Jeremy Lin may have never won a ring for the New York Knicks. And his star turn at Madison Square Garden lasted mere months. But in that stretch, his electric play propelled a moribund team into the playoffs, rejuvenated bored fans and started a craze: “Linsanity.”
On Saturday, Linsanity came to an end. The journeyman, who spent 15 years on N.B.A. teams and in leagues in Asia, announced his retirement from professional basketball on his Instagram account.
The unlikely star, a walk-on at Harvard who went undrafted, outshined the league’s biggest names in 2012. Few had heard of Lin, a bench player who joined the N.B.A. in 2010, when the Knicks picked him up a year later. And even fewer expected him to stand out.
But by February 2012, Lin was squarely in the spotlight.
That year’s season started the way it often had for the Knicks. Fans were demanding that Mike D’Antoni, the coach, resign; the offense was a mess; and the Knicks appeared destined for another losing season. That’s when D’Antoni decided to give Lin a chance.
The improbable starter led the team on a seven-game winning streak and averaged 22 points a game before the All-Star break. Madison Square Garden was alive again, brimming with the usual fans, like Spike Lee, and the casual fans, many of whom had lost faith in the perpetual losers.
Scalpers got in on the action as demand for tickets soared, with seats in the upper level going for $150, The New York Times reported. Fans wore masks with Lin’s face, while holding up signs that said “Madison Square Guard-Lin.”
As Lin’s jerseys sold out and the Knicks dominated sports headlines, fans and commentators began to describe the mania surrounding him as Linsanity.
With the Lakers, led by Kobe Bryant, set to play at Madison Square Garden, Bryant — never shy about taunting opponents — weighed in on the frenzy. “Who is this kid?” the five-time champion said on the eve of the matchup.
The next night, Lin dropped 38 points on Bryant in a stunning Knicks win. D’Antoni, the coach, later remembered Lin coming up to him after the win and saying, I guess Kobe knows my name now.
Harvey Araton, a Times columnist, mused the next day that Lin was “the Knicks’ grandest stroke of fortune” since signing Knicks legend Patrick Ewing in 1985. One fan, The Times reported, said he had not seen a mood like the one Lin inspired since 1955, when he first started attending games.
By the time Lin led his team to victory over Bryant’s Lakers, he had already become a New York icon and had inspired a new generation of young Asian American basketball fans. His status as a role model, he would later say, took him years to embrace.
And the fame came with a dark side. While he rarely discussed the phenomenon of Linsanity, Lin did speak out about the racism he faced after President Trump called the coronavirus the “China virus,” and the prejudice he had to overcome as the N.B.A.’s first Asian American super star.
“It was a tornado of emotion because there’s so much that was happening,” Lin, who is Taiwanese American, told The Times in 2022, ahead of the release of “38 at the Garden,” an HBO documentary. He added, “I didn’t even know what to feel like.”
Within a year, Lin had gone from sleeping on a teammate’s couch to gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated (twice) and being named to the list of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2012.
But almost as quickly as it began, Linsanity in New York came to an end. The Knicks lost in the first round of the playoffs, and Lin began a journeyman career during which he fell back to the development leagues, played for a total of eight teams in the N.B.A. and finished his career overseas, in the Chinese professional league, and then for a team in Taiwan.
Along the way, Lin spent a year with the Lakers, where he rejoined Bryant on the court, this time as a teammate.
Perhaps his greatest career accomplishment, though less sensationalized than the Linsanity year, came in 2019. After half a decade bouncing between teams, he landed on the Raptors roster, joining the team on its historic and singular championship run, and becoming the first Asian American player to win a ring.
Andrés R. Martínez is a Times editor who leads a team in Seoul responsible for breaking news coverage.
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