Former National Basketball Association guard Jeremy Lin, the first Asian-American to win an NBA title, pledged up to US$1 million to coronavirus relief efforts on Monday.

The 31-year-old, whose 2012 heroics for the New York Knicks were dubbed "Linsanity", will donate US$500,000 and said he would also match all donations up to an additional US$500,000.

Lin, who now plays for Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association after winning the 2019 NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors, last month tore into US President Donald Trump for "empowering" racism by calling the COVID-19 a Chinese disease.

The novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, in December before spreading across the world as a pandemic, with the United States increasingly hard hit.

Lin on Monday returned to the same theme on The Players' Tribune website in a first-person piece titled "The Darkness Has Not Overcome It."

"One simple way to be the light is to support organizations doing crucial work during the crisis," Lin wrote in making his pledge.

"You know, my whole life, I’ve been treated a certain way because I’m Asian," Lin added, mentioning some of the racial stereotypes he has been subjected to.

"I’ve even been asked if I can see. I’ve been told to go back to where I came from.

"During the height of 'Linsanity' I was still the butt of many Asian jokes ... It was just words.

"But over the last few weeks, as the tension and anxiety in the US has gone through the roof, we’re seeing that there’s a real darkness beneath the words. It's not just trash talking or trolling or hateful speech."

Media in the US have reported a surge in verbal and physical assaults on Asian-Americans following the COVID-19 outbreak.

Lin, in Beijing awaiting the restart of the CBA season after the health emergency eased in China, urged people all over the world, irrespective of race or country, to pull together.

"Truth is, we have it in us to be the light, because there are already millions choosing to be the light every day," Lin wrote.

"No one knows how devastating the impact of this crisis will be, but the projections aren’t good.

"We’re going to be recovering from this for a long time. But in the process, there will be so, so many opportunities to choose light."

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