Los Angeles Lakers point guard Jeremy Lin once again went scoreless for the second time this season in Wednesday's 111-95 loss to the Washington Wizards. With another miserable performance, several fans already expressed their frustrations towards Lin, believing that it's time to trade Asian-American for a younger prospect.
However, even if Lin continues to record zero-point games for the remainder of the season, it would be very hard for the Lakers to trade him because of two main reasons: Lin's $8M expiring contract and his immense value as a magnet for Asian-American viewers.
Lin, who is averaging 11.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.9 rebounds per game, is widely labeled as one-and-done rental player for the Lakers. Since his arrival in Hollywood, many analysts - including Yahoo Sports insider Adrian Wojnarowski - think Lin will just play the season out before the Lakers replaced him with an All-Star caliber point guard (like Rajon Rondo or Goran Dragic) summer.
"I think this Lin is a one-year player with the Lakers. He's a backup point guard in the NBA. He's obviously be thrust into a bigger role because of who they have [on the Lakers roster], with the injuries and with Steve Nash being out for the year. You can see that Lin's confidence is not there. There's not a great chemistry between Kobe and Lin, that's obvious," according to Wojnarowski.
While Lin remains a very intriguing talent for any team, the Lakers front office is aware that no team would dare to absorb his $8 million expiring contract (he's actually earning near $15M salary) in exchange for assets.
Another reason why Kupchack and even the Buss sibling won't deal away Lin is his business value for the organization. The ownership might have already predicted the Lakers' current struggle this season, so they pulled off a move to acquire a player that would make their games still watchable for 2.5 million of Asian-American audience in Los Angeles.
In an interview with NBC News, University of California-Riverside professor Karthick Ramakrishnan really thinks one of the reasons the Lakers acquired Lin is his ability to draw Asian-American viewers.
"Los Angeles is the largest Asian-American market, 5 times larger than Houston's," he wrote for AAPIVoices.com, a data journalism project focusing on Asian-American issues.," according to Ramakrishnan.
With these reasons, it won't be surprising if the Lakers will stick with Lin through thick and thin for the rest of the 2014-15 NBA season because they know how much money they could lose without Linsanity on their roster.
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