Analyzing Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s anti-Jeremy Lin tweet

TORONTO—That seems a futile exercise. Dissecting a Floyd Mayweather Jr. remark, that is. Saying something really ludicrous seems to be his modus operandi to get people's attention, so there’s not much profundity to extract when Mayweather opens his mouth. Paying attention to what Mayweather says amounts to validating his self-centeredness and stoking his ego. In short, reacting to his rants is a waste of time. I kept that in mind when I thought about his tweet on Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks point guard who, as everybody on planet basketball knows by now, has risen from obscurity to become the toast of North American sports. In his tweet, Mayweather said: "Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise." Mayweather—the perpetual diss machine—may actually have a point. Seriously. (With emphasis on may). Try really, and I mean really, hard to imagine that this was tweeted by someone who has no long history of offensive behavior, and there's some truth in there. Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian? True and false. Mayweather didn't say Lin was a scrub, let's give him that. In fact, it's surprising he even considers Lin to be "good" given his propensity to look down on other athletes not named Floyd Mayweather Jr. (Good, in Mayweather's vocabulary, is equal to high praise). To begin with, isn't Lin's Far Eastern roots part of what makes this a compelling underdog story? In a league dominated by African-Americans and Europeans, it’s hard to ignore a player of Asian descent killing it on the hard court the way Lin does. Mike Breen, the veteran ABC anchor who calls the Knicks games, said: "When you combine the Asian-American factor and the Harvard factor, I think that's really grabbing people. I think that's No. 1 [reason behind the hype]." If another player had followed the Lin storyline except he was African-American and not Asian, the buzz wouldn't have been this off the charts. What's helping to drive up the craze is the fact that there are more Asians who now watch the NBA because they want to see how Lin is doing. As stellar as Lin has been, the truth is we Asians wouldn't be as intrigued by his play if we didn't feel we connected to him regionally. The measuring stick for Lin's appeal goes beyond the Knicks' home games; it is on the road where tickets are selling out that's a telling gauge of Lin's popularity. In fact, people aren't just interested to see Lin; some of them, most notably fans of Asian descent, abandon their own home team entirely and shift allegiances in favor of Lin and the Knicks. I was at the Knicks-Toronto Raptors game on February 14, and nearly half the bleachers section of the Air Canada Centre was filled with people of Asian lineage, most of who were waving Taiwanese flags and raising pro-Asia posters and banners. (At halftime, the scoreboard even flashed the names of several Canadian-Taiwanese cultural groups who were at the game.) When Lin scored the game-winning three, you would've expected the home crowd to fall silent. But, no, it exploded. The Knicks are enjoying a pseudo home-court advantage away from home, thanks to the Asian-American communities in NBA cities. The Asian factor is crucial to the hype, but this is where Mayweather got it wrong. It's not all there is to it. Lin being Asian wasn't the only reason his popularity has snowballed the way it has. It was a perfect storm of factors that came into play. The fact that Lin came from a school with no basketball tradition (Harvard), that he bounced around the league in his rookie year, and that he warmed the Knicks bench early this season certainly all added to what people are now calling the Legend of Lin. Throw in the New York aspect (huge basketball and media market), a once-proud fan base that's sick and tired of underachieving and just starving for positive vibe, a normally slow news stretch in North American sports, and today's combination of 24/7 news and social media and you have the recipe for Linsanity. The second part of Mayweather's tweet—"African-American players do what [Lin] does every night and don't get the same praise."—is also part true and part false. What Mayweather is asking is this: why isn't such lavish attention heaped on African-American basketball players the way it's given to Lin when a lot of them basically do the same thing he does and some of them even better? Let's be more concise with the comparisons by citing other point guards in the league. Why isn't there a Chris Paul phenomenon, or a D-Rose craze? Why isn't there a Russell Westbrook-mania? Or why are people talking about Westbrook's temper tantrums instead of fully focusing on the fact that his super skills have helped Oklahoma City to have the best record in the West? Why isn't there a Rajon Rondo rage? Or why is so much emphasis given by the media on the Boston Celtics point guard's weakness as a jump-shooter and his inconsistent play over his strengths as a playmaker and a defender? There are two reasons why African-American players don't seem to get the same level of praise. The first has something to do with expectations. African-American players have been so good at basketball for so long and have raised their performance standards so high that people expect, even demand, them to play at such a high level night in and night out. Global praise won't be showered on an African-American point guard averaging 23 points and nine assists over an 11-game stretch that mostly features below-.500 opponents. International acclaim comes to an African-American player only when he wins championships and MVPs. The second reason involves time. Lest Mayweather forgets, other African-American players "who basically do what Lin does" have enjoyed praise, granted it wasn't on this magnitude. Rondo was the toast of the basketball world when he eviscerated the Lakers en route to the Boston Celtics winning the 2008 title. All that high praise went up in smoke, however, when Rondo couldn't improve his perimeter game (until now) and talk emerged that he has had some attitude problems. Same goes for Westbrook, considered two seasons ago as a catalyst for the Thunder's resurgence with his amazing scoring ability but now is seen by critics as a drawback to the team's title aspirations because he scores too much as a point guard. The takeaway here? The hype naturally dissipates over time, when players play more games and we know more or less what their talent ceiling is. Rondo, we now know, can't make a jump shot and never will. Westbrook, we now know, is a score-first, pass-second point guard and won't ever change his game. With Lin, we don't know yet because he has only started to play significant minutes in 12 games. Yes, there's a disturbing trend (iffy decision-making leading to turnovers, defensive liability) but that's being ignored now because, No. 1, the Knicks are winning and, No. 2, Lin is basically just a rookie and he still has all the time to improve. That's where Mayweather is coming from. He believes there are better African-American players out there who deserve the recognition than Lin does. And that's the problem with viewing the Jeremy Lin experience with colored eyes. My cousin from Manila asked me what my opinion of Lin was. I said: I wouldn't cheer for him by default because I'm Asian. I was impressed when he hit the clutch three to beat the Raptors, but I was disappointed because my home team lost. I was impressed when he dropped 38 points on the Lakers, but I cursed at the fact he did it against Kobe Bryant and my favorite team. However Lin arrived at this point, the bottom line is he can play and does win. That's what got him here in the first place, and that's why I'm rooting for him. In the bigger scheme of things, if you can ball with the best of them, the hype will take care of itself. All the praise is simply gravy, just as all the hate and disrespect are irrelevant. — GMA News Dom Menor is a Filipino journalist based in Toronto. He is a former sports editor of GMA News Online and The Jakarta Globe.