It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything of note to post here, and now I am so-so proud to post this.  I first was excited when Tommy Amaker came to coach at HU and in so doing lifted Harvard out of the dark ages of college basketball.  Then came Jeremy Lin.  I feel like I ran into him at least once in passing, and he was at that time very cool.  Then I saw him ball.  KNEW he could ball, but wondered if he would ever get the chance to show his skills in the league.  And now he is.  So so happy.

One has to appreciate the perfect storm of circumstances that conspired to make this possible: an embattled head coach, an addled Baron Davis, an ineffective point guard tandem of Bibby and what’s his face, and a city in New York that is as bloodthirsty as it is competitive, all screaming for the obvious: someone who was willing to pass the damn ball.  That man certainly isn’t Melo’, who for all his individual glory seems to be incapable of making his teammates play above their collective talents, nor is it Amare, who for all his swooping dunking prowess cannot handle the ball every possession.  That person is/was Lin, an undrafted second year player so carelessly discarded by the Golden State Warriors (who to be fair, have Monta Ellis and Steph Curry running the point).

This is an era when people in the NFL/NBA/life seem to be so stiflingly enamored with is stats: vertical, 40 yard dash time, quarterly profits etc.  But what they seem to miss often is the incredibly important element of WILL.  I would trade an ironclad will and burning desire to achieve something for a million 40 yard dash time or stellar quarterly earnings, if only because an injury or bank default can remove the latter, neither of those can ever touch the former.  And here we’re presented with another prime example in Jeremy Lin, a man who two weeks ago was sleeping on teammate’s couches.  What those in the know seem to have underestimated is the incredible amount of WILL it takes to be a student-athlete at a school like Harvard.  There are no scholarships, no groupies, no free rides from professors.  All there is is the work.  That’s it.  So this video goes out to all the nerd-student-athletes that never got their chance.  This one’s for Jeremy Lin, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and all the other nerds still out there doing it.  One love.