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| Jeremy Lin is making his former GMs look bad. (Getty Images) |
How crazy is this Jeremy Lin story? So crazy that two NBA general managers have publicly admitted that letting him go was a mistake.
Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey took to Twitter on Thursday morning to cop his plea.
"We should have kept Jeremy Lin," Morey wrote. "Did not know he was this good.Anyone who says they knew [is] misleading you... Really happy Jeremy Lin. Very hard working, nice, & humble. He has a great, great future."
Then, in an interview with the New York Times, Golden State Warriors GM Larry Riley did the same.
“We always felt there would be some chance he’d be a backup point guard,” said Larry Riley, the Warriors general manager. “I have egg on my face in telling you that I did not think he was going to become a starting point guard with a good team. He’s doing that right now.”Lin, the Knicks' Taiwanese-American point guard sensation, has scored 23 or more points in three straight games to help lead New York to consecutive wins over the New Jersey Nets, Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards.
Undrafted out of Harvard, Lin earned his first NBA contract with the Warriors after impressing at the 2010 NBA Summer League while playing for a team affiliated with the Dallas Mavericks. Lin wound up playing in just 29 games for Golden State, averaging 2.6 points and 1.4 assists in just 9.8 minutes per game.
When the Warriors released him prior to the 2011-2012 season, Lin signed briefly with the Rockets, but was released before he could appear in a single game.
The Knicks wound up claiming Lin off of waivers on Dec. 27, and the rest is history.
And this really is history. Basketball operations executives admit mistakes at a rate of approximately one per lifetime. For the same player to produce two admissions of error in less than 24 hours is almost certainly a league record.
