Jeremy Lin is going through the cycles of grief after re-injuring his hamstring — a third injury to the same leg. As we wrote when Lin’s first hamstring injury occurred, the hamstring injury is like a trap for an aggressive athlete. And perhaps no athlete was a better target for the devious hamstring trap than Jeremy Lin, arriving in Brooklyn with a big contract and a chance to finally prove himself as a starter. Writing about his frustration with his third injury, Lin was careful to head off accusations that he rushed back from his injury. Lin claimed he “checked every single check box” before returning and “progressed carefully through” rehab. But Lin was in a hurry — it’s only natural. He was careful, no doubt, but by his own admission he was impatient to get on the floor.
The devout Lin admits that sometimes he feels so defeated, “I want to yell at God in frustration.” Why now, he asks? “Why not when I was a backup point guard the last four years?” Lin says that despite his training and regaining his confidence (who knew? he looked pretty confident in Charlotte), he sees this as a “year of my prime down the drain.” Lin has plenty of prime left. But the hamstring injury must be respected. As Chris Erskine of the LA Times said last year when Chris Paul injured his, “an athlete would almost be better off breaking a bone than yanking a hamstring.”
“A Columbia University study showed that the re-injury risk on hamstring injuries can reach 31%. In the study, which focused on Major League Baseball, a reported 25% of those injuring hamstrings were out of action for “1 month or longer.” The biggest problem with hamstring injuries is they tend to turn chronic, especially if the athlete returns too early — a temptation Lin will need discipline to avoid.”
