What Happened to Jeremy Lin? He’s Still Playing Basketball

Few players have gone on a more impressive and unprecedented run than Jeremy Lin did in 2012, when he was promoted to the starting lineup for the New York Knicks. He helped the team go on a seven-game winning streak that ultimately allowed them to make the playoffs.

Following that run of initial success, though, Jeremy couldn’t ultimately sustain that level of excellence, leading many to wonder what has happened to him in the decade since. While Linsanity may have been short-lived, Jeremy is still playing basketball, even if it’s no longer in the NBA.

Jeremy’s prominence peaked in 2012, when many thought that he might have been a star in the making. During the off-season after his run with the Knicks, Jeremy moved to the Houston Rockets, where he played with James Harden for two years. Ultimately, Jeremy lost playing time as his level of play dropped off. He moved to the Lakers in 2014, where he had an undefined role on a team that won just 21 games all year.

He then moved on to play for the Charlotte Hornets, the Brooklyn Nets, the Atlanta Hawks, and the Toronto Raptors. He was on the Raptors team that won the title in 2019, although he was limited to just 27 minutes of playing time through the entire playoffs. After the Raptors’ victory, Jeremy left the NBA altogether. Since then, he has played for several teams in the CBA or the Chinese Basketball Association.

Even though Jeremy ultimately left the NBA, his career is remembered more harshly than it probably should be. He wasn’t an all-star of the caliber of some of the best to ever play the game, but he was solidly productive throughout most of his time in the NBA. In the end, he got bounced from the league after an injury limited his mobility. Jeremy may not have been the superstar he initially seemed to be, but he deserved to be in the league for all the time he was.

Although race in the NBA is fraught for several reasons, analysis has since made it almost undeniable that part of the reason that Jeremy ultimately went undrafted despite solid evaluations from scouts is that he was Asian, and many believed that that also meant he wasn’t athletic. While the NBA has plenty of Black and white players, the number of Asian players in the league has always been limited and may have ultimately impacted Jeremy’s career.

Jeremy certainly made plenty of money during his time in the NBA, and he’s still playing basketball at a high level almost a decade after the initial phenomenon of Linsanity. Still, many fans can’t help but wonder how much factors like institutional bias ultimately made the basketball player’s career in the NBA harder and shorter than it might have been.