Jeremy Lin’s rise to stardom can be compared to a winding up-hill climb rather than a straight shot to the top, but surely the ending is much sweeter when it’s reached via the road less traveled. Undrafted by thirty NBA teams, waived twice, sent down for a ‘tune-up’ in the NBDL, and finally given some burn after the New York Knicks exhausted all their PG options is as much as you can cram into the Jeremy Lin nutshell, but nobody could have predicted the Linsanity that spilled out once that hard shell was cracked open. Lin isn’t just playing ‘well’ – he’s putting up elite numbers that have opposing coaches scrambling for revised defensive game plans to contain the speedy guard, and so far, six out of six teams (and counting) have failed at that task.
Upon entering the NBA in 2010, Nike hand-picked the Taiwanese-American to join its roster of athletes, signing him to a three-year deal for his potential as an intercontinental ambassador for the game; Nike quickly employed his talents by touring him around Taiwan for basketball clinics and tapping his dribbling skills for this Nike Basketball Pro Drills video, which was likely recorded during the most recent off-season. Wearing the Nike Zoom Hyperfuse 2011, Lin shows off his ‘Lin-sane’ two-handed dribbling skills – something that Deron, Devin, Derek, John, Ricky, and Jose have witnessed firsthand – while speaking on the benefits of the tricky exercise. It’s likely that not even Nike anticipated the astounding heights of ‘Linsanity’, but this just goes to show that there are undiscovered superstars around the league waiting to burst into the scene. With Lin telling the most provocative rags-to-riches story in NBA history, is Linsanity enough to get Jeremy his own signature shoe, or even a PE version of his dependable Nike Zoom Hyperfuse 2011 Low? Check out Lin in this Pro Drills video below and let us know what you think.