After a year in China playing for the Beijing Ducks, former NBA point guard Jeremy Lin looks for another shot at the NBA. The 32-year-old Lin recently started his season with the Santa Cruz Warriors in the G League bubble this past week.

Jeremy Lin will always be known for his infamous “Linsanity” run, which was a one to two month stretch in 2011 where he broke out of nowhere as the starting point guard for the New York Knicks. He became a national media sensation for a good portion of that season and was arguably one of the most talked-about stories in all of sports during that time. 

In general, that moment in sports has a legacy that will always be remembered for his inspiring underdog story as a Taiwanese-American basketball player making it in a league devoid of Asian talent. 

Since that magical Cinderella stretch, Lin has unfortunately never really experienced that same glory and has bounced around from team to team. 

Many people might feel that he didn’t live up to the expectations he created after his time with the Knicks. Even if he has bounced from teams like the Knicks, Rockets, Hornets, Nets, and Raptors, he still became the face of a minority in America that needed a male sports figure to look up to.

No matter what you think of Lin as a player, you cannot deny that, even if his career didn’t go the way he would’ve liked, he still made a respectable impact in basketball, especially his significance to Asian-Americans in America during this time period.

Asian-Americans never had a public figure like Lin who represented them in a way that was different compared to what the mainstream media usually portrayed many Asians.

While he didn’t become the huge star that he hoped he could replicate from his short time in New York, he still played a good eight to nine years in the NBA that only a few percent of people worldwide could achieve.

In addition to his career on the court, Lin also garnered some endorsements off the court that earned him more money on the side, such as signing for major brands like Adidas and Nike. He even appeared in some major commercials, such as this Adidas commercial a couple of years ago that featured many of the top athletes in the world. 

Years later, there still aren't a lot of Asian-American or foreign Asian players in the NBA currently, but if you look deeper into the lower levels of basketball, there is a slow uptick in this demographic. Lin could’ve been a stepping stone for this, and maybe he could be the reason for the growth of Asian-American players in the NBA. 

Overall, Lin is not just an inspiration to Taiwanese-Americans like himself, but people of all ethnicities who relate to his journey and obstacles of trying to overcome the odds in a particular situation.