Goodbye Jeremy, Five Things We'll Miss about Linsanity

Linsanity headed to Houston and the Rockets Well, it's been reported by numerous outlets that the thing we all knew was going to happen happened. Jeremy Lin is to leave the Knicks and take his spurious ball skills to the Houston Rockets, [rendering my article from yesterday](http://nypress.com/we-love-lin-but-at-what-cost-is-the-legacy-worth-the-paycheck/) ultimately useless henceforth. Time well spent. There's not really much to worry about though, because the Knicks have year-in-year-out proven an adept perspicacity for basketball potential and success. Even though they've let Lin go, we can trust them. There's no reason whatsoever to look to the Nets for some decent New York basketball next year. With acquisitions like the $15 million-dollar-man Steve Francis and his 11.3 Points Per Game in 2006-07, or first-round-pick Renaldo Balkman and his career 4 PPG, there is no reason to doubt the Knicks front office. Everything in the last paragraph is not true. But now that we do know the fate of the quickest sports phenomenon New York has seen in ages -not to rule out the possibility of Tim Tebow outpacing Lin by weeks- we do know a few things. We know what we'll miss about Jeremy Lin and the excitement he brought to the vanilla, selfish Knicks. Five Things We'll Miss about Jeremy Lin: 1. Lintinis There's a reason that people mixed the name "Lin" with the word "insanity". The sheer speed at which Lin hit the scene was maddening, so maddening that he began to influence one of the most storied cocktails ever. At Arctica on Third Ave., [Lintinis, a mixture of Bombay, blue curacao, and tonic became the house drink](http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/knick_star_scores_tipple_double_FcbMXDHsXBLdMe1QiMw0XO). This, deservedly or not, boosted Jeremy Lin to James Bond status. I'm not sure how I feel about that, considering Bond is a much better shot than Lin, but now we have to go back to drinking boring ole alcohol. 2. Ball movement It's been heavily documented that Lin is a turnover machine. During his 940 minutes last season, Lin had 126 turnovers, about 0.13 turnovers/minute. The NBA's leader in turnovers, John Wall, 255 turnovers in 2386 minutes played, about 0.1 t/m. That doesn't seem like much, but in per-minute speak, that's humongous, and John Wall led the league in turnovers! Put it this way, if Lin played as much as Wall, he would have had 319 turnovers. But, aside from that number (which surely supports yesterday's article. Hey! Time really was well spent!), Lin kept the ball in motion. During his time on the court -and with the help of an injured Carmelo Anthony- the Knicks seemed to flow, cut and pass. The ball was always moving, which kept the game moving faster and more interesting. Now that he's gone, the offense will revert to one-stop-shopping, where it'll live and die with Anthony's ability to score. 3. A guy proud of his religion but who doesn't punch us in the face with it Tim Tebow is a nice guy and a philanthropist, and his faith is a major part of that, but I'm not sure if [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajUSLxt7aK0) is a great pump-up song before a football game. Tebow once justified his vocalness about his faith by saying ["If you're married, and you have a wife, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife 'I love her' the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and every opportunity?"](http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2011/11/tim-tebow-responds-to-jake-plummers-comments-on-his-faith/1#.UAXXfWmXQgE) No, but I wouldn't go around telling everyone else everyday that I do. 4. Humility It's often overlooked, especially in New York. But Lin's willingness to park his butt on the bench until he got his chance doesn't deserve oversight. Lin, and probably because he didn't have the credibility to make any demands, never spoke poorly or negatively about any of his teammates. No matter what trap questions he was asked last season: "Whose offense will it be when Anthony returns?" "Do you think you can play with Anthony?" "Do you like playing with Anthony?" He ignored the "I" in Lin. (See how tough it can be to play with a guy like Anthony?) But now he's gone, and that humility is gone. Guys like Anthony, [whose ability to get coaches fired is second only to Dwight Howard's](http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ycn-11103956), will run the show once again. 5. Unfortunate (or fortunate) editing oversights that result in quick backlash for companies as large as ESPN Not sure if I should link to this or anything -NY Press probably can't defend itself as well as ESPN- so I won't. But there was certainly a bit of comedy at the expense of that poor ex-ESPN employee. Two Thing We Won't Welcome about the Lin-less Knicks: 1. Raymond Felton and Twitter jokes like this from Grantland's Bill Simmons: After winning over the Asian community with Jeremy Lin, the Knicks now expect to win over fat people with Ray Felton. - Bill Simmons (@sportsguy33) [July 15, 2012](https://twitter.com/sportsguy33/status/224334334331584514) 2. [Grantland articles tacitly encouraging Knicks fans to ditch and root for the Nets](http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/32174/dumb-office-arguments-are-knicks-fans-allowed-to-become-nets-fans). --Nick Gallinelli