“It was just too much for me at the time. I just couldn’t handle the pressure” – Jeremy Lin on why his stint with the Warriors became a painful memory originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Perhaps he still shakes his head when he thinks back to those first days with the Golden State Warriors.
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On paper, it looked like a dream come true. Local kid, California Player of the Year, state champion, walking into the NBA with something to prove.
But the reality was…
“It was just too much for me at the time,” Jeremy Lin, once the author of basketball’s greatest two-week spectacles, admitted. “I just couldn’t handle the pressure.”
A perplexing memory
He was 22 years old then, just trying to keep his head above water.
The team was already a mess that year — losing games, searching for direction — and Lin felt it all stacking on top of him. He had grown up watching the Warriors. Now he was wearing the jersey, sitting on the bench most nights, and trying to convince everyone he belonged.
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And even getting there took a stroke of luck.
“Joe Lacob [the executive chairman of the Warriors] did that because he saw me and I grew up playing against his son,” Lin said, referring to Lacob signing him after he went undrafted in 2010. “That’s the reason why I was able to get into the NBA. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have gotten a chance.”
That part still eats at him a little, because Lin’s resume was no joke.
He averaged 15 points and nearly six assists at Harvard. He was California’s best high school player in 2006 — better numbers than guys who got full rides to powerhouse programs. Won a state title. In pre-draft workouts, he outplayed several first-rounders.
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“And still,” Lin said, “being one of the best point guards in the country, crushing it in all of my workouts, and going undrafted… That’s a lot of what ends up happening when you talk about what it’s like to not look the part.”
He didn’t say it with anger, just matter-of-fact.
No new opportunity
It wasn’t the last time he’d feel it, either.
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Years later, he dominated in the G League — finishing top five in multiple statistical categories — and still couldn’t get a team to sign him.
“I was a top league leader in points, assists, efficiency and still not getting an NBA contract when everybody else that was a league leader got one,” he said.
Even in those early Warriors practices, you could tell he was pressing. He wanted to prove so badly that he belonged that he sometimes got in his own way. Nights where he’d check in for six to eight minutes, barely touch the ball, then go back to the bench, trying to figure out what he did wrong.
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And the numbers backed it up: Lin appeared in just 29 games that year, averaging under three points and an assist in about nine minutes a night. He shot 38 percent from the field. Not exactly a fair chance to showcase anything, but that’s the way the league works sometimes.
Golden State would waive him the next year.
Looking back now, Lin doesn’t seem bitter about it, though you can still hear the disappointment under his words. But what he’s quick to point out is the bigger picture. The way his story shines a light on how hard it is for some players — particularly Asian-Americans — to even get seen, no matter what they accomplish.
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He perhaps smiles now when he tells it. But he remembers. How much it hurt. How much it fueled him. And maybe that’s why those early struggles ended up becoming part of his legend — proof that the pressure didn’t break him, even if it bent him for a little while.
For Lin, it started with a dream and a little help from a connection.
But the rest was all him. And even though it didn’t work out in Golden State, it’s hard to argue with how the story turned out.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 25, 2025, where it first appeared.