Lin-Sanity continued this week as the Knicks returned to Madison Square Garden.
Since 1985, only 15 players have scored at least 20 points, seven assists and a steal for six games in a row. That list includes Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, Chris Paul … and Jeremy Lin.
Lin told the New York Post that he’s playing for God.
Q: That’s a terrible thing when you lose your joy, isn’t it?
A: Absolutely. I think now that I remind myself I’m playing for God. It frees me of all the other pressures that I was dealing with.
Q: Would the best compliment for you be for someone to say, “He makes his teammates better”?
A: I think that would be the second-best compliment. The best would be, “When I see Jeremy play, I see him play for God and I see him bring joy on the court.”
Knick’s star Jeremy Lin, who will make $800,000 this year, has created $170 million in business since he was pulled off the New York bench.
Forbes reported:
New York Knick point guard Jeremy Lin is a one-man economic recovery that even Ben Bernanke couldn’t dream up in his Federal Reserve meetings.
Lin-sanity has taken the country by storm and as a result created a spending frenzy that’s benefiting a broad range of companies, tax rolls and even the stock market. Lin’s salary this season is a modest (by NBA standards) $800,000, but by some calculations, he’s turned into the $170 million man.The most tangible impact has been on the market cap of Madison Square Garden (MSG), whose stock has jumped 7% to close Thursday at $31.87 from its close at $29.77 on Feb. 7 when Lin first entered the Knicks’ starting lineup. That translates to a $170 million to the company’s market cap to $2.4 billion.
Neither the Rangers, currently sporting the best record in the NHL’s Eastern conference, or The Westminster Dog Show can take credit for that. Apologies to Malachy.
But there’s more of an impact to consider. Ticket prices for Knick games are estimated to have jumped more than 25% in the resale market. That means all the online ticket sellers are seeing an increase in their bottom lines.
Plus, it isn’t just the tickets in New York that have increased, the tickets sales have gone up while the Knicks are on the road.
“We’ve seen an increase of 10x in site traffic and ticket sales,” says Joellen Errer, head of communications at online ticket seller Stub Hub. “Page views, search activities increased. As soon as he hit the game winning three-pointer on Tuesday, prices have risen 2-3x.”
