What Mayweather is conveniently ignoring is the fact that Lin is doing the job that two black players, paid millions, were incapable of doing.
NBC debunks Mayweather’s contention here:
EXCERPT:
Mayweather’s wrong on several points, most notably that no one of any skin color in the history of basketball has done in their first four starts what Lin pulled off for the Knicks last week. He’d also be wise to recall the way Tiger Woods, the Williams sisters and others have been received upon their smashing debuts on the scene.
The key here isn’t just what Lin has done on the court but the way that he has confounded expectations while doing it. Part of that is because he’s Asian-American, but most of it is because of the fact that he came from essentially nowhere to do it.
And those who say that this is just a case of New York dominating the media as well, should remember that there have been others who have burst out of obscurity to capture the hearts and minds of the masses. And, as you’ll see in the list that follows, most of those that have done it haven’t quite done it at the same level that Lin achieved in his first week.
Tim Tebow: Another popular one over the last week, including on these pages, but it simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Tebow won a Heisman Trophy and two National Championships at Florida, and he didn’t play anywhere near Lin’s level outside of some fine fourth quarter comebacks.
Victor Cruz: Cruz was also undrafted and also achieved at a level far beyond what anyone expected of him this season, but there’s a pretty big difference. Lin is a point guard charged with running the entire offense while Cruz’s skills would mean very little without Eli Manning delivering him passes.
Kurt Warner: Tebow has been talked about a lot, but Warner’s story is actually a lot closer to Lin’s. Forced into action by injury, Warner, undrafted and a veteran of minor leagues like Lin, had to play well or a talented Rams team would have been a bitter disappointment in 1999.
He played well enough to wind up as the league’s MVP and the Rams won the Super Bowl. That’s getting way ahead of ourselves, but Warner comes closer to mirroring the role Lin is playing for the Knicks this season than Tebow did for the Broncos.
None feels like an exact fit, mostly because Lin has done something no one else has ever done before in his first four starts, but the idea that this hype is being conjured up out of thin air and not performance is pretty demonstrably false given how much ink was spilled on all the other guys who share his ability to make an auspicious debut.