Jeremy Lin returned to Madison Square Garden Thursday night, dropped 21 points and the Houston Rockets defeated his old team 109 – 106.
Then later that night, according to a story originally published on Deadspin, ESPN was offering an apology for a reference to Lin as “cooking with some hot peanut oil.”
The incident with ESPN anchor Jorge Andres went like this:
“Jeremy Lin coming into tonight’s game with back to back 30 point games for the first time in his career. He was cooking with some hot peanut oil.”
That apparently caught the attention of management at ESPN, because Mediaite reports Jorge didn’t waste any time apologizing.
“Earlier in this show I made a comment about a Jeremy Lin basket that I should not have made. This was clearly a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize. I’m very very sorry for offending anyone. That was never my intention.”
The comment came from the same network that used the infamous “Chink in the armor ” headline on its mobile coverage, after which copy editor Max Bretos was fired.
It was perhaps that history at ESPN that made the network extremely sensitive to the issue.
You can watch Jorge’s comment and the apology on Deadspin.
