A day after a league official told ESPN’s Marc J. Spears that the G League is investigating a claim made by Jeremy Lin that he was called “coronavirus” during a game, Lin tweeted that he’s “not naming or shaming anyone.”
“I know this will disappoint some of you but I’m not naming or shaming anyone,” Lin tweeted Saturday. “What good does it do in this situation for someone to be torn down? It doesn’t make my community safer or solve any of our long-term problems with racism.”
In a Facebook post Thursday, Lin, the former NBA guard now playing for the Santa Cruz Warriors of the G League, spoke out about the racism he believes the Asian American community continues to deal with and offered examples that he said he has experienced.
“Being a 9 year NBA veteran doesn’t protect me from being called ‘coronavirus’ on the court,” he wrote.
Lin didn’t specify when he was called that, and it was unclear if the incident occurred in the G League bubble in Orlando, Florida, where Lin currently is playing as a member of Santa Cruz, the Golden State Warriors‘ affiliate.
Lin became the first American-born NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent when he broke in with the Warriors during the 2010-11 season. He became best known for a hot scoring stretch — one that led to wins with the New York Knicks during the 2011-12 season — that was described as “Linsanity.” In total, the former Harvard star averaged 11.6 points and 4.3 assists in 480 games in the NBA from 2010 to 2019.
He previously had spoken out about racist taunts he received while playing, saying in a 2017 podcast that while some came during his time in the NBA, they were far worse during his four years at Harvard while competing on the road from 2006 to 2010.
“When I experienced racism in the Ivy league, it was my assistant coach Kenny Blakeney that talked me through it,” Lin tweeted Saturday. “He shared with me his own experiences as a Black man — stories of racism I couldn’t begin to comprehend. Stories of being called the n-word and having things thrown at him from cars. He drew from his experiences with identity to teach me how to stay strong in mine. He was also the first person to tell me I was an NBA player as a sophomore at Harvard. I thought he was crazy.”
Before his G League stint this season, Lin had been playing in the Chinese Basketball Association.