How speaking up saved a pivotal friendship
Jeremy Lin harbored some resentment toward a former coach. So he acted like an adult, used his words and saved one of the most important relationships in his basketball career.
Jeremy Lin wasn’t just a basketball player, he was a phenomenon.
Lightly recruited in high school and undrafted coming out of Harvard, he turned the entire NBA on its ear during one unforgettable month back in 2012.
Lin scored 20 or more points in each of the first five games he started for the New York Knicks. He made a game-winning 3-pointer against the Toronto Raptors, and he outscored Kobe Bryant 38 points to 34 in a duel at Madison Square Garden.
He led the Knicks on a seven-game win streak, and the team went 9-3 heading into the All-Star break, a streak that has its own name: Linsanity.
While that was certainly the high point for Lin’s career, it was a long way from the end. He ultimately played 10 years in the NBA, signing two different three-year contracts and earning more than $60 million while playing for seven different teams.
But when it was over, he found himself ruminating about the chances he didn’t get, the doors that never opened.
Why wasn’t he a coveted recruit coming out of high school? He was captain of a team that won the state title and was named California’s Division II player of the year.
And why couldn’t he get back into the NBA in 2020? He went to the developmental league, after all, averaged 19.8 points, and still couldn’t get a sniff from any of the country’s top teams.
Lin described what happened next when he went on Dwight Howard’s podcast. The clip I’ll be quoting from starts at 16:40:
“So I found a sports psychologist,” Lin said.
Lin’s first assignment: Write down a list that included everyone who’d hurt him in his basketball career.
“I was like, ‘What?’ “Lin said.
“A lot of times we’ll be holding on to stuff and we think that the other person is getting affected from it. But really, it’s just us getting affected.”
— Jeremy Lin
The result was a fairly long list that took a lot of mental energy.
That was nothing compared to the psychologist’s next assignment: “Call them and explain to them how they’ve hurt you. Not in a toxic way, but have a grown, adult conversation, and just let them know.”
Lin knew it would be awkward. He resisted doing it.
“He made me do it,” Lin said. “All of that wasn’t for them, it was for me.”
As I listened to Lin describe this, I was struck by the courage it took not just to make those calls, but to talk about it afterward. I’ve found professional athletes to be extremely leery of admitting that anything even bothers them, let alone explaining the steps they took to get over it.
But as Lin continued, it was clear he didn’t air anyone out or even vent. He was explaining how helpful it was for him to talk about the impact these decisions had on him.
There was one conversation, in particular, that made it clear why the exercise was so worthwhile: Kenny Atkinson.
“Kenny was my guy,” Lin said.
Atkinson was an assistant coach for the Knicks when they claimed Lin off waivers in 2011. He was the one who arrived early to work out with Lin before practice and stayed late doing shooting drills afterward.
“We just did this for months and months,” Lin said, “and then Linsanity happened.”
In 2016, Atkinson was named head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, who promptly signed Lin to a three-year contract.
Lin was injured for most of his first year with the Nets, suffering from hamstring issues. The following season, he suffered a season-ending knee injury on opening night. The following year, Lin was traded to Atlanta, a team that was not trying to win.1
It was devastating for Lin. He was trying to resuscitate his career after two years of injuries, and now he’d have to do it on a team that was tanking. What made it worse was that Lin heard, before the trade, Atkinson had told the front office he did not believe Lin was the same player after the injuries.
Lin brought this up when he recalled his phone call with Atkinson: “I felt like we were so close and you were my head coach. I wish you could have given me a heads-up, or somebody could have told me straight up.”
Lin was not ready for Atkinson's response.
“He was like, ‘You know what, Jeremy? You’re right. Maybe I gave up a little too early. I didn’t realize you could come back from the injury and play the way you did. So I take that. I’m sorry.’ “
Not everyone gets that kind of closure. Spelling out your feelings doesn’t guarantee a satisfactory response.
But in this case, it repaired a breach. One that Atkinson didn’t realize had occurred and would have never known about if Lin had not called to talk to him.
And now?
“We’ll still text, and we'll still keep in touch,” Lin said. “But if it wasn’t for that, maybe I might not have spoken to him the rest of my life without him even really knowing.”
It’s really a best-case scenario.
“He made my career,” Lin said. “For us to be able to reconnect and be cool again after that was priceless.”
Here’s another link to Lin’s interview:
16:40 — Lin talks about his work with the sports psychologist
24:40 — Lin describes his reconnection with Kenny Atkinson
This is a strategy referred to as “tanking,” where a professional franchise fields an obviously deficient team in hopes of netting one of the high draft picks awarded to the worst teams in the league.