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Last week, I spoke on a panel organized by GrubWithUs for Social Media Week New York. Such events attract a wide range of people interested in the tech industry, either because they’re in it or aspire to be. The topic may’ve been food startups, but when I introduced myself as “Jeremy Lin’s biggest fan,” the room was cheering (by contrast, “co-founder of Reddit” drew a few polite nods and tennis claps). I thought this was supposed to be a tech event.
It was no longer just Knicks fans, or even just basketball fans; that was when I realized New York City had gone completely Lin-sane. (OK, that’s the last one).
There have already been several attempts to explain Lin’s (seemingly) sudden explosion on the court and in our national (nay, global) consciousness. Timothy Yu offered a great explanation from the Asian American community when he said, “He's everything we are, and he's everything we've been told we can never be.” Sure, being a Harvard graduate makes for a good sound byte, but an Ivy League pedigree alone does not a sports phenomenon make. (See: Harvard graduate and Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, whom commentators seem to know nothing about save his alma mater.)
Sure, performing well in the country’s media capital on an until-recently-disappointing team gooses one’s popularity. And of course, an easily pun-able surname helps spread the word -- take note, parents (branding 101 from the guy who launched companies named “Reddit”, “Breadpig”, and “Hipmunk”). But none of these explain why I -- and many of my fellow geeks -- love him so damn much.
Jeremy Lin is a validation of our worldview: Ignore expectation, follow the data.
Lin didn’t come out of nowhere. The data was there all along. After shocking the Lakers, even Kobe Bryant recognized, “players don't usually come out of nowhere. If you go back and take a look, his skill level was probably there but no one ever noticed."
While the high-paid analysts at ESPN were scratching their heads and asking, “why didn’t we see Jeremy Lin coming?”, a FedEx Ground delivery truck driver, Ed Weiland, wasn’t surprised:
“Jeremy Lin might be the #2 PG available in this draft.... Jeremy Lin is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star.”
Weiland’s emphatic analysis appeared in 2010, the year Lin went undrafted. This nearly two-year-old entry circulated online thanks to a user who submitted it to Hacker News, a Reddit-like site with a community of startup founders and the startup-curious. Needless to say, Lin gained quite a few fans who hadn’t watched a lot of basketball.
Geeks strive to build a world where decisions are driven by data. At this point in time, the internet is the closest thing we have to a marketplace of free ideas. If you’ve got the talent and access to the data, you have a fair shot at making something great (keeping that data free was a major driving force behind our opposition to SOPA & PIPA). Moneyball inspired millions, but it especially warmed the hearts of geeks, even those of us who got picked last during gym class. These are not new insights. In 2009, Michael Lewis wrote an article in The New York Times about Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey using secret statistics “to find new and better ways to value players and strategies.”
There’s still more moneyballing to be done in the NBA, methinks.
There’ll inevitably be some, like Weiland, who end up looking prescient (notwithstanding the predictions he made that didn’t pan out). The point is, geeks with “spiral notebooks full of numbers” have their place at the table for talent decisions. At least start with a spreadsheet to remind folks about the myth of the “hot hand.” A data-driven approach could’ve identified a great talent from the bottom of the depthchart -- instead we (Knicks fans) got lucky.
Imagine all the Jeremy Lins we’ve already missed out on. This isn’t just a plea to combat prejudice; it’s a call for rational decision-making.
Actually, it’s also sort of a plea: New York Knickerbockers, please hire some number crunchers so I can finally erase the memory of Hakeem Olajuwon.
Alexis Ohanian’s social enterprise, Breadpig, is partnering with ticket search engine, SeatGeek, to give away a pair of tickets to the Knicks vs. Cavaliers game at MSG on Feb. 29. Enter here by making a donation to a DonorsChoose.org classroom in New York and let’s cheer on Lin (and the power of data) together!
Photo: New York Knick's Jeremy Lin celebrates in the final moments of an NBA basketball game against the Dallas Mavericks in New York, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012. The Knicks defeats the Mavericks 104-97. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Opinion Editor: John C. Abell @johncabell
