Tuesday, August 5, 2014

China's Internet Servers Buckle in Wake of NBA Jeremy Lin Look-alike Contest

LOS ANGELES — (TYDN) Much of China's and the West Coast's Internet servers were down Tuesday following the debut of a look-alike contest for the Los Angeles Lakers' newest player, Jeremy Lin, TheYellowDailyNews has learned.

The storied Lakers, which picked up the Los Angeles native over the summer in a five-player deal with the Houston Rockets, announced the fan-appreciation contest Tuesday afternoon, urging look-alikes to email their photos in hopes of winning front-row seats.

Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak, left, announces Jeremy Lin Look-alike contest. Photo: TheDailySportsHerald
Moments after the announcement, servers in Asia and the West Coast buckled under the weight of hundreds of millions of simultaneous entries. Renesys, which measures online traffic across the globe, reported that virtually all of China's severs collapsed as did servers in California, from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Mitchell "Mitch" Kupchak, the Lakers' general manager, said he was "absolutely shocked" by the response to the look-alike contest.

"I had no idea so many people thought they looked like Jeremy Lin," Kupchak said in an exclusive interview with TheYellowDailyNews.

The Lakers promptly abandoned the contest in a bid to undo the damage, which also affected hundreds of millions of Google's Gmail users.

Several well-placed NBA sources, speaking to TheYellowDailyNews on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said Commissioner Adam Silver was considering ordering the sale of the Lakers to punish the team.

A Lakers sale would be the second NBA team Silver ordered sold this year following the pending sale of the Los Angeles Clippers. That transaction, valued at $2 billion, is in response to Clippers owner Donald Sterling's recorded racist comments, which sparked outrage from fans, players and NBA executives.

See Also: