President Obama said he knew about something that, for a time, no one in the NBA did: the brilliance of Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin.
In a podcast yesterday with ESPN.com affiliate Grantland, the Harvard Law School alum told host Bill Simmons he sat on his Lin knowledge for a while.
“I knew about Jeremy Lin before you did or everybody else did because Arne Duncan, my Secretary of Education, was captain of the Harvard team,” the President said. “And so way back when, Arne and I were playing [basketball] and he said, ‘I’m telling you we’ve got this terrific guard named Jeremy Lin at Harvard.’
“Then one of my best friends, his son is a freshman at Harvard, and so when he went on a recruiting trip to Harvard he saw Lin in action. So I’ve been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while.”
Simmons asked the President, who said he has NBA League Pass on his iPad and sometimes watches games while reading his briefings, if he was taking credit for Linsanity.
“I can’t take credit for it,” Obama said. “I’m just saying I was there early. ... What’s interesting is the fact that somehow folks were missing it in practice. ... Because you’ve got to assume that during scrimmages he was running the pick-and-roll pretty well.
“And it is a terrific story. He seems like a wonderful young man. And, look, it elevates this great sport all round the world. It can’t hurt ratings for basketball in China.”
Jeremy Lin, President Obama, Arne Duncan, Bill Simmons, Harvard Law School, Harvard, NBA
No comments:
Post a Comment