The day after a league official told ESPN’s Marc J. Spears that the G League is investigating a claim made by Jeremy Lin that he was called a “coronavirus” during a game, Lin tweeted that “he is not reporting or embarrassing nobody”.
“I know this is going to disappoint some of you, but I’m not naming or embarrassing anyone,” Lin tweeted on Saturday. “What’s the use of someone being demolished in this situation? It doesn’t make my community safer or solve any of our long-term problems with racism.”
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Lin, the former NBA playmaker now playing for the Santa Cruz Warriors of the G League, spoke about the racism he believes the Asian American community continues to deal with and offered examples he said have experienced.
“Being a 9-year-old NBA veteran does not protect me from being called a ‘coronavirus’ on the court,” he wrote.
Lin did not specify when he was called that, and it was not clear whether the incident occurred in the G League bubble in Orlando, Florida, where Lin currently plays as a member of Santa Cruz, an affiliate of the Golden State Warriors.
Lin became the first American NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent when he debuted at the Warriors during the 2010-11 season. He became best known for a high scoring bid – which led to victories with the New York Knicks during the 2011-12 season – which was described as “Linsanity”. In total, the former Harvard star averaged 11.6 points and 4.3 assists in 480 NBA games from 2010 to 2019.
He had previously talked about racist insults he received while playing, saying in a 2017 podcast that, although some occurred during his time in the NBA, they were far worse during his four years at Harvard while competing on the road from 2006 to 2010.
“When I experienced racism in the Ivy League, it was my assistant coach Kenny Blakeney who helped me overcome racism,” wrote Lin on Saturday. “He shared with me his own experiences as a black man – stories of racism that I couldn’t understand. Stories of being called a n-word and having things thrown at him from cars. He took inspiration from his experiences with identity to taught me how to stay strong in mine. He was also the first person to tell me that I was an NBA player when I was a sophomore at Harvard. I thought he was crazy. “
Prior to his stint in the G League this season, Lin had played for the Chinese Basketball Association.