 that we are doing a 360 degrees filming today, so feel free to entertain yourself as well. Okay, we can start, okay. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Tianwei, and moderator and host coming from CCTV News. And it's a great pleasure for me to be the one who leads with questions, with a conversation with one of the most established NBA players, Jeremy Lin. Huaiying Kai. I love the hairstyle, Jeremy. And the earrings. I appreciate it. I just told her backstage, my parents aren't big fans, but I feel like at this age, might as well get it all out of my system, and when I have kids and stuff, I won't be doing all this. I mean, you're in China, so feel free to do that. You are a bit not used to people just shape you as a Chinese American basketball player. And yet, every time you are approached by the press, you have been asked questions, including now, about that. So what do you feel about your identity? Let's just begin with a very serious note. Okay, I'll do my best. I know there's people behind me. We do my best to look at you guys, but yeah, I think for me, when I first started at Harvard, obviously every question was just like, man, you're Asian, what's that like? What's it like to be Asian? I'm just like, I don't know. I'm just saying, you know, it's no different than you being whatever ethnicity you are, but that's all anybody wanted to talk about. And I felt like everybody kind of just put me into, oh my goodness, he's Asian, he's Asian. And I remember just kind of thinking to myself, there's this whole other side of, it kind of opened my eyes to what life was like in the US because I was playing basketball at a high level, but it didn't seem like people were willing to talk about that as much as they were just, hey, you're Asian American. And so I think for me, slowly as I got older, I kind of just learned to appreciate my identity in terms of who I am for myself, versus allowing what other people think of me to kind of shape who I am. And a lot of that goes back to my faith. I'm a Christian. I always kind of talk about my identity comes first and foremost from Christ. But it's a double sword, isn't it? On the one hand, you've got so much respect, particularly on this Asian continent. The first Chinese American made it so high to the NBA and also certainly have that straight seven games, really impressive. On the other hand, you're being shaped by this identity. So how can you break it? Do you want to break it? Yeah, I mean, I think a double-edged sword is a great way to say it. If I score 20 points, everyone's like, he's the greatest. And if I score five, they're like, he's the worst, right? And so what you see in my, the way I'm viewed now is very bipolar. You're either like, you think I'm the best or you think I'm the worst. And that's just what I've seen in a lot of fans. And I think for me now, I just try to be more proactive about like controlling my brand. So the things that I want to be known for or what do I want my legacy to be, things like that, I try to be more proactive versus letting everybody else kind of dictate what they feel about me. Because obviously in today's day and age, what they feel about you is basically what you did your last game. That's kind of how things work and that's how people are judged. And so I just try to be a little bit more proactive about shaping who I feel like I want to be known as. I remember reading some materials related to what your friend said about you. In one media report, they were suggesting people want to come up to you and take photos with you. But when they walk to the door of the mall, they're saying how much you suck in the recent games. Of course, not the people sitting here. But that's the prize you pay as a celebrity, right? I know you were having a little bit difficulty adjusting to that, but you eventually came out of it. Does computer games help? Yeah, computer games definitely helps. Because for me, that helps me reset mentally when I'm feeling stressed. Which game is that? I play Dota 2. Oh, that's fun. So I play with my... The good thing is I get to play with people across the world. When I was playing in Charlotte and my little brother was playing in Taiwan, we could still play online together. But I think, yeah, it was... At first, I felt like I lost my privacy when everything happened. Everywhere I went, people wanted a picture or whatever, a video or an autograph. At first, I got really upset, but then I felt like, man, I'm just kind of like a zoo animal. People just kind of stop by, take a picture, and then they kind of go on their way. I felt like... No, I would always say I'm a zoo animal. You are not. You are a hero. I appreciate it. But I think as I got older, I really appreciated or embraced the platform that comes with it. I have a voice. I'm 27 years old. I'm able to attend the World Economic Forum, like something that is just a tremendous honor. I'm able to impart my values or what I feel is important and be able to try to impact this world. And these are the things that I focus on whenever I start feeling like a zoo animal. I think about that. But how much time you have to personally use and intellect you have to personally use in order to adjust yourself on issues like this? A lot. I mean, I'm kind of dumb. I use a lot of time, even though I'm a very small potato from China. But still, so what does it mean for you? I mean, I think a big part of that is surrounding myself with the right people. Because my main job is basketball. So I train every day during the season. I barely have any time. But if I surround myself with the right people, I think that's what it's about. So my agencies, the people who work for me, we talk about a plan. We have retreats every year. We say, all right, this is certain situations or directions that we want to go on. This is how we want to change and shape the world or whatever. And they start game-planning for things that will allow me or give me those opportunities. During the summer, like right now, I have the chance to be able to do something like this. But if there's no strategy ahead of time, that's kind of what I meant by being proactive is if there's no strategy, then I'm kind of just being tossed back and forth, going with the flow, reacting to everything. Versus kind of playing offensive. So what is your strategy now? My strategy, honestly, a big part of what I want to do is, I mean, I can't really answer it in a short thing because there's so many things I want to do. We've got time. But if I could summarize, definitely, I want to bring Christ to a lot of different areas in the world that I feel like don't have that access to just understand what that's about. I think underprivileged children are something that's very near and dear to me. I grew up with a lot of teammates who, their parents never drove them to games. Some of them didn't have parents. They didn't sleep well at night because there were gunshots. I would talk to them, hey, what college are you going to or what college you want to go to? And they kind of laughed. They're like, college, are you kidding me? And so underprivileged children has always been something that, once I saw how my teammates grew up, I felt like, hey, if I have a chance, I'm gonna do something about that. Basketball as well. I want to grow the basketball, especially here. Growing up in the US, we're so spoiled, we have access to the best coaching and everything. And then education. Earlier this morning, I was at a box fish thing. It's an ed tech app, and it's providing English to like 8,000 schools right now for free and it integrates games into education and it just makes it engaging for the students. And so we want to branch out and touch a lot of different areas, but I would say those are probably the top four. Talking about bringing basketball to this part of the world, we've seen a lot of great players from China, but not many have been making themselves to the NBA. Earlier we got Yao Ming. I know you were also commenting on Yao Ming when he was named in the Hall of Fame for the basketball. Very gracious of you to do that. What do you make of the level of playing for the Chinese basketball players these days? Of course, except Yao Ming, he's already there. The others. Well, I think it's slowly, it's getting better. If you look at the CBA, you see a lot of American coaches, European coaches coming in. I think you see a lot of former NBA players or fringe NBA players, Stefan Marbury and Jordan Crawford, Greg Odin. Michael Beasley was here. You see a lot of big time players and what that does is just raises the level of basketball competition and kids are only gonna get better and better. I think we had two Chinese players get drafted, which is awesome. Obviously, I hope they make it with the second round. It's gonna be difficult, but I hope they make it and stick. And my dream is when I'm old and have gray hair and everything, I wanna be able to look at the NBA and just see a bunch of Asians. I wanna see the Asians like we see European players in the NBA. I think that would be an awesome plan. Just a bunch of them, you mean? A bunch of them, yeah. Just a bunch of them? I mean, we can get greedy and try to take over the whole thing, but of course, today we've already got the news, Jerry, as you know, we were talking about this before coming in here. Joe Chi coming from Xinjiang was drafted by the Houston Rocket. And of course, they got more rounds to compete in order for that the most important position. But that reminds me of your story. I mean, you've been sitting on the benches for a long time before one critical moment when there were no other players to call on. The coach made you up there in the court and eventually the story happened. What do you make of this? Is this a coincidence or is it hard work of years? I mean, I think it's a combination, right? I think if we all think about our own lives, you guys are all sitting here today. I mean, I think you guys would say you took advantage of the opportunities you had, but there are a lot of other things that had to happen along the way. And that's kind of how I think about Linsanity. It was a perfect storm of a lot of different things. Playing for Dan Tony and guys getting hurt, being in the biggest market, we had our two best players get hurt at that time and everything kind of came together. And then, obviously I had to work hard and try to hone my craft, but not to be pessimistic but if you're asking me what do I make of it or what's the one thing I think of it is, honestly, I remember how fleeting that moment of success was. Tell us. I will. I remember I was just like, I was just like, I was happy, but then like two, three weeks later, I was kind of like, man, all I'm thinking about is the next game because if I don't play well, then there's backlash. And then after I play well, then I have to play well the next game and after the season, it's the next season. And that's when I kind of like had an epiphany moment where I was like, all right, well, if being on top of the world isn't good enough, then what is? And I think that's when I started to kind of take another step spiritually and just help to really enjoy the moment, enjoy each day. And I think now as I go through my life, like this past season with the Hornets, that was my most enjoyable season. It wasn't my best statistical season or anything like that, but I appreciated each little moment. I appreciated the bus rides. I appreciated some nights where it's just like, man, my body's hurting. I had to play four games in five nights, but learning to appreciate the grind of your job and to appreciate the fact that I'm competing against the best in the world, like things like that before I didn't, I was too, I was just too focused on the next thing to really appreciate what I had now. And that's probably the one thing I learned the most. And you moved, of course, from the East Coast to the West Coast. Yeah. That definitely helps. You're right. It definitely helps. I'm a California guy. Yeah, I know. You know, In-N-Out Burger, anybody here likes In-N-Out Burger? I'm a California guy and, you know, and so every off season I spend my time in California. How do you relax yourself? Earlier we talked about computer games, but I heard in your two-room apartment, I even know that. There was a stack of shoes occupying a whole one wall. Is that true? Let me know if there was too much privacy being revealed. I do have a shoe wall. Wow. So I'm, you know, I have a five-year endorsement deal with Adidas and they treat me a little bit, you know, they spoil me. They spoil you. There's no other way to say it. They spoil me. So I literally had to call Adidas and tell them, hey, you need to stop sending shoes. I have no, I have no more room. You have to give me a parking tour around my shoes. I've given away hundreds of pairs of Adidas shoes. But the ones I like, I keep and I've created a, I basically went to Ikea, bought a bunch of little mini, you know, shoe racks and then I glued them all together to make a big wall. And then after I got to, you know, my wall has 108 pairs and I told myself, I cannot make my wall any bigger. So now- Are you gonna wear them one by one? Honestly, I try to give away, I gave away the like, I gave away like 50 pairs last year, just anybody who's my size. The problem is most of my Asian friends don't wear size 12 and most of my non-Asian friends are larger than size 12. So I usually end up with a, you know, a stockpile of shoes. Talking between. Yeah. The sizes. Exactly. And the races. Yeah. Sometimes. If I could quote you a little bit, you were saying back in the year 2012 at the old star weekend interview, something like this. I know a lot of people say I'm deceptively athletic and deceptively quick and I'm not sure what deceptive is you said, but it could be the fact that I'm an Asian-American but I think that's fine. It's something that I embrace and it gives me a chip on my shoulder. But I'm very proud to be an Asian-American and I really love it. Having said that though, I know there were some kinds of debates, if not exchange of harsh words between you and some of the other players, but when Kobe Bryant retired, you said something very graciously about him and you were quoted widely about that. Help us to understand what is it like to be with different kinds of players, to understand them, to have the empathy and also to grow yourself out of those interactions? Yeah, I mean that's a great question. I feel like one of the most valuable things, I actually learned this from a high school coach, one of the most valuable things and if you ask me why is my high school coach such a great coach, it's because he never thought he knew it all and I remember we played a team and they took us to overtime and we barely beat them, but they were definitely less talented and after my coach called that coach and said, hey, what was it about your team that made it so difficult for us? And I was just like, man, that's like, I could learn from that. And so as I've gone through my experiences with so many different players, I just try to pick up one or two things from everybody. If I could just steal one or two things from Kobe, I just saw how detailed he was, his footwork, things like that. I normally don't think that much about my footwork. I'm pretty fast, so there's not much footwork you just run in a straight line, you go by people. That's like how I try to play. But for him, there's so much angles, there's so much change of pace. And so learning how he thought about the game was something that I appreciated and so when he retired, I definitely had some nice words to say. What did you say about him? Just remind our audience. Oh, I just said, congrats on the 60 piece, which he scored 60 in his last game and I said it's a fitting way for an amazing career. And I think, you know, I just try to learn, I just try to learn everywhere I go and I think that's really important for anybody. And so, you know, and another thing I try to do is I try to put myself in someone else's shoes as much as I can, because obviously we all go through situations where we feel like this isn't fair, that isn't fair. And I think it happens every day, but usually when I take the time to really talk to somebody or like explain or see where they're coming from, I often take a softer stance from my perspective. I'm like, wow, I can actually understand that. So I see a lot of other players, I see what happens to me, sometimes I don't think things are fair and I just kind of try to roll with the punches the best I can and... But you know, Jeremy, does humility help really? I mean, this is a very competitive sport we're talking about and people just go very expressive and even in order to attract the immediate spotlight. So does it really help to be the modest one? And I asked myself that question for years. I said... Did you resolve it? Did I ask the right question? I think so. If you asked me three years ago, I don't think I would have an answer for you. But I always thought to myself, you know, humility, obviously the Bible talks about how humility is true greatness and, you know, for me I always felt like it's a form of strength. And then I started to play in the NBA and I was like, look, the best players are very arrogant. They're arrogant and they think they're the best and that's why they are the best. And so I started to struggle with this whole concept and I started to ask myself a lot of questions. But I think humility is a strength because if you look at this past year, why did we as the Hornets, why did we exceed expectations? We were expected to finish 13th in the Eastern Conference. We finished six and we're, you know, a half game out for finishing third. It's because we had humility on that team. We were willing to sacrifice, we were willing to play for each other. I think if you look at teams that overachieve, a big part is they're very humble in the way they go about stuff. I think there's a big difference between being humble and being stepped on. And I think that's where I kind of learned to pick up the difference. When I step on the court for lack of a better analogy, you know, we always talk about stepping on people's throats. That's the analogy that you think of when you play because you have to. You can't play, you can't play with a, with a, you know, a passive, you know, I hope I, you know, it has to be, you know, an enforcing type of attitude. But I still think you can do that in a humble way. A great example to me is Steph Curry, Tony Dungey. These are guys, Tony Dungey was a coach who won a Super Bowl and his rule was I'll never yell or cuss at my players. So he never yelled, he never cussed his players, but he earned their respect and they were running, willing to run through a brick wall for them because of the way he approached it. But that didn't mean that he didn't have the, he didn't command the respect of his locker room that didn't mean players didn't get punished. Same with Steph, if you look at his demeanor, he smiles, he jokes, he dances, he has a lot of fun, but when he steps on the court, he's going for blood. And, but the way he carries his himself is with a very humble demeanor, the way he treats people. If you talk to him, like I talk to him now, and there's no difference than when I was his teammate, you know, and to me that's humility. And I think that's, that's a, that's very admirable. That is so beautifully, I have to say. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I think we need to give him a round of applause for that. Beautiful what you said. It's not just on the basketball court, it's everywhere. What you have just said, yes. Having said that though, I have to go one step further. Talking about your professional career, you go free agent now, what does that mean? What is the rationale behind it? I mean, for me, I want to find a home. I've played six years in the NBA. I've played on five different teams and I've played for two D-League teams. So seven cities in six years. I'm tired of boxes, I'm tired of moving companies and I want to find a home. And the shoes. Yeah, the shoe wall is the hardest thing to move them. Oh yeah. You gotta wrap all of this, it's complicated. But yeah, I think for me, I want to find a home and I want to, and I think if you ask me, like what do you want out of free agency? I want to see how good I can become. I'm 27 and an athlete's prime, or at least in the NBA, your prime is usually 27 to 30. That's when you kind of peak physically mentally and that's where most players perform their best. And so I'm going into my prime and I want to see how great I can be as a player and that's my purpose in free agency. So I'll just exhaust every opportunity to see which one will be the best for me. What kind of opportunities are you talking about? Let's go into details. That's where I can't go into details because it's actually illegal for us to talk to teams until July 1st. At this moment, may I raise a detail because a lot of friends in New York are asking me to ask the question to you. Jeremy, come back to New York. Is that a possibility? It's not looking likely because they just traded for Derrick Rose. But I will say ever since I left, I've always been open to going back. And I still am. Never say never. That's one thing in the NBA. Never say never. And so I've always been open, but right now I'm not sure if it's the best timing, but if it happens, it happens. You come to China once every year almost. I'm sure there are different kinds of off-the-record discussions about what kind of cooperation could happen, how much nurture you give to the young players in China and what kinds of future initiatives there could be even between China and the United States. So what areas do you think that China can work on more in order to raise the level of the basketball? You know, we have a joke here. Anything that's with a fence, Chinese do really well. For example, tennis, table tennis, black minton. But when it comes to the free court, soccer or basketball, there might be some challenges. So any advice? Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely, I have these conversations. By the way, I'm doing stereotyping, so it's not politically correct, but just a joke to throw around. No, no, no, I totally understand. And I think, see, I'm lucky. The reason why I say that is I try to learn from the players who come before me and I think Yao is a great player. And I just had dinner with them in Shanghai and he's treated me so well ever since I came into the league and what I see him doing now, I just try to learn and kind of like plot because eventually I'm gonna retire too. And so what Yao's been doing, he's been doing a lot of stuff. He has a team, he works with the Shanghai Sharks and he works with basketball and trying to change basketball in China. And if you ask me what's the one thing, I think right now when we see a lot of Chinese players go over to the US, they're mostly seven footers or above. And I think developing players, not just based on their height, but based on, I think that's why Steph Curry is so great for the game is he's just six, three, he's not that strong, he doesn't jump that high, he's not extremely quick, he's not a freak of nature athletically, he's just skilled. If we can make the Chinese basketball players skilled, if we can teach them these things, they don't have to be seven feet and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that because there's a time and place for centers but if we can just make it more well rounded, I think we'll see a lot more guards, Asian guards in the NBA. And there's a lot of other things too that like every country we can all improve on and one thing that kind of breaks my heart is seeing former players when they retire, where are they at in their lives, what are their opportunities, job opportunities, what's their education level. And so I think pushing the concept of student athlete is really, really important. If I get hurt tomorrow and can never play the game again, at least I have a degree, I can go do something with it. There's people around me have helped so that I can transition into something else because eventually I'm gonna stop playing. And I think that's definitely something important for some of the players that we have in China as well. Before we wrap up, we've only got three minutes left. Oh, two minutes only. Okay, you have to be very skillfully answering two questions within two minutes without wasting any time, so let me ask you directly. There has been a lot of reporting about corruptions, about the sports system. We've heard scandals about FIFA, we've heard scandals about IOC. As a sportsman yourself, what do you make of all of this? And also what can you do? Decency of the sport. Yeah, I mean, honestly, if you ask me what I can do, I can't really do it much. And that's kind of what is annoying. Cause I'm a problem solver so when I see a problem I wanna help it. But I think one thing I wanna do is eventually be in a position where I can do something about it. And so what that requires now is learning, talking to people, meeting people, and just trying to learn as much as I can. Obviously, it's disappointing, but you see a lot of cheating allegations and stuff like that. But I think we're headed in the right direction, I think we're cleaning up sports in general, and one day I wanna be able to, when I can't play the game anymore, I wanna still be able to affect the game and that's a great way to do it at a high level. Yeah, and final question. What specific skills are you working on these days? I'm working on my shooting. Okay. I see everyone laughs. Elaborate on that. I'm just trying to be a great shooter. It seems like you are working on the same thing as we do. Yeah, I'm trying to be a great shooter because I can really drive to the basket and that's basically why I can play in the NBA is cause I can drive, but if I feel like if I can shoot at a more consistent and if I can hit more types of shots, it'll open up my driving game. So I'm shooting like 700 to 1,000 jumpers every day while I'm not on this Asia trip and we're just every day just in there. We got a rebounding machine and a big, huge net. It just fires the ball back and forth and we just keep shooting and it comes back out. So it's been a fun offside. It's great to have you here in Summer Doubles so that you can have a rest at least. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Jeremy Lin. Thank you.