Jeremy Lin Begins Life with Hornets and The Truth About his history with Rockets and Lakers
Les Alexander the owner of the Rockets was extremely POed at Morey during Linsanity. You have to remember what the Rox looked like at the time in the summer of 2013. Their biggest “star” was Kevin Martin and they hadn’t been to the playoffs in 5 years. This was before there was even a notion that they could get Harden much less Howard. Les wanted a BIG name to sell tickets and in the Summer of 2013 there weren’t many names bigger in FA than Jeremy Lin. The same Jeremy Lin that Morey and Mchale cut 4 weeks before Linsanity happened in MSG.
After the season ended with the Knicks Lin said himself in several interviews that he’d thought he’d play for the Knicks for the next 3-4 years. Lin said he wanted to play in front of the Knicks fans in MSG for the rest of his career. Lin may be a Harvard grad but honestly the guy is not very savy when it comes to NBA power politics. He didn’t know Melo was not gonna let Dolan sign him to take the spotlight in MSG. This can be confirmed in the Henry Abott piece written for ESPN.
During the time when Lin was a household name and was setting scoring records and bringing the Knicks back into the playoff picture, Morey and Mchale were being ridiculed during Linsanity and their competency in evaluating talent was being called into question. You have to remember Morey and Mchale cut Lin in favor of Johnny Flynn on Christmas Day. Mchale got visibly peeved several times being asked how he “missed out” on seeing Lin’s talent. For what it’s worth Johnny Flynn was out of the NBA after that one season.
Les Alexander wanted a name and wanted to mitigate the laughstock joke that his GM and Head Coach cut a guy that four weeks later was setting scoring records, putting 38pts on Kobe in MSG and creating a sporting phenomena that was a bona fide national sensation. Plus the Rox still have a lot of business ties with Chinese Companies from the Yao Ming days. Just look at the Chinese writing on the Rox goal post. Those ties were weakening as Yao had been retired for almost 4 years by this point.
So Les Alexander pretty much forced Morey to get Lin back. Les stated in interviews that he even called Morey and screamed at him after watching Lin hit the famous game winner against Toronto on Valentine’s day 2012. Not only screamed at him but hung up on him mid sentence. During the off season Les forced Morey to fly to Vegas where he met Lin and Lin’s agents at the Golden Nugget Casino business room. There he literally had to profusely apologize to Lin and under orders from Les tell Lin he was deeply sorry and that the Rox made a mistake and now wanted to make it up to him and get him back in Houston to be the face of the Franchise. Lin talks about this meeting in several interviews saying that Morey kept apologizing “almost too much.” In other words to the point of graveling which was ordered by Les. You can believe that the apologizing/ cowtowing was not Morey’s idea nor would he forget it when Lin got to Houston and Harden was signed and the ROX no longer needed Lin as “the star.”
So Morey structured that backloaded contract that gave Dolan the excuse not to match. Lin only signed the contract because he was absolutely certain NY would match. Lin being Naive really thought till the very last minute he’d be a Knick for life as he said in many interviews afterword and was in his words totally shocked when the Knicks declined to match at the last minute of the deadline. So to his detriment for the next two years Lin headed back to Houston to play for Morey and Mchale.
The Morey structured the contract for 3 years 25 million 5/5/15. This was instead of a normal 8/8.5/8.5 split which the Knicks would have no reason not to match. The balloon 15 million dollar 3rd year was just to keep the Knicks from matching and would be clause used to call Lin “overpaid” and “not worth his contract” by the Houston media and fan base later when Lin was no longer needed. in reality Hou only paid Lin 10 million for two years compared to the 50 million plus they eventually got back in the Asian Market.
Mchale does not like Jeremy Lin’s game at all. He never has. It was his player evaluation that mainly contributed to Morey cutting Lin the first time on Christmas Day 4 weeks before Linsanity. Mchale didn’t even think Lin was NBA caliber as stated by several sources at the time. The fact that Mchale now had to welcome back the guy he helped Morey cut, and treat him as the face of the franchise and the #1 option was like a slap in the face. Basically Mchale made a player evaluation that said this guy isn’t worth the $500,000 lin had on his contract at the time and isn’t as good as 4th string Johnny Flynn who was out of the league by that offseason. Linsanity made him look stupid. His own bosses owner Les Alexander and Morey giving Lin 25 million and declaring him the number one option was for all intents and purposes saying Kevin Mchale doesn’t know what he’s doing. Mchale wasn’t about to let that stand but for the moment thats what the owner wanted and there
was nothing Mchale could do about it..at the time.
So Lin was set to be the #1 option and the face of a team without much talent to entertain Hou, sell tickets and bring in the chinese AD dollars, but before he plays a regular season game for the Rox, Morey was able to work the Harden trade. Suddenly Lin becomes expendable. For the first few games Lin and Harden play great together. Their first game against the Hawks Lin scored 20pts and Harden got 35pts. But now the Rox wanted to focus on Harden becoming an Allstar and a scoring title contender. So they design the offense to put the ball in his hands every possession and they Play Harden 40 mpg.
Now the Rox have a real NBA “superstar” to be the face of the franchise. To get the headlines on ESPN and get talked about by Kenny and the crew on NBA tonight.
So Lin starts to get marginalized. In fact Mchale starts benching Lin in favor of Tony Douglas in the 4th Qt for no reason. Still despite all that Lin starts every game. And average 13.8/6 while playing off ball. To tick Morey and Harden off more Lin got more Allstar votes than Harden and Harden had to get in as an alternate.
So Lin helped the team get to the playoffs for the first time in 5 years. Lin hurts his shoulder in the 1st qt of the 2nd game of the playoffs and is out. Pat Beverley steps in and hurts Westbrook tearing WB’s ACL suddenly Bev becomes a Houston Hero. Mchale never mentions Beverley a career euro league player without gushing.
In the offseason Howard signs with the Rox. Now Morey has delusions of grandeur and Lin is an afterthought. Mchale decides to bench Lin for Beverley and snatches Lin from games arbitrarly at any time even when Lin is playing very well. And example is a game the Rox played against Lin’s old team the Knicks on 1/3/2014. Lin scored 13 first half points on great shooting percentages. Lin makes one arguable turn over in the middle of the third and Mchale benches him for the rest of the game. An example that was a very common trend that year in regards to Mchale benching Lin arbitrarly even when Lin was hot.
Here is a video of that game Lin was on fire and Mchale benches Jeremy at 3:35 left in the 3rd Qt Lin didn’t play a single minute the rest of the game despite it being a close game to the wire. While watching Lin shoot free throws listen to the what the HOU Announce team is saying.
The Rox media, writers and Commentators start going in on Lin relentlessly. Every loss is his fault and everytime he’s on the court every mistake is magnified. Morey does this to justify the Bev promotion and the Lin benching. The problem is Bev is injury prone. Lin starts 33 games almost 40% of the entire schedule an averages 12.5/6. Lin has some great games including a triple double on Kyrie Iriving and had some big wins in the playoffs against Lillard. Never forget Lillard was scoreless in the 4th of game 6 when Lin was on him, Lin was subbed out and Lillard got that historic three in Parson’s face when Bev was suppose to be guarding him but loses him. Still the Rox org, media and most of its fan base blame Lin for series loss.
By this time Lin has served his purpose to Les. The Rox now had two “Superstars” to get them hype. Lin is expendable even to Les Alexander now. The Rox paid Lin 10 million for two years and got a PG who got them to the playoffs twice and solidified their relationships with the Chinese companies. Two years 5 million per year for a PG who averaged 13.8/6 and 12.5/6 while staring every game the first year and almost half the games the second year is a steal in any GM’s book.
So Morey can finally get rid of Lin. Morey makes no secret about how much respect he and org have for Lin with the Melo #7 situation.
Thankfully the Lakers need a PG and a pick so they take Lin’s last year at 15 million which was always the problem with Lin’s contact. If he just got 8/8.5/8.5 25million it would be no issue but people see that 15 million for one year and it freaks them out forgetting he only got 5 million per for the first two years of the contract.
Lin more than earned his 5 million a year for the two years he was in Hou. They got a great deal for that amount of money on the court. And they made 10 times that in Asian endorsements.
So you asked why Hou gave that “big” contract to Lin if Morey and Mchale were against him from the start. There is your answer.
Next Lin was traded to the Lakers. Mitch kip gal said Lin was a player they alway wanted to get and Byron Scott said he is a fan of Lin. The season started with Lin as a starter for the 14/15 Lakers.
Lin put up close to 50/40/90 stat while being as popular and charming as ever. This made Kobr Bryant extremely jealous of Lin and he started taking about 30 field goals a game and putting up very low percentages, lower than Walker. He used to get double an triple teams and deliberately not pass to the open Lin. He cursed Lin on TV, called him a coward and p****. All this while Byron sat there and tried to cater everything to Kobe. Keep in mind Scott did everything he could to please Kobe while marginalizing Lin. This led to the same stuff that Kobe and Lin couldn’t play together and resulted in Lin being benched for a scrub Ronnie Price. Kobe was a scrub all these games taking acetal bad shots and making very few and yet all the blame fell on Lin. Scott was playing along and did everything to please Kobe. He also went as far as to call career garbage Ronnie Price as head of the snake.
So what did Lin do? He did what he always does and played his game despite being marginalized and tested badly. He led the Lakers off the bench and made them the strongest bench unit in the league often erasing double point deficits whih starters will get them in And Lin pulled them out of a deep hole.
Scott was not happy with and wante to further embarass LIN. So he have Lin a DNP and also proceeded to start rookie Jordan Clarkson ahead of Lin and went out and said he has 3 starting PG’s
Eventually Lin just played out the season for a tanking team and then joined the hornets.
All in all Lin was heavily maginalizes by Harden, McHale, Bev, Scott, Kobe, Price and others.
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