Jeremy Lin, Lakers Learn About Themselves and Each Other Amid Lost Season

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — We want things to happen immediately.

Rarely do they.

Given his resume, Jeremy Lin is unabashed about his belief in fateful twists and miraculously fast turns.

"If anyone knows that, I know that," he said Tuesday. "Things can change overnight."

Except they almost never really do.

And that's the lasting takeaway from the 2014-15 Los Angeles Lakers season that started slowly and now ends in inconsequence.

Lin really wanted this to work, entering this season with one of the most unstable career paths in sports history. And in search of feel-good stories in an unquestionably dry spell for the franchise, the Lakers hoped bringing Lin back to his birthplace would spark the sort of special stuff we all know he's had in the past.

Instead, Lin was downright disappointing night after night early in the season. He was unnerved by Lakers coach Byron Scott's lack of belief in his game and discouraged by the rising negativity all around him.

On Tuesday, Lin didn't close the door completely on re-signing with the Lakers this summer, but he's back where he was before as a basketball nomad, still searching for a place in the NBA that feels really right.

He said his goal in free agency will be to find "the best place that I can fit in." About the Lakers, Lin did his best to accent the positive in saying, "I don't know where I'm going to be next year, but never say never. I would definitely keep this open. It's not like this is last resort."

Odds are that it'll go down as a mere footnote in Lin's career and the Lakers' annals that their relationship improved after the All-Star break in arguably the franchise's worst season ever.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

It was just too late to recapture the hope that both parties—and Kobe Bryant, who invested a lot of initial effort into tutoring Lin, specifically on mental toughness—brought into the season.

On Jan. 23, the day Bryant's torn right rotator cuff was diagnosed, the Lakers moved quickly toward the future. Scott put rookie point guard Jordan Clarkson in the starting lineup in San Antonio—and handed Lin the indignity of not playing at all despite being healthy.   

Despite some initially embarrassing late-game missteps, Clarkson ran with the abundant opportunities. He is likely to beat out fifth-overall-pick Dante Exum of the Utah Jazz and sixth-overall-pick Marcus Smart, the point guard the Boston Celtics drafted over Julius Randle, for a spot on the All-Rookie first team chosen by the media.

What Clarkson has done is arrive pretty fast. But in other ways it hasn't.

He's 22, far older than the average NBA rookie.

Lakers scouting directors Jesse Buss and Ryan West watched Clarkson play time after time at Missouri to become such ardent believers in him that the Lakers basically spent the first half of the second round trying to trade or buy a pick to get him. (Eventually, the Lakers paid the Wizards $1.8 million for their 46th overall pick to get Clarkson—even more money than the $1.1 million the Nets paid the Timberwolves for their 44th pick to draft Markel Brown.)

After all that internal draft-night euphoria over landing Clarkson in June—and Clarkson showcasing his athletic ability at the NBA Summer League—he was a non-factor upon starting his Lakers career.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

And in a team sense, the Lakers were the league's fourth-worst team that night in San Antonio, and they remain so, even with all the growth Clarkson has displayed.

Growth takes time; despite the fact that Nick Young told reporters on Tuesday the Lakers need to "let this season go," that "this season never happened."

The point for the Lakers, as general manager Mitch Kupchak has tried to preach as often as he thinks Lakers fans are willing to hear it, is that this business requires waiting.

The Lakers have gone from Kobe and Shaquille O'Neal winning…to Kobe and Pau Gasol winning…to Kobe and Chris Paul getting vetoed…to Kobe and Pau and Dwight Howard and Steve Nash falling apart.

Lakers fans, with their cymbals so regularly crashing and dominating the NBA orchestra, are understandably not accustomed to being patient.

In a sense, though, Lin's struggles with Scott, Bryant and everyone else here to begin this season were not dissimilar to what happened to that Kobe-Pau-Dwight-Nash mix that started and stayed sour despite everyone's best expectations.

Sometimes there just isn't more than one season to try.

Lin expected things to click better at the start of this season, but it wasn't until he took time away to recharge with family and friends (and laugh about non-basketball stuff instead of stew over how few pick-and-rolls Scott was running) that progress came.

"I care very, very much about my job," Lin said, "and it hurt.

"When you're in it and you're trying to figure everything out and you're trying so hard every day, sometimes the best thing to do is actually not to try and just to get away a little bit."

That's what Lin has learned as his hard feelings toward Scott have softened. They're not soft as Charmin, to reference Kobe's description, but there really is a part of Lin that would be interested to see if he and Scott could build off the peace they did strike.

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

Yes, Scott did stiff-arm Lin, who never even got to practice on the same team as Bryant early in the season despite Steve Nash showing early on he wasn't up for full-time, or eventually any, duty. Scott favored Ronnie Price and Wayne Ellington, two journeymen guards who were willing to do their best at whatever Scott asked of them, guys who were resilient professionals.

And Lin, 26, learned something through what looked so unfair at first.

"In a five-year career, I've really only played three-and-a-half years," Lin said. "There's just so much more to learn. This is my first year in a different system. And now I know: I've been through it. I've seen it. I've come off the bench; I've started. I've not played at all; I've played almost every minute of the game.

"So I've had a wide array of experiences. And now I want to be able to make sure I evolve my game to be someone who's not contingent on anything other than me impacting the game. That's my goal."

Lin now appreciates that Scott has a point about being able to wear hats of varied styles for the team's greater good from night to night, calling it his "next challenge."

And on the flip side, Scott came to understand Lin a little better. It took time, but even as Scott was focused on developing Clarkson, Lin proved his physical toughness to the coach.

None of it will matter if the Lakers sign Rajon Rondo or someone else to be their point guard this summer. And maybe Mike D'Antoni signs up to coach the Denver Nuggets, they dump talented but knuckleheaded Ty Lawson and sign Lin to run spread-floor pick-and-rolls over and over until the opponents run out of oxygen in that altitude and D'Antoni's mustache curls up in glee.

If those transactions happen, everyone will expect the new marriages to click right away for instant gratification.

Lin will know better.

"Linsanity" was so brilliant because it was so rare.

It's not often we get to see something work as immediately and amazingly as it did for Lin in New York in 2012. We certainly didn't see it for Lin in L.A. in 2014-15.

Instead, we got a reality check.

Most things in life test our patience.

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.