Cyber-tough guy in the house! If you think NYC was just making up those stereotypes on his own, then you haven't been paying attention in life.
Yes, me too! 2006 had some quality posters like yourself and durvasa. We need a poll for the best year in terms of quality posters. Kinda like comparing draft classes (of which 2006 was craptastic).
With YOF's it generally took a lot of dedication, to be Chinese and seek out this English board and post in English. Plus yaomingmania skimmed off the super YOF's that would drive CF crazy. With LOF's I feel like some of them are not very into basketball and they come here with a 4chan mentality of "anything goes." But this board is not "anything goes," it's pro-Rocket. And I'm not aware of any Lin site that reaches the level of yaomingmania to divert some of the more rabid fans. I battled some Lin champions on this board and they called me racist and ****. Oh well. I'm not going to give you my non-racist bio here. Maybe I'm just getting too old. I hate the "McFail" stuff and all the implicit pro-/anti- Lin crap. I kinda feel like I no longer fit this board. Thinking of riding off into the sunset. (Don't cry.)
I never said that Asians as a race were short and unathletic. Also, I'm neither short nor unathletic. But good guess! And I commend you for standing up against perceived racism! Asians are statistically shorter and less bulky than African/Caucasian. That's a fact. So a 6'3" PG in the NBA is definitely out of the ordinary and someone to look up to.
Yup. Yea I'm just making pretty obvious statements that a logical Asian-American that is proud of Lin but also realistic would make. May have tried my hand at some social/racial identity hypotheses, but y'all are welcome to disagree. I just happen to have being AA and having AA/Asian friends to base my observations on.
^ Very well done. Good work. I've been on this site since 1999, obviously. I was here when it was ClutchCity. Clutch is like Drudge, and I mean that as a compliment. Pioneer, been around since pretty much the beginning. And he's still here. Thank goodness for us fans. I've been on the internet since it was nothing but IRC Chat and newsgroups. 1992 or so. Newsgroups were like early versions of BBS's. Very early. The one I used to go on before Clutch came around was a group called rec.sport.basketball.pro. I'm sure Clutch remembers that group. Then, like 1996 or so, a new place popped up for Rockets fans. The team had just won 2 titles and people were dying to talk about the team. And BOOM there was ClutchCity/ClutchFans. It was awesome. An oasis. I was hooked quickly. These days, I have less time to post. My interest in the team was peaked with the signings of Harden and Lin. But I was a huge Yao fan. Just didn't have time to post in those days.
Remember that "African" is not a uniform race. Remember in that group, you have distinct subgroups that vary greatly, such as the Masai, the Kalahari bushmen, and West Africans (what we Americans think of when we think of "African"). People like to talk about how Africans dominate sprinting, but that's not entirely accurate. WEST Africans tend to dominate sprinting. When's the last time an East African won a sprinting title? Also with "Caucasians", there's a wide variety of body types, from the large (Northern Europe) to the small (Southern Europe). Just from personal experience, there was a dramatic change in the typical body type when I travelled from the Netherlands and Germany to France. With "Asians" as well, there's a wide range as well. Northern Asians tend to be bigger than their Southern counterparts. Remember that Lin's parents were below average in height, so it seems that environmental effects have a significant effect on one's body shape. Anyway, my point is that Lin isn't that much of an anomaly in terms of height and weight. Not unless you have extremely stereotypical views of Asians.
All your points are fair. Yes there will be sub-groups that have different sizes and shapes. These sub-groups also tend to be smaller in population size. For example, amongst Chinese/Taiwanese/HK, Han Chinese tend to be the vast majority. I'm just coming from the angle that if you were to pick out 100 males at random from the U.S. that self-identify as Asian ethnicity, they will be on average and in distribution, shorter than 100 males at random that self-identify is Caucasian. Look for China/HK/Taiwan in this table. Avg height is 5'7". http://www.interbasket.net/news/4385/2009/09/average-height-by-country-males-20-years/ Somewhere else on the wonderful Internet you can find 25th, 50th, 75th, etc. percentiles as well, by nationality -- and those points will not tell a different story. I'm also Asian, have lots of AA friends and was born and grew up in the U.S. I have hundreds if not thousands of data points from growing up and going to high school and college with Asians. We are on average shorter. Make no mistake, we'd all love to be 6'3"! JLin is maybe not an anomaly (upper 0.5 - 1%), but he is almost certainly in the upper 5% in height for Han Chinese.
Read somewhere that standard deviation of an American's height is about 3 inches. Let's just assume for simplicity that we use that for Han Chinese. If the avg. Han Chinese is 5'7", then 6'3" is 8 inches above, which is almost 3 standard deviations away from the mean. He's definitely in the top 5%, most likely the top few %. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68-95-99.7_rule
