If you are looking for a guy who is secretly rooting for Jeremy Lin and Linsanity to fall apart, you have to look no further than his very own bench. Sitting there in a suit and a perfectly trimmed beard, unable to play due to a herniated disk in his back, is Baron Davis.
With the Knicks wallowing in mediocrity and bordering on irrelevance, the chatter among the irrational New York fans was that Baron Davis was somehow going to be the Baron Davis of old and lead the team to their first playoff win in nearly 4000 days. But then something happened.
Jeremy Lin took his spot.
Now publicly he is going to say all the right things, and thankfully that beard is there to distract people from the scowl his face probably has. The story of the Chinese kid from Harvard was supposed to be about the aging superstar regaining his past glory.
But instead of Baronsanity we have Linsanity.
Last year at this time, Baron Davis was the catalyst that drove the Blake Show. His alley’s were Blake Griffin’s oops. It was his head popping out of a KIA during the Slam Dunk Contest that would be immortalized as Griffin jumped over it (or at least the front bumper).
But then a funny thing happened, he was traded to Cleveland for Mo Williams because Donald Sterling wanted to get younger.
Then in the offseason, the Cavaliers amnestied him allowing him to sign with a contender. Surely he saw himself as being the third wheel in New York’s Big Three as opposed to the little buddy to Miami’s Big Three (another team he considered).
But now Jeremy Lin has made Baron Davis an afterthought.
And if you think it couldn’t get any worse for him, Jeremy Lin was added to the dunk contest to “assist” teammate Iman Shumpert (besides being in the Rookies vs Sophomores game), taking a role that also could have gone to Baron Davis.
If Jeremy Lin shows up All Star weekend with a full beard, you know its going to be on like Donkey Kong.
