If you haven't noticed, there has been an animated discussion about Jeremy Lin over the last couple of weeks.
It all started on April 5th, when a fan named Hsiu-Chen Kuei made a dense video that staked a claim that Jeremy Lin is treated unfairly by NBA officials, especially when it comes to flagrant foul calls.
In the video, numerous examples of Lin getting hit hard are shown, and none of them resulted in flagrant calls. To give viewers perspective, she included similar hits to other players that did indeed result in flagrants.
A written appeal to the league goes along with the video; here's part of it.
Lin’s health and safety are at risk, as Lin gets hit unnecessarily and excessively in the face, head, and neck areas by other players frequently. The most alarming aspect of these incidents is that the referees didn’t make the right calls to protect the player, Lin, from harm.
Kuei made a good enough case that the NBA itself ended up responding with a statement on Reddit.
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The full statement can be seen here, but it boils down to this.
While some of the plays in the video you referenced involved hard contact, none was subsequently deemed a Flagrant Foul given the full circumstances, angles and comparables from past games.
After the league attempted to slide the conversation under the table, Lin recorded a video to thank the fan, while commenting that he hopes the league reviews these calls as well.
Jeremy Lin thanks fan create video about his non-call flagrant foul, hope the league can review it & get more calls pic.twitter.com/74jDgC4fC9
— Dennis Ginobili (@manu77728) April 10, 2016
Then, Andrew Keh of the New York Times released a piece on Thursday that profiled Kuei. Apparently, she spent about 18 hours (six nights at three hours a night) putting the video together before sending it off to the league office.
Now that the New York Times had covered the story, the NBA felt that it needed to release a more in-depth statement on their official site. The full statement is here; let's look at a piece of it.
While he has not drawn a flagrant foul in that time, neither have other guards known for their driving ability like Reggie Jackson (2,031 drives), Tony Parker (1,974), Tyreke Evans (1,969), Ty Lawson (1,891), Kyrie Irving (1,649) or Victor Oladipo (1,544). Conversely, Mr. Lin has drawn more common fouls on those drives than any of those previously listed players and has drawn fouls at the seventh-highest rate among the 23 players with more than 1,500 drives.
They make some interesting statistical points, but that doesn't take away from the video evidence presented by Kuei. For now, the NBA is standing with its initial take on the situation. If more visual evidence is generated and more fans get on board with the idea that some sort of prejudice is taking place towards Lin, the league might have to speak out again.
So, what do you think? Is Lin being discriminated, either purposely or subconsciously, by NBA officials, or is this a conversation over nothing?
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