Who wrote the best piece on Linsanity?

OK, so this might take you a little bit of time to read through, but I think it'll be fun to examine. There's a mixture of opinion, feature writing and reporting in these pieces, but none of them are so long that they'd automatically blow the other out of the water.

So who did it best in the wake of the Knicks beating the Lakers and Minnesota? Include, in your vote, a bit of reasoning and/or critique for the pieces at hand.

I sure hope folks engage this one. It's a hot topic.

Gregg Doyel, CBS: http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/17241874

Rick Reilly, ESPN: http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7574087/overlooking-jeremy-lin

Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo!: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-wojnarowski_jeremy_lin_knicks_rockets_nba_021412

Jay Caspian Kang, Grantland: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7570431/jeremy-lin

Harvey Araton, NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sports/basketball/the-knicks-jeremy-lin-keeps-his-cool-as-heads-spin-around-him.html?scp=8&sq=jeremy%20lin&st=cse

Jason Whitlock, Fox Sports: http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/Unlike-Denver-Broncos-quarterback-Tim-Tebow-New-York-Knicks-point-guard-Jeremy-Lin-is-real-deal-021412

Mike Lupica, NY Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/jeremy-lin-saga-a-true-american-classic-asian-american-kid-harvard-brought-life-back-ny-knicks-madison-square-garden-article-1.1021601

Pablo S. Torre, Sports Illustrated: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1194909/index.htm

Bruce Arthur, National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/sports/blog.html?b=sports.nationalpost.com/2012/02/14/the-jeremy-lin-story-is-real-magic

 

I've only read the first two. But I can tell you it's not Reilly.

 

Whoever included the fewest plays on words with his last name. So, not Reilly.

 

My vote is for Whitlock column because he cut to core of issue. Lin has done what Amare and Carmelo have failed to do-make The Knicks a better basketball team.

 

OK, from worst to best, in my opinion:

8. Reilly. This read like so much of what Reilly's worst stuff has become: filler to get to what he thinks are one-liners. Just painful to read, so superficial, and no meat to it whatsoever.

7. Kang. It was too long, and it was too "me"-centric for my tastes. I don't need Kang to tell me about him to tell me what he thinks of Lin.

6. Whitlock. Basic principle, but I just can't believe anything I read from him any more. He's the most opportunistic writer out there, and the entire part about "Oh, I had lunch with Dr. Harry Edwards and hip-hop culture is bad and Asian culture is good oh and by the way I'm not at all racist" was just too much. Also, this rang as hollow as anything in recent history: "Writing columns that discomfort the comfortable and defend the vulnerable is far more important to me than being outrageously popular and irreverent on Twitter."

5. Lupica. It was better than Reilly's, but it still could have been so much more. It was straight Lupica, which meant if you had handed that to me with no byline, I could have told you it was his. But the whole basis was a reach, a "sunshine in the sky, ain't America great" feel to me that reminded me of "Summer of '98." Not that I think Lin is on steroids (stop!) but just ... sometime it's not all about how amazing America is and ain't it wonderful how this can happen here. He DOES get points for the stuff from Amaker, which really were my favorite quotes I probably read in any of the pieces.

4. Araton. I'm just not a big fan of the NYT style. I like more punch to my copy (but not Reilly punch). It's good, it's serviceable, but it's dry. And I don't like dry. Also, I'm sure the cross-breeding with the Giants is great for NY, but I really couldn't care less what Justin Tuck thinks about Jeremy Lin.

3. Doyel. I really liked this, and it was the first piece I read. I still really like it, but much like Lupica, you could have handed this to me sans byline and I would have known exactly who wrote it. Unlike Lupica, I don't take that as a negative. This was exactly the piece Doyel needed to write, because he's the one who could carry it off. But his style isn't to use a ton of quotes, it's not to really delve into things ... it's to opine. And he does it well. He does do a good job of working stats and background into his pieces, so I liked that.

2. Torre. I LOVED the lede on this. I know the story's been told plenty of times, and I know it was discussed in different terms on the Jones thread. But I love a good situational lede. I just do. It draws me in, and I thought Torre did a good job of revisiting it at the end, bringing it full circle. I really enjoyed the whole piece, and it read much shorter than it really was. I thought it was very fluid, and very well-written, and informational without being dry. Loved it.

1. Wojnarowski. An admittance: Had you given me the list of authors, I would have guessed I'd like Woj's piece best before I even read them. There's something about his style and his writing I like, even though I don't read much of it because I really couldn't care less about the NBA in general. And just as I loved Torre's lede, I loved this one too. It was an even more original situational lede, and I thought it worked really well. It kind of melded Doyel's take in with some other stuff, with quotes and takes to back up what Doyel wrote.

The thing that impressed me, really, was that these eight people found different angles. It wasn't all "Wow, where'd this kid come from?" We got where he came from, what he did, how he got here, what he's doing now, and why it matters. It was more than I expected.

 

I added a ninth, Bruce Arthur. It will be in the running.

 

Meh. I liked it, and I thought it was interesting, but it was ... tortured. So overwritten, so much schlock.

Really? That's your lede? Meh.

 

Oh, I dunno. I'm guessing, you see the shot Lin made in person, after he'd done everything else in the last week, how the crowd flipped one way and then the other within an hour, I can see getting caught up in it.

The lede is not terrific, though, I agree. Storm isn't the way I'd go with it.

I did not vote for it, but I'd put it in the top half.

 

BTW, this is awesome.

 

She could be one of the could-be columnists under-40[/crossthread]

 

Anyone who uses the term Linsanity should be eliminated.

 

I am under 40! Yay!

And Alma, I'm not saying you wouldn't be caught up in it. But to me, overwriting is always the antithesis of that. Caught up in it means you're going stream of consciousness, writing what you feel. Nothing about that felt pure, or of the moment. It felt like he knew it was big so he TRIED TO MAKE IT REALLY BIG.