Almost 15 years after cementing his place in New York Knicks lore, Jeremy Lin is officially calling it a career.
The 37-year-old, who has not played in the NBA since 2019, announced his decision on Instagram. “As athletes, we are always aware that the possibility of retirement is never far away,” he wrote. “I’ve spent my 15 year career knowing that one day I would have to walk away, and yet actually saying goodbye to basketball today has been the hardest decision I’ve ever made.”
Lin’s NBA career spanned from 2010 through 2019, and included stops with eight different teams. His final season, in 2018-19, was spent on the Toronto Raptors, with whom he won a championship. Most recently, he suited up for the New Taipei Kings of the Taiwan Professional Basketball League
Through and through, the point guard is most associated with the Knicks. His tenure lasted just 35 games, all of them coming in 2012, but he left an indelible impression with one of the wildest meteoric rises in league history.
Linsanity was an absurd experience
Linsanity was born during a February 4, 2012 victory over the then-New Jersey Nets, in which he dropped 25 points and seven assists on 10-of-19 shooting off the bench. He started the very next game, a February 6 tilt against the Utah Jazz, and spearheaded another win with 28 points and eight assists.
His ascent kept going from there. He delivered shocking performance after shocking performance. Outsiders and insiders alike kept waiting for him to slow down. They waited a while.
Lin cleared 20 points in his first six games as a rotation regular, and nine of his first 10 games as a mainstay overall. Among the most notable moments from his half-season romp was a 38-point detonation at Madison Square Garden against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers—an eruption that prompted praise from Bean himself. He also dropped 28 points against the Dallas Mavericks while predominantly being chased by Shawn Marion.
Above all, he drilled a Valentine’s Day Game-Winner against the Raptors that still ranks as one of the biggest shots in Knicks history. The final two minutes of that game were just bonkers, and represented Linsanity at its absolute peak.
Jeremy Lin is still one of the biggest Knicks what-ifs
All these years later, both Lin and New York are left to wonder what could have been. A torn meniscus in his left knee sidelined him for the 2012 stretch run, and subsequent playoffs. Then, upon entering restricted free agency that summer, Lin signed a poison-pill offer sheet with the Houston Rockets that the Knicks did not match. The Linsanity era ended as quickly as it started.
Given how the rest of his career panned out, the organization may not have much regret for how it handled things. The team went on to win 54 games without him the very next season.
Still, in an alternate universe where Lin never gets hurt to close 2011-12, it’d be fun to see how his future plays out. Does an underachieving, injury-addled Knicks squad make more noise in the playoffs? Would Lin re-sign that offseason? Is there a world in which he and Prime Carmelo Anthony go on to form a tantalizing one-two punch?
We can go down rabbit holes until the end of time. In all probability, Lin’s star would have continued to fade. Yet, even without the longevity, he long ago etched his place in Knicks history—the unlikeliest of icons at a time when the franchise needed something, anything positive to which it could cling.