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譯者：黎睿藍
已徵得譯者同意轉載並修改部分不同慣用語。

譯文：http://bbs.hupu.com/4016432.html
原文：http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2012/07/the-jeremy-lin-debate-no-
one-wants-to-have.html


The Jeremy Lin Debate No One Wants to Have
By Devin Gordon

關於Lin的一個沒人願意討論的話題


The New York Knicks letting Jeremy Lin walk out the door—for nothing—
was the dumbest decision in the history of professional sports.

紐約尼克隊白白放Jeremy Lin離開，是職業體育歷史上最愚蠢的決定，沒有之一。


But let's forget about that for a moment. The words "dumb" and "Knicks"
are so interchangeable at this point that the notion of the franchise
choosing an option with a $15 million downside (the excess luxury tax
the team faced if it matched Houston's offer) over an option with a
billion dollar downside (Lin's potential career marketing value if he
kept up his level of play) is actually unsurprising. This is the Knicks.
This is what they do. Let's move on. Let's have the other conversation,
the one nobody seems to want to have because "dumb" seems to explain it
 all. No, dumb explains 98 percent of it. Let's talk about the other 2
percent.





The moment I knew for certain that the Knicks were done with Jeremy Lin

 was on Sunday, July 15, when Carmelo Anthony publicly called Lin's offer
 from the Houston Rockets "ridiculous." At that point, the Knicks were
still saying their minds weren't made up, and maybe that was true—maybe
 they were only 99 percent sure. Even still, Melo's remark was like an
X-ray of his psyche, and, because Melo is the only person other than owner
Jim Dolan who really matters in the Knicks organization, it was a glimpse
 into what the entire franchise thinks about Lin.




What's relevant here is not whether Melo was right or not about Lin's
contract. Plenty of NBA players surely agree with him. What's relevant is
that he said it out loud. Bad-mouthing another player's deal is a serious
breach of the unwritten code among pro athletes, which is why it happens so
rarely, no matter how many stupid deals get handed out, no matter how many
franchises are crippled by bad contracts, no matter how many superstars find
their paths to a title blocked by the bonehead decisions of their teams'
front offices. It's also why, conversely, players almost always praise each
others' deals in public, and offer congratulations – we've all seen the
tweets – for getting every penny that the market could generate. It's a
fraternity.

Melo對Lin合約的評價是對是錯根本無關緊要。大多數的NBA球員實際上都同意他的
說法。重要的是他大大咧咧的說出來了。






Apparently, to Melo, Jeremy Lin is not in the fraternity. Or at least, Lin's
place in it is dubious enough that he has not earned the omerta that every
other player gets. Anybody wanna try to convince me it has zero to do with
Lin being Asian-American? Because, and let's cut to the quick, Carmelo
Anthony never ever would've made that remark about a black NBA player's
contract, and I doubt that he ever would've said it about a white player's,
either. If Melo thought that Lin was being wildly overpaid but still,
fundamentally, belonged in the club, he would've kept his mouth shut. He
didn't because he doesn't.




>From the beginning, Melo has always been the Knick most threatened by
Linsanity, and the most skeptical about it. There is no question that Lin's
ethnicity is a huge factor in his popularity—a bigger factor, even, than his
actual play on the court, as splendid as it has been—but there's also no
question that Lin's ethnicity is a huge factor in the ongoing suspicion that
his marvelous play thus far is a mirage. Now obviously I can't read Carmelo
Anthony's mind, but it sure seems like he still believes what a lot of people
did in those flush first few days of Lin's meteoric rise: he can't really be
this good because he doesn't look like a guy who's really this good.






(A quick aside: Lin's three year, $25 million contract isn't "ridiculous."
It's a great deal for the Rockets, who get a bargain for two years and at
worst an expiring contract / trade asset in the third. It arguably would've
been ridiculous for the Knicks because of luxury-tax implications, but when
you have the Knicks' contract history to defend, and Jim Dolan's bottomless
wealth, what exactly does ridiculous mean? Before you answer, consider that
in the last year of Carmelo's deal alone, he will make … $24 million. Let's
hope he's won more than one playoff game for the Knicks by then. The average
annual salary in the NBA is a bit over $5 million. Lin's contract classifies
him as "above average." Is paying Lin the salary of an above average NBA
player really "ridiculous"? So ridiculous that he should be called out
publicly for it?)




And then there's Jim Dolan, whose fury over Lin's "betrayal" has leaked over
the last 72 hours into every single sports publication with a working NBA
beat reporter. There's no point in parsing the reasons why Dolan feels
betrayed and whether they're valid. The real question is, why is Dolan taking
it so personally? Lin was reportedly disappointed the Knicks told him to shop
around in the first place—he wanted to stay put—but he got over it. Why was
Lin aggressively testing the market (i.e., doing what the Knicks told him to
do) such an affront? Could it be that Dolan thought the nice, quiet, devout
Christian Taiwanese kid would be too cowed by The Great Man to play hardball
over money? Could it be that he thought he owned Lin, had made him, and
became furious when Lin refused to behave like it? Could it be that he
expected Lin to be more – ethnic stereotype alert – submissive?




And how do we explain leaks about Dolan (reportedly) using words like
"betrayed" and "deceived" to describe Lin over the same weekend that newly
acquired Knick Jason Kidd got so fall down drunk that he crashed his car into
a tree—with nary a word of criticism from Dolan? Jeremy Lin is the bad guy
here?




I'm doing more mind-reading here with Dolan—never a safe proposition. But
here's what I am confident saying about Dolan on the subject of Lin's
ethnicity: he has absolutely no grasp of what Jeremy Lin really means as a
cultural phenomenon. It does not pierce his bubble. It stirs no emotion in
him. He doesn't understand what it means for millions of people in this
country, and around the world, to watch the first Asian-American superstar
athlete excel on the highest stage, and what it means to have that player
wearing the uniform of his team. The pride, the joy, the inspiration, the
transformative effect it can have on an entire generation of kids.




That stuff is real. It only becomes hokey when people like me try to capture
it with words on a page. If Dolan got that, he never would've let the Lin
situation unravel over scratch money (to him, anyway) and petty animus. He
would've sat the kid down, talked it out, buried the hatchet. And then he
would've signed the deal.




Instead Dolan let him walk away. For nothing. Go ahead and call it stupid.
Just don't say that's all it is.

而Dolan卻白白的讓他走了。來吧，儘管來訴說他是有多麼的愚蠢。但請不要說愚
蠢就能概括這一切。





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