Even though I am thousands of miles away from the United States, the phenomenon called Linsanity was still big enough for me to recognize it even in Thailand. A journeyman point guard bouncing from team to team, who had been an undrafted free agent out of Harvard (hardly a basketball power) suddenly showed himself to be a star of immense talent and ability for a New York Knicks team that had struggled to remain relevant in the bright lights at Madison Square Garden. Even if you were not a fan of the Knicks, it was impressive to see Jeremy Lin in action, or even to read about it.

Even though an injury derailed his rookie year and left him unable to help the Knicks out in the playoffs, there were expectations among New York Knicks fans that he could be the start of a turnaround for the snakebit franchise. That was not the case, though. Knicks owner Dolan decided not to make an offer for Lin, inviting him to test the waters and see how much he was worth to the rest of the NBA, thinking that he could easily match whatever offer that Lin received. Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case. Lin took the opportunity to test the waters of free agency seriously, and received an attractive contract from Houston, the team that had waived him earlier last season, not realizing what they had.

It is at this point where some of the true nature of the dysfunction of the New York Knicks, and other teams and institutions that behave like them, became more evident. It is understandable if the Knicks would have made a decision not to match the Rocks offer for reasons of dollars and cents. It is certainly possible that the Rockets are overpaying for a player with less than a season worth of NBA experience and with knee injury concerns. But it appears that the Knicks main issue with the Lin deal with Houston was a feeling of betrayal, which makes no sense at all from a rational standpoint. If you tell someone to test their value on the market, and refuse to give them a deal, and they find out their market value is more than you are willing to pay, that is not betrayal, but rather sharp business practices. If you want someone you have to be willing to make an effort to keep them happy or have the grace to wish them happiness somewhere else.

Let us not think that the New York Knicks are the only institution that has this problem. It is hard to understand how we should value others in our lives, no matter our situation. I would like to think that most people are not very mercenarial (I know that I am not) and would be happy to accept a hometown discount in order to maintain stability and be with people that they love and care about in a situation where they feel comfortable. But we must be consistent with our message. Either we have to be willing to show and tell others how much we appreciate them or we cannot be bent out of shape when someone makes them an offer that they cannot refuse and we are faced with the problem of having to let them go.

This is the fault that lies in the Knicks and other institutions (and people) who behave likewise. Unless we genuinely care about other people, we cannot let business get personal to us. We cannot profit off of and take advantage of other people and then be bent out of shape when they choose to look after their own best interests and conclude that we are not meeting them. If we really care about others, we have to show them in a way that they recognize that we appreciate them, rather than simply show through our hurt feelings when it is far too late to keep what we want. The Knicks serve as a good object lesson that if we want to keep something we have to show them that we care, because it is far easier to keep what we have than it is to build trusting relationships from scratch. Let us all profit from the lesson.