Palo Alto's Jeremy Lin On Daily Show: NBA Career Is Winding Down

PALO ALTO, CA — Palo Alto native and former NBA player Jeremy Lin acknowledged that his career may be winding down.

In an interview with Trevor Noah, host of the Daily Show, on Thursday, Lin said that after more than a decade in professional basketball, “there’s not much else I can do to prove that I belong in the NBA.”

Earlier in the week, Lin, a Palo Alto High School alum, hinted at retirement in a tweet when he looked back at this past season, which he spent in China and the G League. He had hoped to get called back up to the NBA, but it didn’t happen.

Lin told Noah that “it wasn’t my official retirement,” but added that he doesn’t think “the door is opening.”

“I think it’s closed,” Lin said. “It’s passing the torch to the next generation.”

Lin, who burst onto the scene in 2011 with the Knicks in a run that became known as “Linsanity,” said that there will be “plenty of Asian American players who are going to be better than me down the road.”

The 32-year-old said that he regretted not slowing down and taking in what Linsanity meant to him or society.

“I was just in my second year as a pro,” Lin said. “I didn’t process it. If you’re not fulfilled and content during the journey, you won’t be fulfilled and content when you get to your destination because you’re just going to set another destination for yourself.”

Lin, who played with eight different teams in the NBA, said that even at the height of Linsanity, he still struggled with his mental health.

“I struggled so much with pregame anxiety,” Lin said. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn't sleep. This was when I was just trying to make it, trying to survive. And then I played well. Linsanity happened and I'm literally the most popular person on the planet, and I'm struggling with the same anxiety.”

Lin has recently been outspoken about the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. He said that basketball has helped him correct biases he had about other races.

“Basketball gave me access to different cultures and different people that I would not have come in contact with,” Lin said. “And they reshaped all the different stigmas and stereotypes that I had about other ethnicities that I only learned in Hollywood.”