by Micah Hart
In case you were thinking the NBA, its fans and its media had become incapable of paying attention to anything other than Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks, I hope All-Star Weekend put that notion to rest. Lin made an appearance Friday night in the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge, but that aside the weekend was mostly Lin free. I say that not to complain or to be smug — just to note that when Lin is not part of the storyline we all seemed capable of avoiding trying to shoehorn him into it.
Having said that … with all of our attention on Orlando, there were a few Lin-related items that slipped through the cracks, and now that we are back to regularly scheduled programming, here’s a rundown:
- Late Night with Jimmy Fallon went to one of the show’s best bits last week, as Fallon appeared as Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder to perform “Jeremy (Lin)”.
- A Jeremy Lin autographed rookie card was selling on eBay for $50,000. Surprisingly, it doesn’t appear anyone bought it.
- Ben and Jerry’s named an ice cream flavor after Lin called “Taste the Lin-sanity”, then dealt with a mini-firestorm after many complained that the fortune cookie ingredient played on Asian stereotypes. They’ve since replaced the fortune cookie bits with bits of waffle cone.
- The business of Lin is booming, as his agent Roger Montgomery detailed on Darren Rovell‘s NBC Sports show.
- It’s not all sunshine on the business side though, as Lin is seeking to trademark the uber-popular Linsanity catchphrase. Naturally several others have already applied for it, so we’ll see how this plays out. Kid’s got an econ degree from Harvard though, I have a feeling it may come in handy with this.
I think that about catches us up for now. At least for the next few hours.
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Catch up on every single game-winning buzzer beater during the season and see how it rates on the Horry Scale.
Go NY LINsanity …