Brooklyn Nets

Jeremy Lin says racist taunts more common in college than NBA

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

Sports Illustrated, SI Wire/Sports Illustrated

Brooklyn Nets guard Jeremy Lin says racial taunts that he has experienced in his basketball career were more prevelant in college than in his time in the NBA.

Lin, who is Asian-American, said on the Outside Shot podcast that players and even an opposing coach in college called him names.

"The NBA crowd is a lot better than the college crowd," Lin said. "The college crowd goes crazy. Some of the stuff they say, it's crazy. It's all students and they're all drunk. They were saying all kinds of stuff. I was at Georgetown and there was one dude courtside and he kept looking at me the whole game, saying 'chicken fried rice' and 'beef lo-mein' and 'beef and broccoli' ... the whole game.

"Then we went to Yale and they were like 'Hey, can you even see the scoreboard with those eyes?' Or, in Vermont, I remember at one point, I had my hands up with the Vermont player was shooting free throws and the coach was like, 'Hey ref you can't let that Oriental do that.'

Lin recalled one situation when he played a college game at Cornell.

"The worst was at Cornell, when I was being called a c---k," Lin said. "That's when it happened. I don't know ... that game, I ended up playing terrible and getting a couple of charges and doing real out-of-character stuff. My teammate told my coaches [that] they were calling Jeremy a c---k the whole first half. I didn't say anything, because when that stuff happens, I kind of just, I go and bottle up -- where I go into turtle mode and don't say anything and just internalize everything."

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