Linsanity returns with 38 At The Garden, the story of Asian-American basketball phenom Jeremy Lin – Contenders Documentary

With the New York Knicks playing basketball in the nation’s largest media market, when something happens, good or bad, the entire basketball universe knows with an underperforming NBA franchise that hasn’t won a title since 1973. to work in February 2012 when a rookie point guard named Jeremy Lin came off the bench in a preseason game for a struggling Knicks squad — in what quickly became the sport’s biggest storyline.

38 in the yardAn HBO documentary released in October revisits “Linsanity,” the dizzying mania that gripped New York City when Lin took off with the Knicks and made an impact outside of basketball.

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Linsanity was one of those “impossible moments” 38 said director Frank Chi during Deadline’s Contenders Documentary Panel. “A moment when society as a whole says to a group of people: ‘You can’t do something, and then someone comes out of nowhere and just knocks everything down.

Lin, a scrappy, underpowered Asian-American signee who played college ball at Harvard, had a flurry of points and brilliance in his first few games that helped change the Knicks’ entire season curve.

Almost no one – no scouts, coaches, teammates, sports journalists or fans – saw this coming. Even though then-President Barack Obama joked, “I’ve been on the Jeremy Lin train for a while.”

The title refers to Lin dropping 38 points on the mighty Los Angeles Lakers and their star Kobe Bryant in a comfortable win at the Knicks’ home stadium, Madison Square Garden.

However, Linsanity was short-lived 38 shows that Lin’s achievements continue to resonate, especially among people like Chi herself—Americans of Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander descent. “It broke the Matrix for us,” says the comedian and actor Hasan Minhaj on camera. Minhaj and other interrogators 38 says Lin’s success has shaken up Asian stereotypes and proved that Asians in America can excel in any field they want.

“I thought we were making a millennial nostalgia movie,” Chi said. “But it turned out that we … made an almost therapeutic film for a lot of people who either feel like they don’t belong today, or who have bottled up those feelings all along.”

He said the documentary comes at a difficult time when Asian Americans are grappling with a surge in racial hatred and violence.

“A lot of Asian Americans are experiencing this incredible memory — our favorite Asian American memory from 10 years ago — of what it’s like to be Asian Americans living during the worst time in recent history,” he said. “And I wanted to capture that feeling because Linsanity was a magical moment for us.”

In a live-action film reel peppered with game footage, celebrity interviews and colorful sequences by animator Miguel Hernandez, Lin himself also comes in to say he acknowledges his influence with hindsight.

“He was silent for a long time about how much he meant to people,” Chi said. “And we’re just so grateful that this project brought us all together and really brought us home.”

Check back Wednesday for the panel video.