Why We Should Believe NY Knicks Hid Jeremy Lin's Injury to Sell Tickets

If you believe Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, he would lead you to think that the New York Knicks purposely withheld information on point guard Jeremy Lin's knee injury in order to profit from selling tickets for the postseason.

Isola's more than likely right on target with his latest column as it only makes sense for the franchise to want to profit off of a season which happens to be their best in recent memory.

This season also represents the Knicks' best chance to make a playoff run in over a decade. It's logical that they want to maximize ticket sells for the postseason.

Basically, Isola looks at the fact that New York's medical staff had the results of Lin's MRI several days ahead of last Wednesday, which turned out to be an important day at the box office for the Knicks.

March 28th represented the deadline for season-ticket holders to purchase tickets for all four rounds of the postseason. There was no way the Knicks were going to release information on Lin, considering that he's a cash cow at the box office.

By no means am I condoning what the franchise did, I'm only saying the accusations are quite believable.

After all, basketball is a business and like any business the goal is to make money. Especially in New York, where the Knicks have cashed in off of Lin's popularity.

Isola also points out that the Knicks learned that Lin had a torn meniscus and wouldn't be playing anytime soon. Yet they withheld the information to capitalize on ticket sales.

He also goes on to say:

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Although Lin waited until Saturday before formally making the decision to have surgery, it certainly made business sense for the organization to withhold medical information about its marquee attraction. But that doesn’t explain why the Knicks, who are 2½ games ahead of Milwaukee for the eighth and final playoff spot with 13 games left, weren’t forthcoming about Lin's condition after Wednesday’s postseason ticket deadline passed.

Nor does it explain why the Knicks contradicted interim head coach Mike Woodson, who first raised the possibility of Lin’s “sore” knee injury being serious enough to keep the Knicks’ starting point guard sidelined for the remainder of the regular season.

It’s not every day that an organization goes out of its way to refute something its head coach says — when in fact Woodson was simply being truthful. On Friday in Atlanta, Woodson told reporters that he didn’t know “when” or “if” Lin would return to the lineup. Within one hour, the Knicks’ media relations staff released a statement to select media outlets contradicting Woodson.

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It certainly doesn't paint a nice picture about how they conducted themselves during the week leading up to the deadline to purchase tickets, but no one should be surprised.

It's all about money. Always has been and always will be.

Did they use poor judgement in withholding the information from their fanbase? Absolutely.

Did they commit a major crime in the process? Not really.

It's just bad judgement and a bad decision. Once they hopefully re-sign Lin and continue to cash in off his popularity as well as the success of the franchise, hopefully they won't resort to doing anything along these lines again.

They likely aren't the only franchise that would have done what they did. It's just the nature of the beast and the nature of doing business.