Not even close. Yes, there are stereotypes against white players not being slam dunk artists, but come on, nobody blinked an eye when Dirk and Nash won 3 MVPs between them in the last few years. White athletes may be stereotyped as not being as frequently elite as black athletes, but they are still seen as quality athletes.
But in all fairness, Billionzz was probably referring to stereotypes. Even Rex Walters who commented about Lin addressed the issue and Jimmer got similar labels of being deceptively athletic. http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7574087/overlooking-jeremy-lin
You have to understand, scouts aren't paid to discover hidden talent. they are paid to be right. they hardly ever take any risks. and the safest best for scouts, on the college level, is to check out players that AAU coaches are promoting. well, AAU coaches promote players that they've seen in grade school, and in well-known programs. unless you're a small time school, you don't even bother turning over every leaf to find your gem. there are plenty of good players out there that will come to you via the AAU route. pro scouts are the same. they look at well established college programs and high school programs. there's a reason why kids transfer from high school to high school to be seen. if you're not "picked" to be on a well known AAU team from the start, it actually is pretty easy to slip through the cracks especially if you're a "riskier" prospect than others. let's face it, two 7th graders, one black, one asian, same height, same speed, some stats. your money on the line and you can only pick one - who would it be? the answer is pretty clear, and that's just the way it is.
that right elbow bothers me so much! but then again if he can be consistent with it... reggie miller had an uglier shot and it works!
Not really. white players have the market cornered on dirty, scrappy, unathletic players that are deadly from 3pt but not much else.
I'm talking about the modern era, Jerry West basketball wasn't anything like today's basketball. If your a a giant then it doesn't count either, I'm sure Yao had any chance he wanted to play. If you're 7 foot tall you will get a chance play, it doesn't matter if your white, asian or green you will get a chance. I have 3 boys that played bb in a large school district in the Houston area. I have seen it over and over when they get in school it didn't matter what they did in city leagues or aau it was always the black teammates that got the first shot and they had to fight for playing time. One of my sons was very good and he fought threw it because it was easy to see he could outplay any guard on the team but I also had a step son who was just an amazing athlete but he would get pissed having to sit behind lesser talent because of his color and he finally stopped playing bb. He played so semi pro baseball and the same situation never came up thru school or in the semi pro level but it did with bb. I have friends that played in the NBA and top level division 1 and I have watched them do the same thing. They may have not thought they were doing it but I sat there again and watched the same thing with blacks playing when some whites should have been. I'm not saying that it happens every where all of the time but it does happen. Haven't you ever seen white men can't jump?
There is nothing wrong with his elbow at all, some of that old school teaching is just wrong. If you bring that elbow in to much it takes your hand out of it's natural position and cocks it outward. You just want your index finger or the middle finger whichever you prefer straight up and if you do that you will notice you can't bring the elbow way it.
This is a great point by Billionzz and most of the Asians, or specifically Chinese , players that get recruited into NCAA are usually bigs so they're not going against the same stigma that guards would face. It's also why we would most likely see another Max Zhang (Berkeley) or Tao XU (USF), get a D1 scholarship vs a guard like Jeremy Lin. And we will all continue to see teams draft high in players like Hasheem Thabeet, Yi Jianlian, Brandan Wright, etc.
Nobody ever said that there was absolutely no bias against white basketball players. We're just saying that that bias is exponentially greater against Asians. How many white players are in the NBA? How many of them are legends, MVPs, and All-Stars? Compare that to Asian players.
Form doesn't mean squat imo. Larry Bird is one of the best shooters ever and his form was not close to being good. Kevin Martin's shot looks r****ded but the guy is one of the best shooters out there as well. Joakim Noah shoots about 75% from the FT line and he has one of the worst looking shots ever, while Deandre Jordan who has pretty good form is a brick machine.
Fair enough, maybe it's coz I'm not white I can't see it. But I was thinking 2006 Lin was All-State CA first team. Also making All-State was Brook Lopez, Westbrook, Harden, Ryan Anderson, Budinger, Landry Fields. HS player of the year went to Budinger. I can go back through every NBA draft and find a white guy drafted in the first round that was taken seriously as a pickup (IE Love, Hayward, Morrison, Hansborough, Jimmer, etc). This is what I automatically think of. Anyway I still believe you, it's just the bias I'm used to seeing is way worse Even though freaks of nature bigs get a lot more spin, it's easier for Asian nationals in general to get spin in the NBA. I'm Asian, born in LA, those guys from Asia don't rep me. Yet you've had multiple guys from China get drafted at the 2-5, you've had a guy from South Korea get drafted, 2 guys from Japan, but no Asians born here unless you wanna count Wat Misaka from like 80 years ago and he barely did anything. That's a problem - we're a basketball country, you figure the Asians that could contribute at an NBA level would be the ones who grew up playing on the same courts as today's NBA stars, not guys from countries whose national teams are jokes in the Olympics
Right and I definitely agree with you since that's another thing that I was talking about earlier with the guards that played in Europe having a platform to compete at a higher level than high school or college which gives scouts more time to look at them. Most of them are already picked when their young to be developed and play for their junior club teams. Those guys from the Asia countries also have their national teams that they compete for in FIBA tournaments as well and play in their respective pro leagues, just like Yao and Yi did and some guards that got exposure early on. There was so much things that worked against but also some in favor of Lin, especially his parents supporting his dream to play basketball. He's mentioned this in his interviews even his other Asian-American friends didn't get the same support. It's like China's recruitment system looking for players solely based on height, while kids in USA get pushed away from playing basketball or major sports in general which also limits the pool of players. There was a article by Kevin Ding who also mentioned this as well. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/justin-339740-jeremy-lin.html It will be interesting to see how long it will be before we see pros like Jeremy Lin, Michael Chang, Dat Nguyen, or Cung Le.
Yes practice and in-game is different, but it is correlated. I doubt Dwight really shoots 80% in practice. And even if he did, it would be an exception as such a big dichotomy should not exist in the vacuum of a free throw. And as stated earlier, his previous warm-ups did not showcase such a smooth stroke full of confidence. His shooting has been pretty decent recently, and that's a fact.
I don't know if 25 games is a good enough sample size for people here ... But Lin in the last 25 games is shooting 41% from 3s. That's pretty good for a PG.
To be fair, 90% of the guys you mentioned were drafted mainly for their size. There haven't been many, if any, guard-sized players drafted out of Asia. Even Sun Yue was 6'9". But you do raise a good point. I think Asian athletes in Asia do have the advantage of not having to deal with racial stereotypes, at least in the early stages of their development, since they're mostly playing against other Asians. A Chinese kid who wants to play basketball is not going to get unfairly picked last and have his confidence shattered just because of the color of his hair and the shape of his eyes. It's the same thing with White players. We see a lot of explosive and flashy talent come from Europe and South America, but White American players are almost always the same type: spot-up shooters who are willing to do the dirty work. No doubt prejudices along the way funneled them into those roles. Meanwhile, Asian players aren't seen as suitable for even those limited roles!
If you look at the video above, you can see how comfortable he looks shooing from distance. It was not like that in November/December. I've seen those warm up videos as well. Look for him to up his 3 pt shooting here on out and especially next year, shutting down all the Lin/Harden can't coexist noise. That there's a pretty awesome backcourt imo. Lin just needs one more year to prove to everyone how good he can be. Just one more year. My Prediction: By the time Lin hits his prime, his 3 pt shooting is going to be one of his most lauded qualities. yeah, I said it. That's the power of hard work~
