Eddie Vedder Addresses Linsanity

by nobis60 on Feb 16, 2026 12:24 PM CST in Texas Longhorns and Other Basketball

A grunge icon of the '90's celebrates 2012's first cultural phenomenon in glorious song.

It takes a lot to turn my attention to any non-Mavericks NBA topic prior to late April, but Linsanity has done it. Any time you're able to take the NBA by storm, brilliantly illustrate the hollowness of Tebowmania and allow Jason Whitlock to make an ass out of himself all within about an 8-day span, I'm in.

In Bill Simmon's Linsanity ~~mail-in~~ mailbag column this morning he suggested that Pearl Jam remake their hit "Jeremy" with Lin-centric lyrics, and I had to agree that it sounded like a pretty good idea. Fortunately I've got Eddie Vedder on speed dial, so I convinced him to bang this out for the BC Faithful.

At Harvard
Drawing supply curves
On graph paper by hand,
But now he's in demand
Sportscenter's Number One
Fat sportswriters flailing
To give a nuanced view on race

D'Antoni didn't give attention
To the fact that Jeremy could play
Linsanity is peaking
Across the sports world

Jeremy just dropped 25 and 10 today
Jeremy got The Garden goin' cray

All 30 teams remember
Passing on the boy
Seemed a harmless little ****
But they unleashed a lion
Started dropping dimes
And burning up the nets
Embarassing the vets

And even though he can't go left
He gets in the lane
Gets wide open
Do you think Isaiah'd say
He's just another good guy (like Bird)?

Whitlock mocked his erection
'Cause that fatass can't see his cock without a mirror
Linsanity is peaking
And it just broke Twitter

Jeremy's ballin', and he still finds time to pray
Kinda like Tebow, only Jeremy can play

Try to forget this,

Try to erase this,

Is what 'Melo's gonna do.

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Read More: nba, eddie vedder, linsanity, whitbrainlock, hold the msg in the palm of your hand, Jeremy Lin (G - NYK), New York Knicks

Comments

Nice.

Fascinated to watch Melo get back in the lineup…

by Sailor Ripley on Feb 16, 2026 1:05 PM CST reply actions

It will be interesting to say the least

Simmons seemed to think that Melo’s basketball IQ would take over and he’d adopt a drive-to-the-basket style that would complement Lin’s game. Consider me a skeptic.

With the various racial undertones, overtones and Deftones surrounding this story, I’m praying that at least one sportswriter will react to Melo’s first 7-24 shooting night by avoiding an obvious racial landmine and referring to him as a ‘singularity’.

by nobis60 on Feb 16, 2026 1:27 PM CST up reply actions

Not sure why people think that Melo is going to mess this up

His best years in the NBA, including when the Nuggets went to the Western Conference Finals was when he played with Chauncey Billups, a talented PG. Melo has been the best player and the best ball handler on his team nearly his whole career, but he knows how to play with a PG. The Knicks will only improve with Melo, maybe with a couple initial awkward moments.

by Amen Amachigh on Feb 16, 2026 1:33 PM CST up reply actions

Melo may be getting an unfair rap thusfar

He’s certainly done it the right way and the wrong way in his career to this point.

I think he is smart enough to recognize the facets of his game that he needs to play up (driving, cutting, taking an entry pass and kicking it out if the D collapses) and play down (pound the ball into the deck, contested 20-footer bonanza) to fit into the offensive flow that the Lin-led Knicks have put together.

The question for me is whether he’ll see doing so as damaging his personal brand, because in the NBA (to borrow a Spock-ism):

The needs of the Brand > The needs of the many

by nobis60 on Feb 16, 2026 1:43 PM CST up reply actions

Given the way their season started

I think ‘Melo may be unusually receptive to giving Lin room to shine. The media pressure on the Knicks before Linsanity hit was starting to get ugly, and it wasn’t because ‘Melo wasn’t getting his touches.

by Dagga Roosta on Feb 16, 2026 4:23 PM CST up reply actions

Bravo

by Scipio Tex on Feb 16, 2026 1:24 PM CST reply actions

By the way

You should mail that to Simmons, post-haste. He might talk about it with his friend Joe House! His college friends are the best college friends! They go to Vegas together and play in fantasy leagues!

by Scipio Tex on Feb 16, 2026 1:28 PM CST reply actions

One can only dream.

by nobis60 on Feb 16, 2026 1:48 PM CST up reply actions

my college friends are the worst

we go to shreveport and stop managing our college teams a third of the way through the season.

"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

by J Galt on Feb 16, 2026 2:23 PM CST up reply actions

*fantasy teams

"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

by J Galt on Feb 16, 2026 2:24 PM CST up reply actions

doesn't Whitlock make an ass of himself everyday anyway?

by Texastough on Feb 16, 2026 1:56 PM CST reply actions

Is Eddie Vedder still culturally connected enough to know what cray means?

http://aseaofblue.com | https://www.barkingcarnival.com | @JC_Hoops

by jc25 on Feb 16, 2026 2:06 PM CST reply actions

He turned up in a pretty funny Portlandia sketch a few weeks ago

So anything’s possible.

by nobis60 on Feb 16, 2026 2:13 PM CST up reply actions

Guffaw

I laughed at the Whitlock uproar. He’s gonna get fired!!!

They pay him to do precisely that sort of shit.

by Sailor Ripley on Feb 16, 2026 2:16 PM CST reply actions

The question is:

is he aware of what his actual role is, or does he have himself convinced that he is paid to be a legitimate journalist?

"I don't want no part o' yo' tight-ass country club, ya freak bitch!"

-BOJ aka HookTech (HT) on BON

by BurntOrangeJuice on Feb 16, 2026 5:07 PM CST up reply actions

Given our species' near-limitless capacity for cognitive dissonance, the second one is conceivable

But I’m gonna go with what’s behind Door Number One.

by nobis60 on Feb 16, 2026 5:54 PM CST up reply actions

You may be right, but I think he might be more over the top if he was being an imbecile intentionally.

The level and intensity with which he plays the imbecile persuades me toward thinking he just might be self-deluded into thinking he’s doing good work, while having great utility to his employers as an imbecile. Of course, this requires the cynical assumption that his bosses recognize the dissonance between his self-image and his actual image, and have decided that the latter is too profitable to mess with. I guess I’m cynical.

"I don't want no part o' yo' tight-ass country club, ya freak bitch!"

-BOJ aka HookTech (HT) on BON

by BurntOrangeJuice on Feb 16, 2026 6:29 PM CST up reply actions