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Linternal Affairs: Statistician Predicted Jeremy Lin's Success 2 Years Ago
By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 11, 2012
Modified Feb 11, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 11, 2012
Modified Feb 11, 2012
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As you probably know by now from perusing some of our stories here at Linthamist.com, Jeremy Lin's career arc has gone something like this: Harvard wunderkind to draft afterthought to Golden State Warriors bench warmer to D-League reject to the biggest brightest friggin' baller in NYC. But there were some people who knew Lin was going to be a star—and that included both his high school basketball coach and a "Moneyball" statistician who predicted his success over two years ago, going against every other basketball expert to declare that, "Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star."
Previewing the 2010 NBA draft, Hoops Analyst writer Ed Weiland noted the thin group of point guards available to teams, but noted: "That doesn’t mean there won’t be a player or two who surprise the experts though. The best candidate to pull off such a surprise might be Harvard’s Jeremy Lin." He felt so strongly about Lin, he made him the feature of his first draft preview post: "I thought Jeremy Lin would be a good guy to start with, because he’s the one player I probably differ on with the rest of the draft pundits by the biggest margin." If only the Lakers had listened to Weiland, maybe they would have made the decision to pick him up when he went undrafted.
The person who seems to have gotten aboard the Lin Train before everyone else is his Palo Alto high school coach, Drew Slayton. He was so ahead of the curve, he purchased the domain Linsanity.com on July 17, 2010. As of now, the site includes a bunch of t-shirts ("#17 Pure MSG," "LIN.Y.C.") and a summary of all his achievements with the Knicks called "The Book Of Jeremy." In an email to Guyism, Slayton explained that traffic had boomed in the past week, and what he aimed to do with the site:
We are just trying to enjoy the Jeremy Lin Show and have a bit of creative fun at the same time—as a writer, the T-Shirts and The Book of Jeremy that I am writing on the site are a blast for me but not nearly as much fun as watching Jeremy deal on Deron Williams. Jeremy has worked his tail off to get where he’s at…and he definitely deserves the Linsanity. Jeremy is going GLOBAL!
It's too bad he hasn't found room to include some of Spike Lee's Lin-inspired slam poetry on the site:
Tagged
basketball
jeremy lin
knicks
linsanity
moneyball
nba
sabermetrics
sports
Stats
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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