Jeremy Lin: China and Taiwan compete for claims to NBA star

Everyone wants a piece of the New York Knicks basketball player Jeremy Lin. He’s almost as hot a topic as an island in the South China Sea. And though there will be no Navy called on over this battle, China and Taiwan are staking their claims to Mr. Lin's success story.

As the Knicks’ only Asian player suddenly lifted his team to seven straight wins this month after years of struggle on the court, people throughout Taiwan found a sudden passion for the NBA and lauded Lin as one of their own.

Taiwanese enthusiastically point out that Lin’s parents lived on their island before moving to the US where he was born.

But just as Taiwan is claiming him based on his parent’s birthplace, China has also been swept up in the 'Linsanity' and found reason to claim him too: One of Mr. Lin’s grandmothers was born in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, trivia hardly overlooked in China’s official media. Like most in Taiwan, the Lin family ancestry traces back to China, just some 160 kilometers (100 miles) away.

In fact, waves of citizens from China are so excited about Lin, they’re urging the 23-year-old 6 foot 3 point guard to play for the Chinese Olympic team, because after all, he’s Chinese, they say.

No matter that he was born in California, that he reportedly struggles to speak Mandarin, or that he has made only a handful of visits back “home.”

At the end of the claim game, however, Asia is positioned to win over the player who has averaged more than 20 points per game this month, his first major effort for the Knicks. If the fans in Asia don’t woo Lin, the sports marketers sizing him up right now just might.

“If he carries on the way he is, he’s going to be a marketing sensation not only in the United States but pan-Asia,” says Mark Thomas, managing director of the S2M Group, a sports management firm in Shanghai. His “huge” value is still being calculated, Mr. Thomas says. But according to the China Daily, Forbes magazine placed his  worth around 100 million yuan ($15.9 million), and has already been registered as a trademark by a Chinese businesswoman.

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