Lin ‘The Yellow Superman’
You’ll never guess which former NBA player the league’s newest sensation Jeremy Lin has been compared to by ESPN’s Bob Ryan in his show “Around the Horn.”
Clue: This former NBA player was also a PBA import way back in the 80’s.
Still can’t guess? Here’s a giveaway. Some people now call Lin “The Yellow Superman.”
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While surfing the Web yesterday, two articles by Dennis “D’ Source” Guillermo caught my eye.
The first one was entitled “Jeremy Lin: The Second Coming of Billy Ray Bates?” Wow! It’s good to know that people think so highly of Billy Ray.
The entire piece was built around a statement made by Ryan.
“I don’t remember anything like this (Lin) since Billy Ray Bates,” Ryan was quoted in the Examiner.com article.
But why Jeremy has been compared to the cager Filipinos have tagged “The Black Superman,” was not fully explained.
While both are scorers and leapers, they play different positions. Lin plays the point while Bates is a shooting guard.
The comparison made by Ryan could be based on the instant impact they both made in the NBA, although one NBA fan points out that it took a while before Lin was noticed in the NBA.
The Black Superman, who made it to the NBA via a 10-day contract with the Portland Trail Blazers, was an overnight sensation because of his high-scoring and high-flying exploits.
But Billy’s stint in the NBA was short-lived. After his second season, he was given his walking papers. He was too difficult to handle.
Of course his stint in the PBA is an entirely different story.
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Billy didn’t last in the NBA because of his “off-court transgressions,” as they put it. So far, Jeremy Lin has shown no signs of Bates’ very bad off-court habits.
NBA fans want the Yellow Superman to last longer in the NBA than the Black Superman did.
Thank God Jeremy and Billy are different in many ways. For one, Jeremy is Harvard-educated. I don’t remember if Billy has an education to speak of.
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The other D’Source article I came across concerns three-time world boxing champion Ana “The Hurricane” Julaton, who is scheduled to defend her WBO super bantamweight title against the undefeated Yesica Marcos.
Yesica is Argentine and the fight will be staged in Argentina, where Filipino Johnriel Casimero and his party were mobbed by irate Argentinian boxing fans after he TKO’d Luis Lazarte.
Promoter Allan Tremblay, who was also the promoter of the Casimero-Lazarte fight, assured Ana’s manager Oswaldo Rivero that what happened last month will not happen again.
“We have organized countless fights for different world titles. We have been doing this for the last 25 years. While we cannot deny responsibility for what happened in the last fight, you have our assurance that the Team Julaton’s stay here will be pleasant,” Tremblay wrote in a letter.
