The Linsanity for this National Basketball Association (NBA) season has been short-lived, as Jeremy Lin, Brooklyn Nets' de facto ace, gets injured. This is a setback which may be devastating for his team.
After working so hard on building up his comeback from a previous knee surgery, Jeremy Lin found himself dropping out of the current season too early. Lin's daring shot after declining a screen from Trevor Booker resulted in him landing awkwardly on his left knee and tearing up his patella tendon. The said injury is guaranteed to keep him out of the 2017-18 NBA season.
Lin has since been consoling Kenny Atkinson, Brooklyn Nets coach, after the unfortunate incident. The injured player pointed out that this season's retooled Nets are far better without him compared to last year's lineup.
"That was kind of cool, one of the first things Jeremy said to me was we're more equipped this year to handle this. It's great of him to remind me of that under tough circumstances," says Atkinson when asked what he thought about Lin's concern for the team. Still, the Nets will have to work hard on proving Lin right, as his performance in the last game before he got injured was stellar and was even on his way to putting up similar numbers to one of his best seasons.
D'Angelo Russel, one of Brooklyn Nets aces after Lin, has so far held his own ground. The third-year off-ball guard has been putting up some nice statistics averaging 21.0 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 7.0 assists per night, thriving in Atkinson's offense-friendly system. Russel is also in line to be groomed as the league's next elite basket-getter. Whether or not he can fill in the void that Lin has left behind this season remains to be seen, but so far, Russel has been having a good start.
Atkinson believes that Lin may be right when he said that the current Nets lineup will not fail them again like last season, though losing Lin and his guidance will be hard for the team despite Russel's power play.
