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Late Tuesday night, in his inaugural hour as a Rocket, Lin opened up to SI.com about how the most popular basketball player in New York City ended up in Houston, where he'll have his official team physical on Wednesday. He spoke about how Knicks management -- which had spoken to him and his representatives only once this month before that call from Grunwald -- finally let him go.
"Honestly, I preferred New York," Lin said. "But my main goal in free agency was to go to a team that had plans for me and wanted me. I wanted to have fun playing basketball. ... Now I'm definitely relieved."
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The process began in late June, when Knicks coach Mike Woodson, who was in Los Angeles visiting Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler and Landry Fields, contacted Lin to arrange a meeting to discuss his future. When Woodson said that his schedule prevented him from coming to Palo Alto, Lin -- who has been living with his parents this summer -- wound up flying to L.A. That night, over dinner at Mastro's Steakhouse in Beverly Hills, the guard was sold. "Woodson was saying, 'You're going to be a starter, you're going to be a big part of the team,'" Lin said. "I came away really excited."
ROSENBERG: Did the Knicks let Lin go for wrong reasons?
But the next week, on July 1, the first day of the NBA's free agency period, the Knicks informed Lin and his agents, Jim Tanner and Roger Montgomery, that while the team had interest in bringing Lin back, they were also going to court other point guards to join him. The names of four candidates were provided. Three of them were veteran free agents, all age 36 or older: Steve Nash, Jason Kidd and Andre Miller. The fourth was former Knick Raymond Felton, 28, who played for the Trail Blazers last season.
The Knicks would not make a formal offer to Lin -- not then, or, ultimately, ever -- instead opting to steer him toward the open market so he could assess his own price. Serious conversations with three teams other than the Knicks began. Only Houston, which had already cut the Harvard economics major last December, warranted a visit, on July 4. "The Rockets kept saying how sorry they were that that they'd cut him, and how much of a mistake it was," Tanner said. "They almost said it too many times. They kept acknowledging it."
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