On Wednesday night, basketball star Jeremy Lin spoke out about the recent attacks on Asian Americans and opened up about his personal experiences with racism on the court.

Lin, who grew up in Palo Alto and once played for the Golden State Warriors, is now playing for the Santa Cruz Warriors in the NBA G league. Officials with the league are looking into his claim that he was called “coronavirus” during a game.

The basketball star stated that he wants to promote the message of empathy, love and compassion. He has chosen not to call out the player who made the offensive comment on the court.

“From my standpoint, it does no good to bring somebody down, when what I’m trying to do is uplift the people that need to be and to bring awareness to the things that need to be brought,” said Lin.

When asked when he first became conscious of racism, Lin stated, “I never really thought that much about it until I would say I started to play really competitively, and I started to play outside of the Northern California bubble.”

The 32-year-old said when he played at Harvard, he was called a racial slur.

“Yeah, multiple times, and even in certain arenas, talking about my eyes, talking about different stereotypes, talking about going back to China, things like that, and I’ve never named the person,” he said.

He says the longstanding problem of anti-Asian racism was exposed during the pandemic.