VIRTUAL LINSANITY

THE ASIAN SENSATION

I’m excited to announce the first official partnership / collaboration / commission with Alex Wong aka Steven Lebron. Alex wrote a book that covers the behind the scenes stories of the most iconic basketball magazine covers which gets me hyped because I grew up during a time period when print media ruled from Nintendo Power, GamePro, MAD, to The Source, XXL, and Import Tuner. Before I forget, please pre-order Cover Story (ships 10/26) from this link (not affiliated) as it will support a local independent bookstore.

Rewind back a couple months, Alex reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in running a project that would coincide with the release of his book. The project would be to create a take on Linsanity, as the book delves into Jeremy’s back-to-back Sports Illustrated covers in 2012. Whether you’re a fan of Jeremy or not (Eddie Huang’s certainly not), there’s no denying that nothing like Linsanity ever existed in the NBA prior to.

Of all professional sports, basketball has been the biggest part of my life. As a kid I started playing intramural basketball in 3rd grade and played every year until high school. So many great things to note in this individual photo: the middle part haircut, two shirts, wristwatch, AND1 basketball shorts and peach fuzz mustache. Growing up my family couldn’t afford Nikes and these ones in this picture were gifted to me from my coach at the time. Not sure what model those were, but these were officially my first pair of Nikes ever.

My dad was an avid Portland Trailblazers fan in the early 90s. This is what I called the golden era, but also the heartbreak era of basketball. Jordan at his peak. 1992 Dream Team. Clyde Drexler led the Blazers to a championship bid only to end up jumping ship to Houston to join Hakeem to win a ring in 95. My dad was heartbroken and felt betrayed, as the captain of the ship in Portland left his teammates in order to win a ring. Seeing the Blazers today, makes me grateful for Lillard’s long standing commitment to Portland. Another Blazer great was Terry Porter. Terry came to a local grocery store that my mom worked at to do a supermarket sweep style charity run. Afterwards he took some time to sign autographs for the employees and lucky for me I had a couple Upper Deck Terry Porter cards I gave to my mom to have signed (one for my brother and the other for myself) which I kept in one of these hard screw cases.

With a solid foundation in basketball, there was something missing. I cheered for my hometown heroes but never during my younger years would I have thought to witness an Asian American make such an impact in the NBA. 2012 really sparked some hope that Jeremy Lin, the Asian Sensation would open the flood gates for an Asian Invasion in all of sports. Prior to Jeremy Lin, I really gravitated to former NFL Dallas Cowboys linebacker Dat Nguyen and sanshou boxer Cung Le.

Without further ado, the bootleg Linsanity shirt will be available for pre-order (link will go live tonight) through this weekend until Sunday night 11:59 PM PST. The shirt is digitally printed on the front and screen printed on the back on the standard THEWWW.XYZ shirt: 6.1 oz Bayside blanks.