NOTE: This is Part 1 of 4. Part 2 posted on 2/3/10. Part 3 will post on 2/4/10. Part 4 will post on 2/5/10.
Photo courtesy Jennifer Ho.
You never know what you’ll see from Jeremy Lin.
I’ve said that a lot, but usually it’s pertaining to some move I saw him do (not televised and streamed online and you probably can count the number of other people simultaneously watching it on one hand), such as hitting the buzzer beater from near-half-court — with the foul! — in triple overtime against William & Mary, or making four steals in a span of five consecutive possessions by Dartmouth, or baiting Georgetown’s impressive backcourt duo into a half-court steal and dunk, or racing back full court and swatting a layup by UConn’s potential future NBA draft pick Jerome Dyson, or vanquishing Boston University in a 27-second stretch near the end of the game by converting an incredible layup while nearly going too far under the backboard, followed immediately thereafter by a steal and thunderous one-handed dunk to cap a personal 11-0 run. I’m sure I’ve left out more.
I’ve now met with bonafide evaluators of the NBA Draft and there is consensus that, at a minimum, Jeremy can be a star in Europe and/or Asia. So when there’s a real possibility that the months of February and maybe a little bit of March may be the last time to see him play live on American soil, I make it a point to go see him.
A coast-to-coast excursion to the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, where the streets make me feel brand new and big lights inspire me (they really do, actually!), where my old college roommate Brian Yang — yes, he of ESPN blogpost fame — runs Dream League New York? No problem.
A tangential trek in freezing temperatures to witness a showdown with profound post-season implications, a potentially epic non-televised clash against perennial Ivy League juggernaut Cornell? Even though it’s in the boonies known as Ithaca, yes, I will find a way (in case you were wondering: Jetblue to Syracuse straight north, only an hour drive southwest!).
Most of you might say it was a waste. I watched Jeremy and Harvard destroy an overmatched Columbia squad, then not more than 24 hours later, I saw the tables turned as Jeremy and Harvard got destroyed, similarly overmatched by the league bully, Cornell. Two blowouts, back-to-back.
Neither game resulted in a boxscore set ablaze by Jeremy’s play. Neither game raised eyebrows with the casual observer, nor the die-hard hometown fan, nor the bandwagonner curious to witness Jeremy “live up to the hype”. Neither game was all that competitive between the two teams.
Still, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Approaching game time
Off the court, the Columbia game for me was the little cousin of the Santa Clara game. (Incidentally, it’s time I set the record straight. We did not sell tickets at a “heavy discount”, which suggests that we paid people to attend. We bought tickets 25 at a time at $5 apiece, then resold them for $8.88 — eight is a lucky number in Chinese tradition. I think our largest order through Dream League was for maybe a dozen tickets, which at $8.88 offers only a small discount off the $10 retail price at the Santa Clara ticket office. We actually made a very modest amount of money on the Santa Clara event, and this includes fronting the fifty or so up-close reserved seats, sold at $20 retail, that we comped for our most favorite Dream League friends. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Taylor and Ed in the SCU ticket office for all of their hard work in taking our bulk orders, multiple times on the phone and in person. And thank you to Columbia’s Anthony Di Fino, for dealing with all of our last-minute will call seat assignments for by email, merely hours before tipoff.)
Now, Columbia’s gym (capacity: 3,400) doesn’t have baseline seating and a sellout can make you feel like you’re in a sardine can, while Santa Clara’s arena (4,700) feels like it’d be a nice NBDL venue built for decent 360-degree viewing angles.
The entrance at Columbia consists of two single-file turnstiles, one for entering and one for exiting, that lead into a narrow L-shaped lobby. While milling around before tipoff, our guests, some of them who had been to Columbia games in the past, were amazed by what a zoo that area had become. I found a little “cove” where I could hand out half of our crimson-colored Dream League t-shirts, which were to show support for Jeremy and the Harvard Crimson team. I also got a chance to meet Loo Yee-Shin, former Taiwanese National Team star and a friend of Dan Rosen, who occasionally writes for SLAM Magazine.
It was a much more intimate setting at Columbia than Santa Clara, and the ticket-selling and redistribution effort on my part was, thankfully, proportional. This means that while the Santa Clara project was a “beast”, getting people to go to Columbia was quite manageable, although it still kept me busy for as much as two days prior to tipoff.
Couldn't find this issue of SI yet!
In fact, the day before I had departed for New York was my last conversation with Pablo Torre, who writes for SportsIllustrated (“SI”). He had wanted to get my feedback on some of the wording for the impending SI article, to avoid any potential controversies pertaining to the Asian-American angle of the story. He also said that the new issue would hit newsstands the next day.
When I arrived at JFK, none of the newsstands at JFK had the latest issue. When I arrived in Brian’s neighborhood, not even the local Border’s bookstore had them. Luckily, Brian’s been an SI subscriber since 1985 (!), so that afternoon, as we typed away on our keyboards getting our work done, in the backs of our minds we were waiting anxiously for the new issue to arrive in the mail. When it finally did in the early evening, we were just sitting there, stunned with amazement.
Jeremy had been featured in America’s most revered, venerable sports magazine. As teenagers, Brian and I used to keep every issue of SI that had Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods on the cover. Actually, to this day, Brian still absorbs every issue, reading every word from cover to cover (something I had less and less time for over the years). We would have never thought an Asian-American basketball player could be featured in such a time-honored publication — well, outside of SI’s “Faces In The Crowd” section, that is.
It was only fitting that we would be reunited this past week for that reason.
At the Columbia game two nights later, it was great to see DLNY’ers I hadn’t seen since last year’s Gotham Games tourney. I got to meet Twitterers, random youth fans, and other guests invited by Brian, who brought his camcorder and took the opportunity to capture the fan fervor. I sat next to Peter Robert Casey, basketball social media “maven” (for lack of a better word). Dan occasionally took down some notes and asked me questions here and there, while Brian candidly interviewed random fans and got them on videotape.
Contrast this with the Cornell game. Again sticking with off-the-court stuff, my drive from Syracuse to Ithaca was memorable, indeed. With outside temperatures consistently at zero degrees Farehnheit, I learned that everything is the opposite of visiting Las Vegas in the middle of July for NBA Summer League.
In Vegas, you hurry on up into your car and turn the air conditioning at its coldest setting on full blast. And you leave it on full blast. In Upstate New York, you hurry on up into your car and turn the defrosters (front and rear) on full blast. And you leave them on full blast unless, of course, you don’t want to see outside your fogged up windshield and windows!
The crowd at Cornell was a sight to see as well. The students were raucus and “hostile environment” was an understatement. Cornell star Jeff Foote later was quoted as saying…
“I would compare it to the first time we won the Ivy League title,” Foote said. “The crowd was rocking. They gave us tremendous energy and made it a great college basketball atmosphere. It really fires us up and we really like to play in front of a lot of people.”
I really felt like I was in enemy territory.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment, Part 2 of 4, “Game action and NBA prospecting”.
You might also like:
- From deity to defeated: Coast-to-coast to see Jeremy Lin (4/4)
- There and back again: Coast-to-coast to see Jeremy Lin (3/4)
- There and back again: Coast-to-coast to see Jeremy Lin (2/4)
- Jeremy Lin’s stats plunge
- Three-Point Play: Living the high school, college, and pro dream (Barnes, Matsui, Curry)
- It’s all on Portsmouth for Jeremy Lin, but…
- I believe YOU can help Jeremy Lin make the NBA, and what it will mean to young Asian-Americans
- Bow to the Jeremy Lin Movement (b-o-w = Based On What?)
