http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1203304/1/index.htm Longish article, short selection below: Lin showed up at the Embassy Suites last December, after the Warriors waived him and the Rockets picked up his nonguaranteed contract. He slept in one bed, his parents in the other. When the wireless signal faded, he wandered over to the Four Seasons. "I asked them if I could use the Internet," Lin says, "and they were kind enough to let me." One of six point guards in training camp, half of whom were under contract, Lin barely touched the ball in practice. "I'm sitting there, obviously upset, thinking, Why am I here?" he says. The Rockets wanted to keep him, but free-agent center Samuel Dalembert joined the team four days before the season. On Christmas Eve, general manager Daryl Morey called Lin from a Buffalo Wild Wings in Florida, taking a break from lunch with his family to make a final cut. "I told him, 'Hey, terrible time, terrible timing,'" Morey says. "'I'm sorry, we liked you, and I think you'll do great.' A lot of times teams just want to be nice on the way out, but in this case it was true." Morey could tell Lin was upset, but he did not realize the extent of the player's angst. "I was leaning toward not playing for the year," Lin says. "I was going to call it quits, go home and then figure out what's next for me." He spent a night venting to Cheng Ho, a former Harvard running back and one of his best friends. "He was hopeless," Ho says. "That was the alltime low by far. He talked about giving up basketball." Morey, a purveyor of advanced statistics with an MBA from MIT, judges players on what they do rather than on how they look. Lin is just the kind of afterthought he was hired to find. So Morey watched "with a mixture of curiosity and regret" as Lin landed in New York and birthed a phenomenon. (Morey's initial reaction: "Damn it.") All 30 teams passed on Lin in some form, but the Rockets had him last, so they felt his absence most. On the night Lin lit up the Lakers, Rockets coach Kevin McHale hadn't been able to find the game on his hotel TV, so he took his assistants to a sports bar. They were rooting for Lin, but the better he played, the worse they looked. After Lin shot down the Raptors, Alexander called Morey, wondering how this rare gem slipped through their fingers.
Solid Read, I still want to know what Alexander said to Morey after Lin made a splash. I want to think it was like the scene in Goodfellas where Maury gets beaten up in his own wig shop by Robert Deniro. Using a wall phone and his fist to get his point across.
The more I read about Lin the more I think he can be a star-- he really has the humbleness and dedication to the sport and doesn't let anything really get to his head. It's that focus that we're going to need to contend, hopefully in the near future.
He can whatever he wants: bentleys, a mansion, dozens or hundreds of women at his disposal, but that's not who he is.
I wanted them to keep Lin over Flynn, but like Morey said it was the wrong place at the wrong time. Good thing we got some good assets out of Flynn.
Knicks are so damn weird: "The Knicks still have not commented on Lin's departure and told staffers not to invoke his name publicly."
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most of us knew Lin was better than Flynn, but flynn had the guaranteed contract. Ironically, Flynn was indirectly a piece to get Lin back here.
