Jeremy Lin might want to take a little time this offseason to watch "The Godfather."
The film draws a clear line between business and personal affairs and advises that you never mix the two, something that Lin is accused of having a hard time doing in Wednesday's Daily News. Mitch Lawrence quotes sources close to the Knicks' point guard, whose offer from the Rockets can now be officially matched, as saying that Lin is upset that the Knicks didn't offer him a contract before Houston threw four years and $28 million at him.
"He was surprised that the Knicks didn’t make the first move," Lawrence's source said. "They know they've got to mend some fences with him because he believes what the Rockets have told him, that the Knicks weren't as interested as they are."
Lin was able to go out on the open market and set a price for himself that the Knicks would have to match, something that the Knicks were more than willing to let him do and something that guaranteed Lin would wind up turning his brief run as the Knicks' starting point guard into the biggest possible payday.
It seems awfully odd that someone would be upset by that turn of events and even odder to hear that an adult would buy Houston's pitch to Lin that the Knicks really didn't like him, as Lawrence's article alleges. Lin has agents who presumably understand the way the world works and they presumably explained that to Lin as free agency gets underway.
We'd also point out that Harvard graduates probably shouldn't need such common sense things explained to them, especially after the Knicks never talked about keeping Lin as anything other than an absolute priority for their offseason. And if he knows those things and still has the sniffles about the way things played out, then we're going to have to rejigger the heartwarming story of doing things the right way that was written dozens of times last season.
The whole thing is so stupid that it is appealing to believe that the whole thing was conjured up just to use Lin-sulted in the headline.
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Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
