The fifteenth is the year, and today is the fourteenth day of the first month, which is still the day of the new year.
What is slightly different from you is that I not only remember the zero point of the first day of the Chinese New Year, but also dial 24 hours forward, and the zero point of the Chinese New Year's Eve is even more vivid to me. At that moment, I, wearing a headset, pointed to a small monitor and said:
"Hello everyone, welcome to the live broadcast at 00:00 on the Chinese New Year's Eve and join us in the opening game of all games in the NBA Development League this season, which will be played by the Santa Cruz Warriors against the G-League Potential Team."
"We see that Jeremy Lin's appearance in the Warriors' starting lineup today will begin another journey of his basketball life."
Jeremy Lin on the other side of the screen, waving his arms and doing stretching, his hair has grown and his body has lost weight, but his face is still the eternal youthful ambition.
Jeremy Lin, 32, has embarked on a new adventure.
This season's NBA Development League, due to the epidemic, chose a fully enclosed tournament system, some of the total 29 teams chose to withdraw from the game, and finally a total of eighteen princes gathered at Disneyland from all over the world.
Each team will play 15 regular season games, after which the top eight teams will advance to the playoffs and make exciting single-elimination rounds until the championship is finally decided. It's conceivable that when the playoffs come to a tit-for-tat, a life-or-death format will make the players on the field all-purpose victory – but anyone who knows anything about the development league knows that all the players who come to the park are not the champions.
Most of the players in this park only have a base salary of $35,000 a year. According to publicly available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the per capita annual income of U.S. residents in 2020 was $49,764. In other words, the players in the development league earn only 70% of the American average.
The reason why they are willing to receive such a meager salary is not for bread and milk, but for glory and dreams. Like jeremy Lin, 32, he can definitely earn millions of dollars a year in the CBA, but he can't resist the urge to kill the NBA again.
From the day Jeremy Lin decided to join the Santa Cruz Warriors, he became a talking point in the entire development league. He filmed a promotional film for the new season for the team, and even the opening match with the potential team, and he was also put on the poster with the talented high school student Jaylen Green.
No one here does not know Jeremy Lin, and it can even be said that for these young people who are now in Disney, Sleeping Beauty Castle is not a fairy tale, Jeremy Lin's story is a real fairy tale. The storm he had set off had swept across the North American continent, and now he was quietly back to square one, once again waiting for the starting gun to sound.
"Honestly, I'll feel old when I come back this time," Jeremy Lin said in an exclusive interview with The Ringer in the United States before the development league began, and he joked about his age as soon as he came up, "but I'm still grateful because it makes you feel strongly that it's a complete cycle." It was the Warriors who gave me the first opportunity of my career, and now I hope to return to the NBA, and they are willing to give me another chance, and I can feel the strong love from the team in my hometown. ”
From Jeremy Lin's home, Palo Alto, 30 minutes north, you can drive to the Chase Center, the warriors' home stadium, and 40 minutes south, it is the Santa Cruz Warriors' base. Eager to complete another south-to-north leap, he made a difficult choice between reality and ideals, "I always believed I still belonged to the NBA, but if I don't want to join the development league, there is no chance to start over." 」 So that's why I'm saying goodbye to the CBA. ”
Jeremy Lin used "hunger" to describe his state when he entered the training camp, he was frantically recovering, sweating like rain, and the quarantine period could not stop his desire for training, and all this was quickly presented on the field.
Chinese New Year's Eve zero points, he scored 18 points and 5 assists in his season debut; after two games, he scored 29 points on 7-of-9 shooting from three-point shooting; and a few days later, he scored 27 points, 6 rebounds and 7 assists in a single game to help the Warriors win the Fort Wayne Freaks in a big comeback - after the first five games, Jeremy Lin averaged 19.6 points and 7.2 assists per game, ranking in the top 15 of the development league in terms of points, and third in the assist list, plus his 48% three-point shooting rate, ranking in the top 10 efficiency values of all players. This is Jeremy Lin's performance on the field in the state of "hunger", which also makes the discussion about him more and more enthusiastic.
Jeremy Lin has long represented not only himself, he is the embodiment of inspiration, but also a symbol of faith, under the Weibo issued after he completed the debut of the development alliance, the hot comment with the most likes wrote: "Stubborn boy zhi, chasing dreams and pure heart!" Last night, 70,000 people stayed up late to chase your dreams. ”
These 70,000 people are the number of people who Chinese New Year's Eve waiting in front of the screen at zero o'clock to watch the live broadcast, and then his morning game can always have hundreds of thousands of viewers on the Tencent platform, and its popularity even exceeds some NBA events.
But after the first 6 games and 5 appearances, Jeremy Lin took 3 consecutive breaks due to back tension, and new worries rose again.
Interestingly, it is not only Chinese fans who have been paying attention to Jeremy Lin, there are basketball fans who were circled in the era of "Lin Crazy" in the United States, and in Shuhao's hometown Bay Area, he is a long-term topic figure. For example, in San Francisco, where there are many Chinese, the South China Morning Post will report on Jeremy Lin every three to five minutes, but because there is no full-time sports reporter position on weekdays, which leads to their reporting often making trouble, the following picture is a latest report in the newspaper, entitled "According to fans, Jeremy Lin's absence due to injury in the development league is evidence of his imminent return to the NBA."
In response to the words "according to the fans", I was full of question marks, and the article quoted the famous NBA whistleblower Shams Charania as saying that the Warriors were about to lay off backup guard Brad Wanamaker, which was also fake news from social media.
But from this oolong report, it can be seen that a media outlet that does not report on sports on weekdays is enthusiastic about Jeremy Lin, and many San Franciscans, like Chinese fans, are asking, are the Warriors really not considering taking away the backup guard Who played badly this season, Vanamek?
This is actually the problem that hinders Jeremy Lin's return to the NBA and the return of the Warriors to the core of the problem - Wanamek's contract, and the Warriors are not so easy to deal with.
Unlike the problem of VanVleet in the 2019 Finals, Wanamek's absolute ability is not necessarily much stronger than Jeremy Lin's, especially after he joined the Warriors this season, his shooting ability suddenly fell off a cliff, and the three-point shooting rate of the season was 23%, which was far from the 38% of the Celtic era, which also became the root cause of the Warriors fans' dissatisfaction with him.
But Vanamek, a man, has an advantage that Jeremy Lin does not have, he is skinny and injury-resistant. Warriors coach Steve Kerr recently mentioned that he made a phone call to Celtics coach Stevens before the team signed Wanamek, and as the only person who has previously coached Wanamek in the NBA, Stevens used a keyword to describe the veteran guard, "Everyday player", a player who can be on duty around the clock, and during the Celtics' two years, Wanamek has never missed a single training and game due to health problems. After coming to the Warriors this season, Wanamek is also one of only 4 full-time players on the team.
In contrast, Jeremy Lin's body is more worrying, although his recent absence is not a big problem, Scholastic has been on social media to comfort the fan group that cares about him, but 3 consecutive games have been absent because of back problems, a total of 9 games only played 5 times, after all, it still shows that Jeremy Lin's health has not reached 100% state - the Warriors only have a substitute guard in Vanamek, if replaced by Jeremy Lin, then the absence of any game is bound to cause a big blow to the rotation of the team.
And the more important reason is that the Warriors have already issued Wanamek with a $2.25 million full-guarantee contract in the offseason, which is only a basic salary, but it is enough to put the Warriors in a dilemma.
Cutting Wanamek, the Warriors need to pay his annual salary is only a small thing, but on the basis of the $147 million luxury tax that the Warriors already have to pay, and then signing any player with a base salary means tens of millions of dollars including the luxury tax. Therefore, Wes Goldberg, a mercury news reporter who is more familiar with the actual situation of the Warriors, explained the problem in detail: "Wanamek's performance is indeed not good enough, but it is not easy for the Warriors to replace him today, because of the full guarantee of the contract, the Warriors have almost no sense in cutting him, and if you want to send him away through a trade, you may need to take the draft pick and other assets, which is also unacceptable to the Warriors." In addition, the Warriors' current most urgent need is not the guard position, if you really want to cut a player, the first person who will get the regular position is probably Toscano Anderson. ”
As Si said, this is the current situation of the Warriors, two-way contract player Toscano Anderson is already an important part of the rotation, thanks to the NBA two-way players can appear 50 times this season, the Warriors need to change the law to let him rest for a dozen more games when the inside is relatively abundant, otherwise it must cut others and make them correct - and on February 27, the Warriors have the last two non-guarantee contracts to be transferred, Damion Lee and Mulder, the two shooters, but the Warriors can not give up.
So it's no exaggeration to say that the Warriors' door has been welded, unless there is a world-shattering lineup change, no one can kick this door, the Warriors in the development league also has 23.1 points and 3.9 assists per game Jordan Pooler, averaging 18.3 points and 6.3 assists per game Mannion, their current control ability is indeed not as good as Jeremy Lin, but they are after all.
This is the reality in front of Jeremy Lin, who also said early on Weibo that "although he signed with the Santa Cruz Warriors, he can sign with any NBA team at any time", but a team like magic, which was extremely scarce in guards before, took turns to sign some younger and more malleable players, and no one has yet thrown an olive branch to Jeremy Lin.
So you should understand, asked what is different about this time back Jeremy Lin, why he said " I think I'm old" when he opened his mouth.
He knew better than anyone what a Colosseum the Development Alliance was. His career started here 10 years ago, and in the documentary "Lin Crazy", Jeremy Lin personally told that he did not like to develop the environment of the alliance, everyone fought for themselves, it was a jungle of the weak and the strong, you think that those who wear the same suit are teammates, but they only regard you as a competitor.
But even so, young people still have the right to be carefree, jeremy Lin played 20 games for the Reno Bighorn Goats in 2010-11, and then-coach Mouselman said: This is the richest team he has ever coached. So the scribe at that time made two good friends in the jungle, their names were Steve Novak and Danny Green.
Jeremy Lin and Green will be teammates in the future, and they will smile and talk about when they first started, they both remembered a light meal one day. On the road trip, the three of them came to Boise City, Idaho, with the team, to find a Chinese restaurant called P.F. Chang's (that is, the picture below), and Jeremy Lin, Green and Novak somehow chatted more and more, each telling happy trivia and yearning for the future. Novak said: "We didn't know each other before, but we are each other's best friends from now on, and we will tell each other frankly that you are not qualified NBA players now, but we will get the NBA call in the future." ”
What a naïve little fragment of a business alliance.
In the NBA's subsequent life, Novak earned $21 million; Danny Green, $80 million; Jeremy Lin, who also earned $65 million. They turned the blessing of "Wishing you prosperity" at the dinner table that day into reality, but now that Novak has become a guest commentator on the local Milwaukee television station, Danny Green will never return to the Development Alliance.
Only Jeremy Lin chose to come back and return to this poor and white starting point.
In this place where he didn't make much money, he even insisted on his own public welfare plan, every time he threw a three-point shot, he would still donate money to his "three-point" plan, and after facing the Fort Wayne Mad Ant to throw that winning three-pointer, he nodded his head as he did when he killed the Raptors 9 years ago, only with a little more laughter.
Does Jeremy Lin wonder how hard it will be to return to the NBA? Of course, he knew better than anyone, but as the sage Socrates said: The greatest happiness of man lies in the struggle for ideals.
He left the NBA as a champion player. And this time, from the day he re-embarked on the journey with a smile on his face, Jeremy Lin and we actually didn't have to care about the ending.
At the end of The Ringer's interview with Jeremy Lin, he said this:
"I want to go back to the NBA and I want to prove to people that I can recover from injuries. But for life, I have some other plans and goals, for example, in the next period of time, one of my important goals is to hope that the number of smiles present will create a new career high, which is what I want to do. ”
Get a career high in smiles.
All I can say is that this guy is too cool.