Swhet Productions

As you can tell from the above title, it is the momentous (and maybe in some ways infamous) NBA All-Star weekend, chock full of Jeremy Lin, James Jones, and Paul George.

Wait, who?

We'll come back to that bit later. But for now, I'll be cooking up some Hoop Soup, a random multitude of all the hottest NBA story lines as well as a few quandaries from straight outta left field.

First, some background: I've been a legitimate follower and fan of the game of basketball since somewhere between ages 10 and 12. With my step mom and her family being some of the biggest Laker Filinatics this side of Manila, I naturally gravitated towards the Lakers. That does not necessarily mean I only follow them; I've been playing fantasy basketball for (I think) three seasons now, and thus I started really following everybody in the NBA.

For example:

My favorite player - Kevin Love

Best rookies (in my opinion) - Kyrie Erving, Derrick Williams, Kemba Walker, Markieff and Marcus Morris, Nicola Vucevic, and Norris Cole

This year's top players (in my opinion) - LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Love, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul

And the list goes on and on. Different subheadings reveal different results. We'll wind up swinging back around to many of the topics and players listed above.

But first, let's start with my Lakers and their penchant for crappy basketball.

Brown and the Lakers Sulk Into the Break

Look, in my house, my dad and I are very well educated on this team after a decade of living amongst some big-time Laker lifers. And the one thing I (and I think everyone else) has noticed about this team is that it ALL revolves around and runs through Kobe Bryant. They have one of the best potential 1-2 inside punches in the league, and despite Kobe always being the go-to, these last few years have shown us that the Lakers will indeed play to their strength down low.

Not this year.

Coach Mike "Mush Mouth" Brown has seemingly decided that he knows all, that his transitional small time offense is suitable for THIS team, RIGHT now. Unbeknownst to him is the fact that he still has both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, the latter of which is having the best season of his career. Brown still won't use him as a primary weapon. As for Pau?

Yeah. About that Pau character.

In this new "post-triangle" system, he is essentially a loose body. He floats around the perimeter, rarely goes to the lane, and is now playing like a sixth man rather than a big man. He was an all-star every year since joining the Lakers, he was the biggest player not named Kobe in factoring into the team's consecutive championships, and he had just asserted himself as one of the league's elite bigs. And yet here he is, being shopped as trade bait for smaller players? Why in the hell would you break away from what has been your niche for 50 YEARS and start a whole new regime based around the exact opposite of what has brought the team 15 rings?

I have plenty to say about the Lakers, but let's leave it at that for now. On to Linsanity!

Linsanity Hits the Big Apple

Here is the situation, if you don't already know: Jeremy Lin was one of the top high school basketball players in California after leading his team to the D-II state title. He was passed over by his top two colleges of choice, UCLA and Stanford. Then USC. Then Cal. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Where does he wind up? Harvard, where basketball reigns supreme! If you replace "basketball" with "economics," "law," or "quantum physics" of course.

Anyways, he dominates the Ivy League, picking up right where he left off in high school. He wrestles the starting point guard away from some other dude who probably works overseas developing a new way for humans to drop deuces from the comfort of their couch. Then time comes to move on to the NBA.

Where does he wind up? Well, no where.

Lin later gets picked up by Golden State and then another team (I can't remember who it was; maybe Utah or something.). He plays in maybe half a dozen games before hitting the unemployment line again. Then suddenly, the Knicks have this glaring need for a point guard. And I mean suddenly. They played without one for like, a decade. But it was just now that they needed one.

What a run this kid has. The team wins 8 straight, he puts up 24 points and 7 assists a game for those 8 games, including a big fat 38 and 8 against my Lakers. Linsanity was born. The Knicks were Linning. They were entering the Lin Dynasty. The fans were parading around like Lingrates. You get my point.

ESPN just splooged all over themselves with this one. They dedicated entire segments to him, regurgitating the same bloody story every day. I kid you not, for a week straight, it was, "Jeremy Lin is the hottest thing to hit New York since Broadway; Lin is definitely finding the whole thing, very surreal." (Cut to press conference/interview clip where he talks about how crazy it all is)

Every. Single. Day.

I get the craze; we're a needy, self-conscious age of people who NEED to have our attention drawn away from our superficial insecurities. That's why we had Tebowmania. That's why we stare so closely at our computer screens for the next mind-blowing Hollywood hook up. But TMZSPN took (and continues to take) it too far. Did we hear his story? YES we f***ing heard his story! You told us! EVERY DAY!

Then the kid somehow makes it to All-Star weekend after 2 weeks worth of games? Now we have Sports Illustrated plastering him on their cover 2 weeks running? Do you know how often anything gets an SI cover 2 weeks running? It's probably never happened (citation needed). And now we have SI and TMZSPN raving about how he's this polarizing Taiwanese player and how there is such a stir overseas about how amazing Jeremy Lin is. He may even play for China this year in London!

Uhm, for one, he's Taiwanese-America. Two, he's AMERICAN. We constantly demonize people who make something minimal into something racial, but for some reason we cannot stress enough how successful this young Asian player has been, or how isn't the biggest or fastest or most athletic but he's smart and works hard. That sounds like something racial to me.

But if a dude working for TMZSPN Mobile posts a headline at 3AM called "Chink in the Armor" after Lin's first bad game against whomever, he gets fired for being racist.

But if Ben n Jerry's makes a "Lin-sanity" flavor that contains fortune cookies as a Lingredient, it has to be recalled for being too stereotypical.

People make him out to be like he could never ball. I'm in the boat that he's actually, ya know, talented at basketball like he proved he was by being one of the top prep players in the state of California and leading his team to a state title, dominating everyone in the process while also being named best player in the state. "He doesn't jump very high, he's not very big, he's not the fastest." Well, actually, he can sky; we've all seen him dunk, and he does it well. He ain't tiny; 6'3, 200lbs is small? Even in basketball, he's still half Taiwanese. His parents are probably 5'4, each. And the kid's got wheels; he's snaked past John Wall, Devin Harris, Kyrie Erving, and Deron Williams, all good to elite point guards, all top 5 picks in their respective drafts. He's no slouch, but because he is half Asian, we have to say he isn't big or fast or athletic, but slap him with that old (stereotypical) tag of "smart" and "gritty." It's senseless.

Again, there's plenty I could say about Linsanity. I won't say too much, though. I don't wanna get fired.

That will have to wrap up Part 1 of my Hoop Soup. Part 2 to come in the next couple of days, maybe after tomorrow's All-Star game is played. Til then, cheers!

Jack Sheezy is the editor-in-chief of Swhet and the author of the recent New York Times no. 1 best-seller "The Book of Basketball."

(^ Welp, I'm getting sued for that.)