Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Before Jeremy Lin went viral on Feb. 10 by lighting up Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers for 38 points, one Hilo native was ahead of the Linsanity curve.
Ryan Higa, the YouTube sensation with more than 5 million subscribers and 1.1 billion hits to his online comedy videos, actually appeared with the newly famous New York Knicks point guard in a pair of videos posted last November.
“I met him about a year ago through email through one of his friends who helps him with business,” the 21-year-old Higa told the Tribune-Herald from Las Vegas, where he now lives. “He’d seen some of my videos before and I knew (of) him from when he first got into the league. … We just kept in touch.”
The 6-foot-3 Lin is the quintessential underdog. The 23-year-old son of Taiwanese immigrants was a prep hoops star at Palo Alto (Calif.) High School, mere minutes away from Stanford University, and Lin dreamed of donning the Cardinal red. The feeling, however, wasn’t mutual. He also went undrafted by the NBA after graduating from Harvard in 2010. As a free agent, Lin signed on with the Golden State Warriors, appearing in 29 games, all in reserve, averaging 2.6 points and 1.4 assists in 9.8 minutes playing time per game. While those statistics may seem underwhelming, he had a better than 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, a number any smart coach will gladly accept from a point guard.
Lin persevered through 10-day contracts, roster cuts by both the Warriors and Houston Rockets and overnight bus rides in the NBA’s Developmental League until an elbow infection sidelined the Knicks’ Baron Davis and paved the way for Lin to become Broadway’s newest star.
The NBA lockout earlier this season is also a part of this Linderella story, as it was then that he and Higa hooked up for a video titled “Daily Life of a Basketballer.”
“He had a day off from his workouts and came to shoot with me in Vegas,” Higa said. “Since he was already there, he told me about his video idea. So I basically filmed my parts and he put it all together.”
That video, on Lin’s YouTube channel, is called “How to Get into Harvard.” In it, Lin portrays a bespectacled and bow-tied, albeit athletic Ivy League nerd, and Higa, his overly eager protégé.
“He likes comedy and he’s a funny guy,” Higa said. “A lot of people don’t know that about him. He’s very modest and shy in interviews and it doesn’t show as much of his comedy as shows on YouTube.”
Higa, who won a 135-pound state wrestling title at Waiakea High, called the path Lin is blazing as an Asian-American in the NBA “just another gigantic step toward equality in the entertainment industry.”
“I’m actually not surprised, because I really was just waiting for him to get his shot. I knew how good he was,” he said.
Higa said he and Lin continue to keep in touch.
“We text each other almost every day,” he said.
Currently on hiatus from film school at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Higa and YouTube partner Sean Fujiyoshi made a feature film in 2008 titled “Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure.” He originally majored in nuclear medicine because his parents found his entertainment dreams impractical, although he adds: “They’ve always wanted what’s best for me.”
Higa is preparing for a six-city West Coast tour in March with some friends who sing and dance. He and fellow YouTube phenom KevJumba are the emcees. They’ve already premiered the show, called YTF, in a sold-out performance at Honolulu’s Hawaii Theatre.
“YTF stands for ‘Yesterday, Today, Forever’ and what that means is that we’ve all been told that we are not good enough to be in the industry that we’re in, whether a singer or dancer or even in YouTube entertainment or film,” Higa explained. “… Well, yesterday’s a thing of the past. Today and forever is a choice and we can do what needs to be done.”
Not good enough? That sounds like the previous professional assessment of a certain ball hawk who was waived by two NBA teams before hooping it up in the Big Apple.
“Even at Golden State, nobody gave him a chance, and that’s his hometown,” Higa said. “People loved him there. In Houston, they cut him. It’s so great that he got his chance and he was able to capitalize on it. You look at the videos of him at Harvard and he’s dominating. It’s undeniable. But people said ‘you’re not really a baller.’ Nobody gave him a chance.
“He’s breaking barriers and opening eyes right now.”
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.