Jeremy Lin held the NBA’s full attention for only a couple months, but his professional basketball career lasted for so much longer. That career officially ended on Saturday.
The former New York Knicks guard announced his retirement on Instagram after nine years in the NBA and six more years playing overseas.
Lin’s full statement:
As athletes, we are always aware that the possibility of retirement is never far away. I’ve spent my 15 year career knowing that one day I would have to walk away, and yet actually saying goodbye to basketball today has been the hardest decision I’ve ever made.
It’s been the honor of a lifetime to compete against the fiercest competitors under the brightest lights and to challenge what the world thought was possible for someone who looks like me. I’ve lived out my wildest childhood dreams to play in front of fans all around the world. I will forever be the kid who felt fully alive everytime I touched a basketball.
So many people have sacrificed and poured into my journey, more than I could ever repay. Thank you all for believing in me, for walking with me, for celebrating my highs and picking me up in my lows. This is a ride I never wanted to end but I know it’s time. I will forever miss playing basketball in front of you all but our time will go beyond just playing. Here’s to what’s ahead.
It’s hard to overstate how much of a phenomenon “Linsanity” was when he started breaking out for the Knicks. A guard who went undrafted out of Harvard, who got waived by both the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets, who at one point went over to play in China, suddenly looked like one of the NBA’s premier scorers.
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It was the sort of story built for the early days of Twitter, with users buzzing as Lin dropped 25 points on the New Jersey Nets, 28 points on the Utah Jazz and 23 points plus 10 assists on the Washington Wizards. No one knew if he was for real going into his big test, Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers
Lin showed up and posted a career-high and career-defining 38 points in front of a joyous Madison Square Garden.
Lin kept going after that, with the NBA scrambling to add him to the All-Star weekend’s Rising Stars challenge. However, the momentum started fading after that. Carmelo Anthony returned from injury and took back his time as primary ball-handler. Mike Woodson replaced Mike D’Antoni as head coach and called an offense that didn’t cater to Lin’s strength as well. And finally, a knee surgery ended his season in March.
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Lin remained one of the NBA’s most well-known players after that, but never found the same success. Instead, he spent the rest of his career as a solid journeyman and back-up point guard. When he won a title with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, he became the first Asian-American champion in NBA history.
That wound up being Lin’s final NBA playing time. He got some run in the G League, but spent much more of his time playing in China and Taiwan. His final season saw him win MVP and a title in the Taiwan Professional Basketball League with the New Taipei Kings.
There are truly no career arcs that match Lin’s, and he remains an icon for both a good chunk of the Knicks fanbase and the Asian-American community. His success as an Asian player prompted some soul-searching in the basketball world on how a player with his talents — even if he ended up just being a solid bench guard — could be completely passed over in the draft process and his first year and change in the league, with then-NBA commissioner David Stern conceding that his race may have played a role in him going undrafted.
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Lin still broke through, and made nearly every basketball fan know his name.