A day after a league official told Marc J. Spears, ESPN, that the G-League is investigating the allegation Jeremy Lin made that he was called “coronavirus” during a match, Lin tweeted that he ‘ no one mentions or shames’.
“I know it will disappoint some of you, but I do not mention or shame anyone,” Lin tweeted on Saturday. “What good is it in this situation to have someone break down? It does not make my community safer and does not solve any of our long-term problems with racism.”
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Lin, the former NBA guard who now plays for the G League’s Santa Cruz Warriors, spoke out about the racism he believes the Asian American community continues to deal with and offered examples that he experienced according to him.
“Being a 9-year-old NBA veteran does not protect me from being called ‘coronavirus’ in court,” he wrote.
Lin did not say when he was named that way, and it was unclear whether the incident took place in the G-League bubble in Orlando, Florida, where Lin currently plays as a member of Santa Cruz, the subsidiary of the Golden State Warriors. .
Lin became the first American-born NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent when he broke into the Warriors during the 2010-11 season. He became best known for an excellent scoring record – one that led to victories with the New York Knicks during the 2011-12 season – described as ‘Linsanity’. In total, the former Harvard star averaged 11.6 points and 4.3 assists in 480 games in the NBA from 2010 to 2019.
He had previously spoken out about racist ridicule he received while playing, and said in a 2017 podcast that while some came during his time in the NBA, it was much worse during his four years at Harvard while Competed on the road from 2006 to 2010.
“When I experienced racism in the Ivy League, it was my assistant coach Kenny Blakeney who spoke to me about it,” Lin tweeted on Saturday. “He shared with me his own experiences as a black man – stories of racism I could not understand. Stories about being called the n-word and throwing things out of cars at him. He draws on his experiences with “Identity after teaching me how to stay strong in mine. He was also the first person to tell me I was an NBA player as a sophomore at Harvard. I thought he was crazy.”
Prior to his G-League season this season, Lin played in the Chinese Basketball Association.