Jeremy Lin retired from professional basketball on 31 August 2025 and now works as an ESPN analyst. He announced the decision on Instagram at 37, after 15 seasons across the NBA, China and Taiwan. ESPN hired him in October 2026 for NBA Today and game coverage.
What Jeremy Lin Is Doing Now
As of 3 November 2026, Lin is a television analyst, a pickleball team owner and a retired player with his jersey hanging in a Taiwanese arena.
ESPN announced on 15 October 2026 that he would join as a contributor to NBA Today and as a game analyst for the 2026-27 season, alongside Jason Kidd. It confirmed a role he had been auditioning for in public: earlier in 2026 he worked as a guest analyst on ESPN’s coverage of the NBA Finals and the Summer League. Lin greeted the hiring with the line “no longer unemployed”, and has said he wants broadcasting to be a long-term career rather than a retirement hobby.
Away from the booth he is a co-owner of the Bay Area Breakers in Major League Pickleball, having joined the team’s ownership group in 2023 while still playing. He has described pickleball as a source of real enjoyment since retiring, and a charity exhibition he played against the former tennis professional Michael Chang raised more than $30,000 for the Jeremy Lin Foundation and a pickleball charity.
Why Did Jeremy Lin Never Play in the NBA Again After 2019?
No NBA team offered him a contract after he won the championship with Toronto, so he went abroad rather than choosing to leave.
Lin signed with the Raptors in February 2019 and won the title that June, becoming the first Asian American to win an NBA championship. His part in it was small — he played 27 minutes across the entire playoff run — and he entered free agency that summer as a 30-year-old guard coming off a knee injury that had cost him almost all of his second season in Brooklyn.
The offers did not come. Speaking at an event in Taiwan in July 2019, he said the NBA had “kind of given up” on him, and broke down describing how far he felt he had fallen. He was out of the league at 30, one month after collecting a ring.
This is the distinction most coverage blurs. He stopped playing in the NBA in 2019 because nobody signed him. He stopped playing basketball altogether in 2025, by choice, as a reigning champion and league MVP in Taiwan.
The Six Years Between His Last NBA Game and Retirement
Lin spent those years winning in Asia, which is the part of his career that rarely gets written up.
He joined the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association in 2019 and was an All-Star there, averaging 22.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.6 assists across 39 games in the 2019-20 season — comfortably the most productive stretch of his professional life. He played on in China through 2022.
In 2023 he signed with the New Taipei Kings in Taiwan, his parents’ homeland, and the final chapter was the best one. He won the P.League+ championship in 2024, then the Taiwan Professional Basketball League title in 2025 after a seven-game final against the Kaohsiung Aquas. It was the franchise’s first TPBL championship, and he was named both the league’s regular-season Most Valuable Player in June and the Finals MVP.
Two months later he retired. In his Instagram message he called it “the hardest decision I’ve ever made”, wrote that athletes always know “the possibility of retirement is never far away”, and described playing as the honour of a lifetime. The Kings said he had shown “true professionalism” and general manager James Mao credited him with a contribution beyond statistics.
The Night Taipei Retired His Number 7
The New Taipei Kings retired Lin’s number 7 on 28 December 2025 at Xinzhuang Gymnasium, in a ceremony titled “Linsanity Forever”.
Thousands of fans attended, and Lin held a separate appreciation event for supporters and media in Taipei the same day. For a player whose NBA career ended with no phone calls, the closing image was a sold-out arena in Taiwan raising his number to the roof. Compare that with players who finish in limbo: Lonzo Ball remains unsigned without having retired, and the difference in endings is stark.
What Linsanity Actually Was
Linsanity was a few weeks in February 2012 when an undrafted Harvard graduate became the most talked-about athlete in the world.
Lin went undrafted in 2010 and signed with the Golden State Warriors, and he was on his third organisation by the time New York promoted him to the starting lineup in February 2012. The Knicks won seven straight games with him running the offence. Over that streak he averaged 24.4 points and 9.1 assists.
Two nights defined it. On 10 February 2012 he scored a career-high 38 points in a 92-85 win over the Los Angeles Lakers, outscoring Kobe Bryant at Madison Square Garden. On 14 February he hit a three-pointer with half a second left to beat Toronto 90-87. He won the 2012 ESPY Award for Breakthrough Athlete of the Year.
There was a symmetry to 2026. Lin was back at the Garden in June as a broadcaster, 14 years after the streak, while the Knicks reached their first NBA Finals since 1999 and beat the San Antonio Spurs 4-1 for the franchise’s first championship since 1973.
Did Jeremy Lin Leave the Knicks Over Money?
By his own account, the Knicks never made him an offer to turn down.
Lin signed with the Houston Rockets in July 2012 and New York declined to match, which was read for years as a player chasing the larger cheque. He has said since — first in his 2022 documentary 38 at the Garden, and again in interviews during 2026 — that no New York offer existed, that he would have taken considerably less to stay, and that he was told the Rockets’ terms were final when he asked for them to be reduced so the Knicks could match.
Published accounts of the exact figures involved differ, so they are best left out. What is consistent across his own telling is the sequence: he expected to stay, no offer arrived, and he has never fully put it down. His career after New York ran through six more NBA teams in seven years, a pattern more like other journeyman NBA careers that end quietly than the superstardom February 2012 seemed to promise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Jeremy Lin Still Playing Basketball?
No. He retired on 31 August 2025 and has not signed with any team since.
How Old Is Jeremy Lin?
He was born on 23 August 1988 in Torrance, California, which makes him 38.
What Are Jeremy Lin’s NBA Career Statistics?
Across nine NBA seasons with eight teams he scored 5,567 points, averaging 11.6 points, 4.3 assists and 2.8 rebounds a game.
Did Jeremy Lin Win an NBA Championship?
Yes, with the Toronto Raptors in June 2019, making him the first Asian American champion in league history.
Which Team Retired Jeremy Lin’s Jersey?
The New Taipei Kings, who raised his number 7 in December 2025 after he led them to the 2025 TPBL title as Finals MVP.
Where Can You Watch Jeremy Lin Now?
On ESPN, where he contributes to NBA Today and works as a game analyst during the 2026-27 season.
