All fouled up: Is basketball's Jeremy Lin a victim of on-court bias?

BASKETBALL is supposed to be a non-contact sport but any fan of the NBA knows this is far from the truth.

For one fan of the best Chinese/American pro-basketball player Jeremy Lin, (Well, the ONLY Chinese/American pro-basketball player) this discrepancy just got to be too much. Hsiu-Chen Kuei of San Jose, Calif. put together a six-and-a-half minute video showing the hard fouls being committed against her favorite player - fouls that were not being called by the referees. It went viral.

She uploaded the video "Jeremy Lin: Too Flagrant Not to Call," on April 5 and since then has attracted millions of views and comments, including a good portion from Asia, one of the NBA's growing markets.

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The point of the video is that Lin is the victim of hard, perhaps flagrant and deliberate fouls that for whatever reason, goes uncalled by the NBA referees. It shows him him being shoved, clotheslined, whacked and thrown to the floor. In one instance, his nose is bleeding from an obvious hit to the face and there was no call.

Some commenters contend that because Lin is an Asian/American, he is being targeted by other players and not being protected by the officials. Some players believe he doesn't belong in a sport where Asian/American and Asian players are still a rarity. Lin has been 
defying that stereotype his entire career.

Kuei's video attracted the attention of the NBA and it felt compelled to respond. The league is backing the officials, encouraging unhappy fans to read the rules about different fouls, according to the NY Times. That's a pretty poor excuse in my mind. Either call the fouls or don't call them. For the sake of entertainmen valuet, the NBA obviously has opted for the latter.

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm a Golden State Warriors fan. I could put together a similar video of Stephen Curry and the no-calls on hard fouls on the MVP. His arms and face are often black and blue after a hard-fought game. 

The no-calls against undersized players who depend on deception, ball handling and speed to play the game versus brute strength or height can sometimes be exasperating.

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I know it is frustrating for bigger players to have someone like Lin or Curry dribble around them to go to the basket and perhaps some of the fouls are a result of that frustration. Racism? That's a tough call. More likely it is simply poor officiating but that's the problem with racist tendencies. Too often, a person isn't aware of how his or her perception of another person is swayed by the racist enviornment in which they were raised.

Lin - the classy guy that he is - just shrugged off the no-calls as being part of the game. He's been in the league six years, now and he's used to the physicality of the pro-game. 

For Lin, playing for the playoff-bound Charlotte Hornets, it's more a matter of consistency. A few times this year, he's shown flashes of the form that  gave birth to Linsanity, but not often enough.

"I'm just happy that people are noticing this," Kuei told the NY Times. "It's not about views. I didn't get money or anything. I didn't want attention. I just want Lin to get fair calls."

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