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Jeremy Lin was called the “coronavirus” on the court, and the NBA G-League is looking into it

The nine-year NBA veteran, who’s on the G-League’s Santa Cruz Warriors right now, was taunted by an unnamed player who associated him with the coronavirus that was first found in China last year.

By Albert Lee
Atlanta Hawks v Washington Wizards
Jeremy Lin recently spoke up about racist comments said at him this season.
Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images

Of the Big Four sports leagues, the NBA has been the most progressive on social issues. Last year, the league openly embraced movements to end racial injustice, and “Black Lives Matter” was on the court during the Orlando bubble in the summer of 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, the NBA family has a racist incident to handle. thought it’s unclear exactly when this happened.

Last Thursday, long-time NBA veteran Jeremy Lin, who’s currently on the Santa Cruz Warriors, the Golden State Warriors’ affiliate, wrote a lengthy Instagram post drawing attention to racism Asian Americans experience. Since he is Taiwanese American, he is drawing from experience that many East Asian groups, like mainland Chinese, Japanese and Korean Americans face.

So you know, I’m Korean American since my last name’s on this post. I can say that I have experienced the eye mocking as a child and being asked where I’m REALLY from, again, mostly when I was a kid. The DMV of course! So I’ve developed a tougher skin from it. That said, I’m going to focus more on Lin’s experience since it is a national NBA topic.

So back to this story, Lin even said that despite being a long-time NBA player, someone called him the “coronavirus,” since it was first discovered in China though the U.S. has the most cases. Perhaps that incident got him to write this lengthy post and it sparked a G-League investigation on Friday.

Lin followed up with another post on Saturday stating that he won’t name who called him the “coronavirus” while on the court, according to his first post. And he also followed up with more racist experiences he faced while playing college basketball.

I’m not sure what will come out of the investigation, especially if Lin doesn’t name who called him the coronavirus. But perhaps that player will be quietly shamed into not doing it again. If there’s anything we can take away from this, I think we all need to work on a better society that is anti-racist, as Lin said.