A Pac-10 Coach Called Jeremy Lin By A Porn Star’s Name While Recruiting Him

Thanks to a new cover story on James Harden and Jeremy Lin, we now know that before Lin became the most popular player on the planet for a three-week stretch last February, a Pac-10 coach once called him the name of a porn star on accident for a whole recruiting trip. Times have changed.

ESPN The Magazine‘s interview with Harden and Lin, to see what the two knew about each other, brought up this hilarious nugget about how mistaken a coach was.

True or false? An assistant coach called Jeremy the wrong name during a recruiting trip to a Pac-10 team.

HARDEN: TRUE.

ESPN: Jeremy?

LIN: A coach called me … uh, he called me Ron Jeremy. I kid you not. I said, I am not coming to this school …

HARDEN: Ron Jeremy! [Hysterical …] That … has never happened to me. [Both laughing …]

So what school may have made the mistake between the porn star and the no-star high school recruit? According to Lin’s Scout.com recruiting profile, he visited Stanford on Jan. 26, 2006, the only school he visited.

A New York Times feature on Lin’s college choices last winter reported that he had discussed walking on with UCLA, California and Stanford, but that only the Cardinal had serious interest. The Golden Bears wouldn’t have been far from Palo Alto, so he could have visited the Berkeley campus with coaches at some point, too.

Will the coach involved fess up? Doubtful. Did he ever realize he made the mistake in the first place? We might never know. Is this hilarious even without knowing those two answers? Absolutely.

Here’s the rest of the interview.

H/t Ultimate Rockets

What do you think of the mix-up?

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