-in high school, he helped his team beat heavily-favored Mater Dei to win the CIF California state championship and earned various player of the year awards. (He went unrecruited by all your normal basketball powerhouses, including hometown Stanford)
-at Harvard, he would have great performances against nationally ranked competition, including BC, Villanova, and UConn. he was a candidate for the Wooden Award and a finalist for the Cousy Award. (He went undrafted despite all of the above)
-he wound up on the Mavs summer league team. After besting John Wall, he was offered a spot on the Texas Legends, as the Mavs had 3 PGs on their roster already. He took an offer from his hometown Warriors and the rest is history.
but I like to look at the human aspect of the story. the one that takes a look at the social impact this has. a lot of journalists try to say that this has nothing to do with race, that it's about "a good basketball player" or it's an "underdog story", which it is... but let's face it, if this was John Lucas III lighting it up in Rose's absence, there would not be this much attention on it. We would not have Lucasanity instead of Linsanity.
I read a pretty good article earlier about it on CNN.
I had been really thinking about what this meant to me as an American Asian all week but I really couldn't put my finger on it. I tihnk the final lines of the article really sums it up for me.
Hopefully one day, Americans of Asian descent will no longer be seen as foreigners, economic competition or anything less than equal Americans. Until then, race matters, whether we like it or not.
)
at this thread now.