Jeremy Lin says NBA dream and ‘Linsanity’ was funded by mother’s retirement savings
- Free agent tells Ellen DeGeneres of sacrifices made by family, including unemployed mother risking her 401(k) retirement savings
- The 32-year-old also recalls first time he experienced racism on the court amid rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the US
NBA free agent Jeremy Lin has told how his mother helped to fund his NBA dream the first time around, giving him two years to make the league after graduating from Harvard.
Speaking to the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Lin explained that his mother Shirley made a huge financial sacrifice to allow him to pursue his dream of NBA stardom.
“The craziest story is just that when I graduated from Harvard, I went to decide to pursue professional basketball,” Lin told DeGeneres. “My mom at that time knew I wasn’t eating until I was full because I was trying to save money for us – because of the tuition and everything.
“She said, ‘I’m going to give you two years to chase your basketball dream. Don’t worry about the money. I’ve got some money’,” the 32-year-old said.
“She didn’t tell me until a few years ago that that money came out of her 401(k),” Lin said, referring to her retirement savings.
“She didn’t tell me at the time, because she knew that maybe I wouldn’t accept it, or she just did what an amazing mother would do. And so that was just kind of a glimpse into the sacrifice that it took from my parents to be able to give me and my brothers a chance.”
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Lin told the story before at the 2016 New Yorker Festival, where he said that both of his parents were laid off from their jobs at the same time that he wanted to enter the NBA Draft.
He went undrafted before being signed by the Golden State Warriors and making his name at the New York Knicks when he became a global superstar during the “Linsanity” period.
Lin has since gone on to play for several other NBA teams before playing last season for the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association.
He is attempting to make an NBA comeback this season. Lin’s mother often features on his social media, including in a 2014 viral video where he dunks on her.
Both of Lin’s parents emigrated to the US from Taiwan for university, with the future Linsanity star born and brought up in California.
Lin also told DeGeneres about the struggles they faced in the US and the racism that he faced as a youngster, including the first time he remembered experiencing discrimination on the court.
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“When I was in sixth grade, we were playing in a basketball game, and we were playing against some people from Southern California,” he said on video link from California.
“That’s when they were kind of like, ‘Go back to China! You’re a Chinese import,’ and other stuff like that. … I always felt like on the court, it didn’t matter – like colour didn’t matter, skin didn’t matter. It was just about who could play and who couldn’t.
“I was taken a little bit aback and was just like, ‘Oh, wow. People do still see me differently, even in the middle of a basketball game’.”
Lin’s experience of discrimination on court has continued to this day.
In the NBA G League this season, where he played with the Santa Cruz Warriors as he looked to secure an NBA return, Lin was called “coronavirus” by a fellow player. The matter has been settled internally after an investigation.
Lin, who became the first American of Chinese descent to win an NBA championship when he played with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, has been an outspoken voice amid the rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the US.
