CHRIS TANG - OAK HILL ACADEMY - THE NEXT JEREMY LIN? ALL-MET ELITE

CHRIS TANG

OAK HILL ACADEMY 

THE NEXT JEREMY LIN?

ALL-MET ELITE

OAK HILL ACADEMY
MOUTH OF WILSON VA.

CHRIS TANG - #2

 

Chris Tang came to Oak Hill through more conventional means. He proved himself in Virginia prep hoops and with Boo Williams's AAU program, both of which serve as direct pipelines to Mouth of Wilson. Coach Gillespie says Tang left Hampton Roads for Oak Hill because he believed the seclusion he would find in Mouth of Wilson and the elite, singularly devoted teammates he'd meet there would be the best preparation for his future. And at its core, that's what the gold team is: twelve incredibly focused kids who are willing to give up pretty much every comfort of home to get better at basketball. Many come to Coach Smith with college scholarships in hand. Sindarius Thornwell, the gold team's 6-foot-5 small forward, committed to play at South Carolina when he was in the ninth grade. He came up to Mouth of Wilson to keep himself motivated and to get his body ready for the next level. Although Tang has not yet signed a letter of intent, several schools have shown interest, including Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Stanford, Oregon, and Harvard.

 

Jeremy Lin remembers what it was like to be Chris Tang. "Since I was in fifth or sixth grade," Lin says, "everyone called me Yao Ming. Every time I stepped on the court, I heard 'Yao.'" Lin says it's definitely "weird" to think that his name has been substituted for Yao's, but he seems both cognizant and respectful of his platform as one of the most famous Asian Americans in the world. "At first, I let all that put a lot of pressure on me," he explained, "but over time, I had to re-prioritize my life to play for God. That's when I'm at my best, when I play for Him." No matter whom Lin plays for, he will be the representative of his people for the sole reason that his very visible and widely celebrated workplace simply has no other options. Lin, who watched Chris Tang's highlight videos last year and has high hopes for Tang's career, has some advice for his next coming: "If people are calling him Jeremy Lin or whatever, he should just play harder and better. Make it so that when the game's over, they don't have anything to say that's not about your game."

 

"The next Jeremy Lin" is one of those meaningless phrases born out of basketball's superstar economy and its tendency to divide its worldwide fan base down into easily defined, component parts. Somewhere in this country, there's a 6-foot-3 kid who plays a lot more like Jeremy Lin than Chris Tang does, but unless that kid has some Asian heritage or unless he ends up at an Ivy League school, the comparison will be moot. In part, an idea like "the next Jeremy Lin" comes from historic, and frankly inexcusable, laziness by generations of sportswriters who refuse to compare athletes across races, leaving us with absurdities like "Keith Van Horn reminds me of Larry Bird" or "Danny Amendola plays like a young Steve Largent" or whatever other stupidity has been spilled in the name of being "careful about race." This is all obvious, and I suppose the tendency to divide all second comings along racial lines happens in nearly every American forum, whether politics or poetry. But it happens more in sports, where stars are held up as proof of a people's physical worth. Once Jeremy Lin became a referendum on all things Asian American, the next Jeremy Lin was an inevitability. And unless this Chris Tang makes it to the NBA, the next Chris Tang will be called Jeremy Lin, as will the next and the next and so on until a Chris Tang goes out and actually supplants the legend of Jeremy Lin. The great American underdog narrative demands a hopeful coda — when you come out of nowhere to inspire a people, the last shot in your movie will always show a bunch of kids running around a playground in your replica jersey.