Linmania: The perfect storm

Reader question:

Please explain this passage with “perfect storm” in particular (Lin has 13 assists, Knicks run win streak to 7, AP, February 15, 2017):

“I knew him before he was Linmania. He’s still the same humble guy,” Kings coach Keith Smart said. “The guy has not changed a bit, which is real special for a young man.”

Lin played last season in Golden State for Smart, who praised Lin’s work ethic and attitude, but never imagined “the perfect storm” that would lead to these results.

My comments:

The perfect storm here means that New York is the perfect situation for Jeremy Lin.

But, first, let’s get the phrase “the perfect storm” out of the way so that we can talk more about Linmania, the Linderella story of the NBA that’s taken the sports world by storm over the past week.

First, definitions. Literally the perfectly powerful storm, the perfect storm describes the worst hurricanes that devastate North America annually. All hurricanes are storms, but, as meteorologists will tell you, not all hurricanes are created equal – it takes a number of meteorological conditions to create the really big ones, such as the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest in history.

“The Oxford English Dictionary has published references going back to 1718 for “perfect storm,” though the earliest citations use the phrase positively, as in a “perfect storm” of applause,” according to Wikipedia, but the weather-related phenomenon term is relatively new. More from Wikipedia:

In 1993, journalist and author Sebastian Junger planned to write a book about the 1991 Halloween Nor’easter storm. In the course of his research, he spoke with Bob Case, who had been a deputy meteorologist in the Boston office of the National Weather Service at the time of the storm. Case described to Junger the confluence of three different weather-related phenomena that combined to create what Case referred to as the “perfect situation” to generate such a storm:

*warm air from a low-pressure system coming from one direction,

*a flow of cool and dry air generated by a high-pressure from another direction, and

*tropical moisture provided by Hurricane Grace.

From that, Junger keyed on Case's use of the word perfect and coined the phrase perfect storm, choosing to use The Perfect Storm as the title of his book.

Junger published his book The Perfect Storm in 1997 and its success brought the phrase into popular culture. Its adoption was accelerated with the release of the 2000 feature film adaptation of Junger’s book. Since the release of the movie, the phrase has grown to mean any event where a situation is aggravated drastically by an exceptionally rare combination of circumstances.

So there. Just as it takes a confluence of events to make a perfect storm, it took many a numerous conditions for Lin to take center stage at Madison Square Garden in the Knick of time, if you’ll pardon the irresistible urge to pun one more time.

You see, everyone loves the underdog and there’s no bigger one like the small Lin. First, he is and Asian American, a race that’s not known for being particularly good at basketball, traditionally a white but increasingly these days black man’s game. Second, he’s from Harvard, a school not known for producing Ivy-League level hoopsters. Third, nobody wanted him when he entered the NBA draft two years ago. And when he did get signed by two teams (Golden State, Houston), he was eventually cut to make room for other, apparently better players. And when the Knicks signed him this season, they buried him to the very end of the bench, never intending to play him significant minutes.

So on and so forth.

The long and short of it is, as you surely know now, that due to shortage of point guards (the Knicks sent Raymond Felton to Denver in the trade for Carmelo Anthony and gave up Chauncey Billups to save money) and injuries to Antony, Amare Stoudamire – the other Knick superstar – and others, coach Mike D’Antoni had no option but to give the reins to Lin.

And the rest, as they say, is history – Current history as that history is still in the making. To date, Lin has given stellar performances in seven straight games, all Knick victories, and along the way sending Knicks and sports fans in general into such an uncontrollable delirium that everybody becomes creative in giving Jeremy a Linguistically beautiful Knickname, the aforementioned Linmania and Linderella being just two of them.

Others include: Lintendo, Linsanity, Linpossible...

My personal favorite is this. As the long suffering Knicks fans are now worried whether the ball-hogging Melo will ruin the Lin show upon return from injury, some are lobbying for Melo to stay away for longer. Who needs Melo, they ask.

Linough is enough!

Let’s not get carried away, though. Coming back to the perfect storm, don’t forget this: Jeremy Lin has always had the will to succeed. And guts and courage, too, gallons of them. And he loves the game.

At the end of the day, after all is said and done, Lin’s courage and passion for the game is the primary force that created this perfect storm.

Lin is in the eye of the storm, so to speak, calmly running the show at Madison Square Garden, of all sporting places.

Yes, it’s Lin, a Taiwanese-American running the show.

A show that nobody, white, black, brown or yellow, wants to end.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.