But I have a personal connection to the newly crowned King of New York – when he was in Shanghai last summer, visiting his ancestral home of Pinghu, I was lucky enough to be the NBA staffer assigned to look after him and his family that weekend.

It’s difficult to really gauge someone’s personality whom you’ve only met through limited exposure – and NBA players doubly so. But based on my limited exposure to him, he’s got a really good head on his shoulders, works really hard and regardless if he continues to put up dominating NBA numbers or normalize into a regular NBA player, he’s got the right mentality for it.

The other thing I thought was interesting is just how normal a kid he really was. Instead of it feeling like a work/player babysitting assignment, it felt like my mom called me up and asked me to take some friends of hers out in Shanghai. One quick anecdote, when we were walking along the Pudong side of the Pujiang River, Jeremy and his little brother Joseph bought some lasers being sold by the tourist vendors. And in the car on the way back to their hotel, they were shining the lasers all around and at buildings and other cars and their mom went “Jeremy! Joesph! Stop shining lasers!”

Here’s some photos from a photo shoot Jeremy did with Inside Stuff magazine – obviously the Harvard and basketball story resonated very deeply with the Chinese media.

I hope the Linsanity continues!

here dwight howard and paul pierce fight tooth and nail for a rebound

spotted on wednesday on nanjing west road in shanghai – dwight howard and paul pierce feeling each other up.

unfortunately, the knicks opponent that night was the preinially woeful charlotte bobcats, but after 2 years without any live nba basketball, it was great to go to a game in person.

i will say this, knicks fans really know their basketball (as a contrast to rockets fans or lakers/clippers fans). in fact, i’d say that the warrior fans and knicks fans were the most basketball knowledgable crowds i’ve ever been priviliaged enough to watch a game with.

the second most notable thing was their love for danilo gallenari – everyone was shouting “shoot it gallo!” everytime the italian forward had it behind the arc. it was an arena wide man-crush. he obliged with two key 3 pointers down the stretch as the knicks prevailed over the bobcats.

chauncey was there to interact with fans and to talk about his new shoe, the ts cut creator

chauncey's kicks

before the meet and greet:

i didn’t really get a chance to talk with chauncey – or even hear him talk about his shoes and his upcoming season, but he’s a good guy and a great player, so good luck to him in the upcoming season – except for when he plays the rockets.

special shout out to the haibao in the photo, andrew p.!