38 at the Garden

I've heard of Jeremy Lin but I'm not a sports fan so I've never seen him play. It's amazing to see his talent and grace under pressure as a ground breaker. Jeremy had to kick the door down to play, just like Black players had to "break the color line" in the 50s to join the NBA. It shows how POC have to fight to access certain spaces. This film shows Lin's impact and why representation matters not just for the Asian American community but for us all. It's also fun to watch him dominate some of the NBA's elite players. I want to check out some of his games online. The filmmakers also spent time to highlight the rise in violence, hate crimes, and terrorism of the Asian community. This is such an important topic. Bravo for using this moment to educate and spread awareness!

It's nice looking back on a fun time in sports, and I get chills looking back at a lot of the moments from Linsanity. But the quality of this doc is sub-par, and that's being generous. Youtube videos have done far better than this. While the main message of Asian pride and combating Asian hate is important and needs to be heard, it is also massively over-done, and gets tired. It's sad because a lot of people will tune this doc out because 2/3rds of it is solely devoted to that fact; we just want to re-live that awesome moment in 2012 that we all remember.

It's far too short. They could have gone far deeper with this subject but it's too surface level and focuses on the wrong things too much of the time. But since it's not great, maybe it isn't a bad thing that it's this short, because I just wanted it to be over.

Lin's individual "storytelling" is just strange. He isn't getting interviewed, he's reading off of a script. Really? Everyone else is getting asked questions, but he's just reciting terribly contrived lines with no depth at all and it feels so phony. But on the plus side, Hasan Minhaj, Shumpert, and Chandler gave some very nice bits of info that were absolutely fantastic.

Overall, not really worth a watch, I'd just recommend perusing various YouTube videos on Linsanity to get a more electric experience. Bummer :(

What Jeremy accomplished and still stands for should be a source of hope and inspiration for everyone. This film features an all-star cast of Asian American luminaries, including the inimitable Hasan Minhaj dropping some truth bombs. Frank Chi establishes himself as an exciting new voice in storytelling with this debut short. Laugh, cry and understand the Asian American experience just that much better. The animation also deserves a special call out, helping to deepen the story and add moments of sublime levity that punctuates the narrative flow in a really nice way. All around the positive vibes we all need.

Short Review!

Sorry, had to make this much longer in order to post here.

This is Really, interesting in the inspirational sense.

As an FYI- There is 1 hour (ie deep not a soundbite) podcast interview with producer Travon Free available Larry Wilmore Black on the Air 19 Oct 2022.

It is over an hour so not a simple soudbyte, but a deep conversation about why and how this was /is so important culturally speaking.

It really stimulated conversation with the class in a non basketball playing country!! Bringing up issues such as the 'cognitive blind spot', where we unknowingly can delude ourselves and strip humanity away from 'the other' and ourselves, by ignoring the EVIDENCE right in front of our eyes as in Lin killing it a school, county and state level AND YET is not offered a single scholarship!

Listen to the podcast and then Watch the documentary, and enjoy deep reflective conversations.

I love sports documentaries more than watching sports. So many good stories out there about how someone beat the odds. This story is a perfect example. Incredibly inspiring thing to witness. It makes you want to get to work on things. It's also a prefect example of preaching and victimization. I remember right when this story broke and reading about it. I don't recall one single thing about race and soon i became a fan before seeing the guy play. Was i surprised, sure. Did i or anyone else care, no. But the way the story is told here, is not how I remembered it. Took a perfectly good story and made it about something else.