Jeremy Lin swears this year off has actually been great for him
In Jeremy Lin’s first interview with local media since suffering a season-ending knee injury in the Nets’ opener, the guard said he will be back for training camp and back playing the same style.
And that style will be better, Lin said, after he essentially will have taken a year off to retrain his body how to move.
“You talking about training camp? Shoot. If I am not, there’s issues,” said Lin, backing the widely held assumption he will opt in for the final season, worth $12 million, on his three-year contract.
Lin will have played just 37 games through the first two years of that deal, after suffering through hamstring woes last season and then rupturing his patellar tendon in this season’s opener. But he insists the injury isn’t going to curtail his attacking, physical style. He said he will just be safer because he has retrained his body.
“I’m not going to change the bread and butter of who I am which is downhill, attacking, dynamic playmaking. I’ll always be that player,” Lin said before the Nets lost to the Lakers 102-99 at Barclays Center on Friday night. “What we’ll see is probably a similar style, but in a safer way. I’ll still be in the paint heavy, but I won’t be landing on my legs the same way, getting off-balance unless obviously I’m forced to. But the landing, taking contact, being able to engage certain muscles before contact, before I take off, all those things are really important.
“It’s not just the plays that make you go ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ and ‘ouch’ that hurts. It’s more everyday movement, like if I’m moving inefficiently or if I’m putting extra load on my right knee throughout the course of the game. … That’s going to be a big area of improvement. A lot of other muscles will be absorbing impact that joints shouldn’t be.”
Much of that work is being done at Fortius Sport & Health in Burnaby, British Columbia, near Vancouver. Lin is working with personal trainer and Fortius Institute co-founder Rick Celebrini, who came to prominence for his work with now-retired NBA star Steve Nash.
While Nets general manager Sean Marks — who also knows Celebrini — has said the team is in lockstep with the decision for Lin to work at Fortius, it raises a question: Why rehab 3,000 miles away?
“The most urgent thing is taking care of the knee, and then on top of that I had to learn all the different things. I’m walking nowadays,” Lin said. “There was a time when I couldn’t. I had to re-learn all those things.On top of that, changing movement. It’s not like just Fortius. It’s the combination of Fortius and the Nets. There’s a lot of stuff that the Nets wanted to do, but we haven’t had the time.”
Both Lin and the Nets said the communication has been constant.
“That’s been the thing that I’ve been absolutely blown away with,” Lin said. “I feel like a diva with how much they’re communicating and every little thing gets passed on to every single person down the line, and everyone in Brooklyn knows, and everyone in Vancouver knows every little thing that happens, every milestone that we pass or whatever it is.”
Nets coach Kenny Atkinson agreed.
“He’s one of my text buddies. He sent me a pick-and-roll defense, it was like a Harvard NBA presentation on pick-and-roll defense and how to become a better pick-and-roll defender. It’s like, ‘OK, Coach Lin,’ ” Atkinson said.
“He’s so involved. He’s not just sitting there doing his own thing, he’s always hitting me with stuff after the game.‘You could’ve done this, you could’ve done that’, it’s great. And I know our medical team is all over him. He’s in a really good place, he’s happy with how he’s progressing.”