For better or for worse, Jeremy Lin can't really help that he stands out based solely upon his ethnicity.
After Yao Ming retired, Lin was the only Asian-American NBA player of any significance, and that led to a skewed reality for Lin to live in that doesn't apply to anyone else.
He appreciates that his background has endeared him to fans, especially to fellow Asians, but Lin - like many minorities - just hopes to be normal.
"You can just take the racial element alone," Lin said Monday during the Brooklyn Nets' Media Day. "You can add on so many other factors, but really anything I do is hyper-magnified in a good way or a bad way. People are quick to discount me or say certain things because of my race. And when I do well, people are quick to say he's so amazing, he's the truth, whatever, because of my race, because of the way I look."
Lin became an overnight celebrity thanks to a euphoric two months at Madison Square Garden in 2012, but more than just his performance on the court, Lin attributes the fawning and adoration to him being Asian.
"In some ways, Linsanity wouldn't have been Linsanity if I was a different skin color, most likely, it wouldn't have been as big of a deal, and that went to my advantage, too, but if you look prior to that, a lot of the obstacles to even get to that point where I could get to a position of getting on the floor, those were definitely obstacles that were very much stereotypes that I had to fight along the way. So I've always understood that there's good and there's bad and you have to take them together and just be thankful for it all."
