, family, academics and then sports was the order of priorities in my family. My parents really stuck to these principles when raising me and my two brothers. As long as we took care of everything, they let us play as much basketball as we wanted.
In many ways, the longer I live, I understand that there are so many things outside my control. That's why I believe faith is such a big part of the story. There are so many things that were orchestrated by God, that were put into place to make this perfect storm, that created Linsanity.
I'm not playing for other people; if I start thinking in those terms I would put too much pressure on myself. I play basketball because that is what I love to do.
The change that I never fall into is the, 'I'm-above-you-look-at-me-do-stuff-for-me change.' The change that I'm hoping I get to is where I become wiser, smarter - where I put myself in situations that don't have a huge potential for disaster.
I try to focus on what I'm supposed to do, and to do my job the best I can. I kind of let everything happen the way it's supposed to happen, let everything fall into place the way it should.
Sometimes you come up against a mountain and you end up making the mountain seem bigger than God.
I'm going to be honest, playing in D-League games is tough.
I have an economics degree with a minor in sociology. The reason I have that is because I want to do a ministry in urban areas and help with underprivileged kids.
I just think in order for someone to understand my game, they have to watch me more than once, because I'm not going to do anything that's extra flashy or freakishly athletic.
I'm going to make mistakes, I just have to be able to learn from them as quickly as possible. To learn faster, I watch film of myself and other good point guards, and then breaking down my mistakes and really analyzing them and seeing where I could have made better decisions.
