Page 8 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
U.S.A. / SPORTS
November 5, 2018
Asians in American sports w Asian Americans in world sports
Jeremy Lin looks for another fresh start
FRESH START. There hasn’t been much new Asian talent in the
National Basketball Association (NBA) lately, but there’s been an Asian-
American NBA star that many fans might have forgotten about entirely.
Once the talk of the league, Jeremy Lin (#7) has played just a handful of
games over the past two seasons, thanks to hamstring and knee injuries.
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
(AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
T
here hasn’t been much new Asian talent in the
National Basketball Association (NBA) lately, but
there’s been an Asian-American NBA star that
many fans might have forgotten about entirely. Once the
talk of the league, Jeremy Lin has played just a handful of
games over the past two seasons, thanks to hamstring and
knee injuries. Now he has a chance to establish himself
again in a league that once described the emotional charge
he brought to the basketball court with a single word:
Linsanity.
When the Taiwanese-American guard entered the
game on February 4, 2012, Knicks fans could be forgiven
for not noticing him. With the Knicks in the 2011-2012
season, Lin had played just a bit over 53 minutes in nine
games, never starting and only once appearing for more
than seven minutes. Before coming to New York, he had
played in only a handful of games for the Golden State
Warriors during the 2010-2011 season.
Hardly the stuff of legends, but the Knicks weren’t that
great, either. Prior to the dawn of Linsanity, their record
was 8-15, and they were one game out of the divisional
basement.
On that fateful February night, however, Lin ignited a
fire under the moribund New York team and their fans.
Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni ran a full-throttle offense
that focused on the point guard, and Lin flourished in that
system. He exploded with 25 points, seven assists, and
five rebounds to lead New York to a 99-92 victory over the
New Jersey Nets.
Lin started New York’s next game, against the Utah
Jazz, and he poured in 28 points and dished out eight
assists. For the month of February, he would average 20.9
points and 8.4 assists, leading the Knicks to a 10-5 record
with dazzling plays and heart-stopping buzzer-beaters.
Pure Linsanity.
The Linsanity continued into the start of March, though
Lin’s numbers slipped a bit to 15.5 points and 7.5 assists
over the month’s first eight games. Then D’Antoni
resigned, and Lin’s star began to fade in new coach Mike
Woodson’s offense: Lin’s numbers fell to 13.3 points and
5.4 assists in the next seven games.
Thanks to Lin’s midseason spark, New York made the
playoffs, though they lost in the first round to the eventual
champions, the Miami Heat. After the season, Lin signed
with the Houston Rockets on a three-year, $25-million
deal, a big contract that seemed to indicate he would be
running Houston’s offense.
Instead, the Rockets acquired superstar guard James
Harden, who became the focus of the offense instead. He
and Lin started together most of their first season
together, but the following season, Rockets coach Kevin
McHale went with Patrick Beverley as the team’s starting
point guard.
Though disappointing for Lin, the decision made sense.
Both Lin and Harden need the ball a lot to succeed, and it’s
difficult — if not impossible — to have two players like
that in your backcourt. And the Rockets had played better
with Beverley running the point.
Lin took the demotion graciously, saying “it is not that
big of a deal … being able to attack [off the bench] and
have that freedom to be able to be freelancing a bit. I think
that will be fun.” Regardless, the writing was on the wall
for Lin.
At the end of the season, Houston traded him to the Los
Angeles Lakers, another poor fit for his talent. Here, too,
he would share the backcourt with another player who
thrives on having the ball a lot, Kobe Bryant.
So Lin sought greener pastures in free agency, signing a
two-year deal with the Charlotte Hornets worth $4.37
million, a mere fraction of his Houston contract. But
Charlotte’s up-tempo play was more his style, and Lin
would be helping starting point guard Kemba Walker
learn the ropes in the NBA.
Though Lin’s statistics were pretty much a wash from
the previous year — some up, some down — what
mattered more was the team’s improvement. Charlotte
had gone 33-49 the previous year, but with Lin, they
improved to 48-34.
That improvement can’t all be ascribed to Lin, of course,
but he finished seventh in voting for the NBA’s Sixth Man
of the Year and impressed the Brooklyn Nets enough to
offer him a three-year, $36-million contract to be their
starting point guard. It seemed like the perfect oppor-
tunity for the 27-year-old to rejuvenate his NBA career
and, perhaps, bring Linsanity back to New York City.
Instead, Lin was bitten twice by the injury bug. In his
first season with Brooklyn, a hamstring injury limited
him to just 36 games. In the first game of the following
season, Lin ruptured the patellar tendon in his right knee
and missed the rest of the season.
Brooklyn never gave Lin the chance to redeem himself
in the final year of his contract, choosing instead to trade
him to the Atlanta Hawks before this season. With
Atlanta, Lin will return to his now-familiar role of playing
backup point guard and serving as a mentor to fifth
overall draft pick Trae Young, Atlanta’s point guard of the
future.
With his wide experience with different teams and
offenses, along with his excellent character, Lin should
have plenty of good advice for Young. But to make the
most of the opportunity, he will have to stay healthy and
regain his form after a season-and-a-half dealing with
injuries.
“The toughest thing about coming back is definitely
getting up to the level that you were before, whether it’s
your speed, your rhythm, your explosiveness, your shot,
your decision-making,” Lin said.
Still, he doesn’t need to be a superstar to succeed. He
just needs to stay healthy, so that occasionally he can
show off the talent that held the world’s attention during
that memorable February not so long ago.
Lin and the Atlanta Hawks face the Portland Trail Blazers
at the Moda Center in Portland on January 26 at 7:00pm.
The squads meet again in Atlanta on March 29 at 4:30pm.
“Huge win” for sex assault victims, says California victim
ACCOUNTABILITY. Yee Xiong, 24, sits for a photo at her attorney’s
office in Sacramento, California, in this August 12, 2016 file photo. As she
prepared to leave the sentencing hearing for Lang Her, who she said sex-
ually assaulted her when they were students, she felt ready to finally put
the case behind her after four years. Then, she was handed a $4 million
defamation lawsuit. That lawsuit, in which he objected to Facebook posts
calling him a rapist, was quickly dismissed. (AP Photo/Darcy Costell)
By Jocelyn Gecker
The Associated Press
S
AN FRANCISCO — Years before the #MeToo
movement, Yee Xiong embarked on a quest for
justice after she says she was sexually assaulted at
a college party.
What followed was a tumultuous legal battle that
included two trials ending in hung juries, followed by her
attacker taking a plea deal for felony assault, then turning
around and accusing her of defamation. That lawsuit, in
which he objected to Facebook posts calling him a rapist,
was quickly dismissed.
But Xiong was determined to hold him accountable. She
filed a civil suit against him that resulted with a jury in
October finding her attacker, Lang Her, liable for sexual
battery and awarding her $152,400.
That was the full amount of damages she sought for
medical expenses and pain and suffering, her lawyer said.
“This case was not about money. It was about
vindication for Yee. And, she was absolutely vindicated by
the jury’s verdict,” said Justin Giovannettone, a lawyer
with Sacramento-based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe,
which took on her case for free.
Xiong said she is relieved the case is over and now has a
sense of hopefulness.
“I think this is a case that is a huge win for survivors
around the world,” Xiong, who is now 26 and lives in
Davis, California, said in a telephone interview. She hopes
it sends “a very powerful and positive message to the
world that people will be held accountable for their
actions, no matter how long it takes.”
Xiong was a 20-year-old student at the University of
California, Davis, when she went to an off-campus party
on July 9, 2012, and drank too much, according to court
documents. She woke up in a bed early the next morning
with her arms pinned at her sides to find him having
intercourse with her.
They knew each other before the party. Both were
students at UC Davis and part of the tightknit Hmong
community at the school. Their families also knew
each other. California has the highest population of
Hmong, a Southeast Asian ethnic minority, in the United
States.
She reported the assault to police the next day. A
rape-kit evaluation found his semen. Her, now 26, was
charged with one count of rape of an intoxicated person.
He testified that he believed Xiong wanted to have sex
with him, and his attorneys questioned why Xiong stayed
the rest of the night in the apartment if she had been
raped.
The case was tried twice in 2015 and 2016, and both
times a jury deadlocked.
Prosecutors were ready to try the case a third time when
Her took a plea deal that included a year of jail time and
five years of probation. He also had to register as a sex
offender.
Her is still on probation and served six months of the
one-year sentence, said Giovannettone.
Xiong thought the plea deal was the end. But on the day
of Her’s sentencing in July 2016, he served Xiong with a $4
million defamation suit, saying that she and her three
siblings colluded to alienate him from their Hmong
community by calling him a rapist on Facebook.
A court dismissed the defamation suit in October 2016,
but Xiong decided to fight back with a civil suit.
“Even though he took the plea deal he was not going to
accept responsibility,” she said. “He was trying to use the
legal system to harass me, so I wanted to fight back in the
same way.”
A four-day trial in Yolo County Superior Court ended
October 12 with a unanimous verdict in her favor.
Xiong credits the #MeToo movement with having
shined a light on how victims of sexual assault react to
attacks, which she thinks may have informed the latest
jury.
“In the other two trials, some of the jurors did not
understand why I allowed him to drop me in my
apartment (after the attack) and let him take me to
campus,” she said. “I think people understand now, you do
what you need to, to survive.”