- Jeremy Lin said as an Asian American athlete, he felt he always had to do more to prove himself.
- Lin made the comments during an appearance on The Ryen Russillo Podcast.
- Lin has become a prominent figure in the fight to combat anti-Asian racism.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Jeremy Lin's NBA career has seen its barriers, and he believes his race is one of them.
The Chinese American basketball player spoke about the conditions he's dealt with as an Asian American athlete during an appearance on The Ryen Russillo Podcast on Monday.
"There's this thing about growing up Asian American and always having a chip on your shoulder, and always having to prove yourself, and if you have one bad game, then everyone's going to jump ship, and nobody is going to believe in you," Lin said.
Lin is a former undrafted free agent out of Harvard who has played nine seasons in the NBA but is currently in G League at 32 with the Santa Cruz Warriors – the Golden State Warriors' G League affiliate.
After spending 2020 in China playing for the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association, Lin is working on getting back onto an NBA roster for the first time since 2019, when he won a championship with the Toronto Raptors.
His road back to the NBA has intersected with the uptick in anti-Asian sentiment in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic - something he is conditioned for.
Verbal racism weighed on Lin throughout his basketball career. During an appearance on the Outside The Shot Podcast in 2017, Lin said opposing players and spectators called him "chink" and "chicken fried rice" during his college career at Harvard and was once asked if he could see the scoreboard with his eyes.
When Lin broke out as a surprise NBA star for the New York Knicks in 2012, the slurs even rained down from the mainstream media.
ESPN published an article with a headline referring to Lin as a "chink in the armor." ESPN took the headline down, and the editor who wrote the headline was fired. Knicks' radio announcer Spero Dedes also used the term "chink" in reference to Lin during a broadcast on 1050 ESPN New York. Dedes received unknown discipline by the MSG Network, according to Sporting News.
Then, in February, Lin revealed on Instagram that he had been called 'coronavirus' by an opponent in a G League game. The NBA identified the individual who used the slur and is dealing with the incident internally with Lin's support, according to NBC Asian America.
The slurs are one thing, but Lin believes there is a set of subtle disadvantages that comes with being Asian in the NBA. One example is the emotional paranoia that comes with being an underrepresented minority in a league that is predominantly Black and white.
"I had this big weight on my shoulder with a lot of the Asian American stuff," Lin said. "Like, if I ever have one bad game, then I won't be able to ever recover from it, or if I have one good game, then that's never enough. I have to put together three straight good games, four straight good games until they actually believe in me."
"Or, if I'm ever even with another player, I'll never be the one that gets that opportunity. I got to stand out like two steps beyond that next player I'll need to get that opportunity."
For Lin, overcoming that mental baggage has been a major focus in his goal to make an NBA comeback. Lin even admitted to Russillo that he had to enlist the help of a therapist.
In addition to the mental baggage that comes with anti-Asian racism, Lin has previously admitted he believes his race has affected his value as a player.
"I'm not saying top-5 state automatically gets you offers," Lin told Bryan Chu of SFGate.com in 2008. "But I do think (my ethnicity) did affect the way coaches recruited me. I think if I were a different race, I would've been treated differently."
In a 60 Minutes interview in 2013, Lin admitted that he a "gut feeling" that his ethnicity contributed to him being undrafted.
In an interview with ESPN's Pablo S. Torre in 2015, Lin said that racial stereotypes of Asians being slower and weaker than black and white players reduced his value on the free-agent market.
"I feel like Asians, in general, don't get the respect that we may deserve whether it comes to sports, basketball, or whatever it might be," Lin told Torre.
Still, Lin's race has elevated his profile in a unique way that Black and white players haven't seen. Lin's emergence with the Knicks in 2012, famously dubbed "Linsanity," stemmed partially from the fact that he represented a significantly under-represented demographic among NBA players.
In 2021, Lin holds significant influence in combatting anti-Asian racism, and he's taken the initiative to put himself at the front of that issue already.