Linspired

Books on the rise of Jeremy Lin are starting to become available (e.g., Ted Kluck and Timothy Dalrymple), and I just read one of them:

Mike Yorkey. Linspired: The Remarkable Rise of Jeremy Lin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012. 176 pp.

Yorkey was following Lin long before Linsanity began.

(By the way, Lin had surgery on his knee this week, and the Knicks expect him to miss the rest of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs.)

Yorkey’s book reads like a breezy series of articles in a sports magazine. It’s theologically shallow, but it’s an interesting and fast read.

Excerpts:

Throughout high school, he [i.e., Lin] carried a 4.2 grade point average (in the grade point system, an A is worth 4 points, but AP, or Advanced Placement, classes were weighted more heavily because of their difficulty) at Palo Alto High, where he had scored a perfect 800 on his SAT II Math IIC during his freshman year. (pp. 38–39)
Basketball had become an idol in Jeremy’s life [during his rookie year in the NBA]. (p. 70)
Some [women], unfortunately, are looking to get impregnated by an NBA player. They see having a child out of wedlock as a fast-track ticket to child support payments that begin in the five figures and can rise to sums of $75,000 a month. The number of illegitimate children of NBA players is staggering—and commonplace in other professional sports too—but it’s generally estimated that 50 to 60 percent of all players have had children out of wedlock. Child support payments are some athletes’ single largest expense. (p. 74)
You know what I find to be one of the most interesting things about Jeremy Lin? The fact that he doesn’t have any tattoos. . . . So, it seems that Jeremy and Tim [Tebow] are taking the long view. It’s like they heard stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco’s line in a recent performance: “Why would you put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari?” (pp. 116–17)
Jeremy is the second lowest-paid Knick, but expect this to change in a big way after the season, when he becomes a restricted free agent, meaning the Knicks can match any contract offer he receives. Because of the intricacies of the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement and the salary cap, Jeremy figures to see an upgrade to $5 million next season. That princely amount, however, will be dwarfed by what he will make off the court in endorsements. (p. 124)
Once the 2011–12 season is over, you can be sure that Jeremy will be headed west—toward his hometown in Palo Alto—and even further west to Asia. You see, Jeremy is even more popular in his ancestral home than here in America. (p. 125)