Los Angeles point guard Jeremy Lin is expected to go into free agency at the end of this year's NBA season. However, he took his mind off that reality and dedicated some time to his family on Mother's Day.
According to an article posted by Lucy Liu and Dominic Jackson on Shanghaiist, Lin posted a YouTube video that showed him rapping in Chinese to celebrate Mother's Day. The video description indicated that he was mentioning a "Chinese tongue twister" to celebrate the occasion.
"In the video, Jeremy can be seen rapping in Chinese to background music," Liu and Jackson wrote. "At the end of the video his mother makes a brief appearance as he says Happy Mother's Day to her."
Shanghaiist reported that the video gained over 40,000 likes on Facebook in less than an hour, and the comments generally commended Lin for being "very sweet and kind to his mother." One of Lin's fans, Popo Chung, took the time to translate the rap into English.
"I love my family: sister-in-law, Yaya (Joshua Lin, elder brother) and Lin Gie-ming (dad)," Lin rapped in Chinese. "Don't forget younger bro and mom, her name is Wu Xin-xin (Shirley Lin)."
Lin added in the rap that he was "unsatisfied and gonna make more progress" in terms of his Mandarin language skills.
"I'll continue to study Mandarin," Lin said in Chinese. "But the objective of this weekend is to celebrate Mother's Day! Yeah! We did it!"
Lin then added a picture of his parents on Facebook as part of the celebration of Mother's Day.
"Happy Mother's Day to my mom!" Lin wrote. "She gave me everything she had and raised me with love. She told me to ignore everyone else and pursue my dream of making the NBA."
Lin then credited his mother for telling him that he could make a career out of basketball.
"Thanks for getting dunked on me last year too," Lin wrote. "Love you Mom!"
It remains unknown whether Lin will stick it out with the Lakers or move on to another NBA team. However, a report from Yibada noted that the Houston Rockets may be starting to have some regrets trading off Lin.
"The Rockets, in attempt to create more cap space and sign a max-contract player, traded Lin and a first-round pick to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for virtually nothing last offseason," Yibada wrote.
According to Yibada, Lin may have saved his NBA career thanks to a late season surge with the Lakers. Yibada argued that if Lin had stayed in the Rockets, that team might be able to effectively counter the Los Angeles Clippers in the NBA Playoffs.
"With all the firepower the Rockets possess, they clearly don't have the answer to [Clippers point guard Austin] Rivers," Yibada wrote. "Lin, who averaged at least 12 points and 4 dimes over two seasons with the Rockets, could have been the Rockets' safe bet to negate Rivers' impact in the series, because of his ability to make his presence felt both as a scorer and facilitator."
Yibada argued that Lin could have saved the Rockets in that situation.
"The Rockets, who [are] expected to pursue Lin again this offseason, know this fact very well and are paying a high price of pulling off an off-season blunder last off-season," Yibada wrote.
