Words by Smiley Team
If you follow the NBA closely, you might remember the name Jeremy Lin – he burst onto the NBA scene more than 10 years ago when a stellar stretch of play led him to be dubbed “Linsanity.”
Jeremy Lin broke barriers in the NBA, and part of his appeal was his background. He was the first Chinese or Taiwanese-American to step onto an NBA floor, and with that came a whole swath of fans that could see themselves, in Lin, on the court. Now, a decade after his rise in the NBA, Lin is working to spread that will into the community, starting a basketball school intended to inspire Asian diaspora youth.
“I’m passionate about players becoming better at basketball but I’m also probably even more passionate about Asian American kids growing up with confidence, with self-esteem, being proud to be Asian, which was something that I wasn’t growing up,” Lin told The Raptors Show.
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The school, dubbed the Jeremy Lin Basketball School, will reside in Toronto, where Lin won an NBA championship in 2019, and will be partnered with the Canadian Chinese Youth Athletic Association.
“Together with Jeremy Lin CCYAA has officially launched the Jeremy Lin Basketball School, where we will continue to use the game of basketball to teach valuable lessons on and off the court,” the CCYAA announced on their Instagram.
The school will serve children ages 3 to 16, according to the Toronto Star, with other programs slated to open later in the year.
“There’s a core curriculum and a training module ... One of our lesson plans is teamwork,” Clement Chu, president of the youth association, told the Toronto Star. “We will design games and drills that involve that concept on the court. After we finish, we talk to the kids about what they learned to ensure they can verbalize what they picked up.”
Lin has spent his recent years playing for the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball League. To Lin, the school is a way to the Asain community that supported him in the NBA.
“I was just so focused on playing well in the next game, I wasn’t so tuned into what everybody else was saying,” he told NBC News. “There was a lack of understanding of what that moment meant and I feel like, because of that … I wasn’t able to say more and do more with my platform off the court that I wish I could have done and should have done.”
DONATE: Check out Good Sports. They’re an organization that helps kids participate in sports.
SUPPORT: Look for local sports leagues, volunteer by cleaning up local parks, and help teach kids to throw a ball if they need help. Communities form around sports, and that support can help children that are struggling.
