Whole new ball game for plucky underdog Lin

SIDELINE CUT:There is something magical about the tale of the unassuming Asian-American whose rapid rise to prominence with the New York Knicks has caused a sensation in the NBA, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IT IS NOT often that an economics graduate from Harvard is cast in the role of one of life’s plucky underdogs. But one of the fascinations of the fabulous rise of Jeremy Lin, who in less than two weeks has gone from unheralded nobody in the NBA’s Development League to the toast of New York Knicks basketball, is that as well as being a triumph for Asian-Americans, Lin represents the ultimate Revenge of the Nerd.

Lin doesn’t look like an NBA player, which is not to say that he is unathletic but in a league dominated by supremely strong, tall, lightning fast and mostly black ball players, he stands out. He is a scrawny 6ft 3in and the first few times he wandered up and down the court in Madison Square Garden, it wouldn’t have been all that surprising if he had produced a pair of spectacles so he could see his team-mates better. As Lin said, when he first showed up at Madison Square Garden, having been plucked from the Knicks’s feeder team because of an injury crisis, the security guards wanted to know if he was a trainer.

He has answered them emphatically. After a couple of cameo roles in his first few games, Lin exploded since being chosen on the starting five, posting 28 points against Utah and then 23 points against Washington.

He returned to a rampantly expectant crowd at Madison Square Garden and delivered a whopping 38 points against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. He did what the big names are paid tens of millions of dollars to do: he made the building shake in a way it hadn’t done for years.

Just like that, Lin owned the city.

Less than a fortnight before, he had been sleeping on the sofa in his brother’s apartment, waiting to hear the Knicks had cut him from their books. Although the Knicks are one of the establishment teams in the league, their record has been moribund: no NBA title since 1973, a travesty for a home support that prides itself on being the most “educated” in basketball knowledge. Lin has transformed just another season of disappointment into something special. It wasn’t simply the numbers that Lin posted which excited everyone, it was his chutzpah.

Statistics, form, background – all the odds and empirical evidence suggested Lin should not be on the floor. He looked as if he was living out some universal male fantasy, as if he had been literally plucked from the seats where he was eating popcorn and thrust into the middle of the game to run the show for the superstars.

After all, Lin’s basketball story has been one of proving doubters wrong. He graduated from high school in California but no college believed he could raise his game to the next level. He scraped into Harvard’s basketball programme but left the college with no offer from the NBA. That was hardly surprising; no Harvard man had made it to the NBA since Jim Smith did so back in 1954. And basketball was a different game then, whiter and slower.

So for Lin to more or less walk from the street into one of most storied basketball teams in the world and to take over as he had done has left the sports world reeling.

The superlatives – with “Linsanity” already beginning to grate – came thick and fast and Lin has become an instant hero for the Asian-American community. This was the son of Taiwanese immigrants thrilling Spike Lee and Woody Allen and all the other habitués of the Garden. By the time the Knicks played their next game in Toronto on Valentine’s night, the entire basketball world was agog to see what he would do next. Not to disappoint, the score was tied at 87-87 with the last 10 seconds counting down and looked set for a period of overtime. Lin held the ball at the top of the court, kept one eye on the clock, dictated his multimillion-dollar team-mates hither and thither so he could clear the court for a one-on-one against his marker, took two dribbles and fired a three-point shot to win the game and then trotted off the court as if this was all part of the masterplan.

At that moment, the possibility that Lin had engaged in a Faustian pact must have crossed many minds. But aside from economics and basketball, faith is his other big interest. He has spoken of one day becoming a pastor, once he has finished tearing up the blueprint for who can and can’t play in the NBA.

Already the question has been asked as to why basketball scouts, whose job it is not to let potential fall through the cracks, could pass on this player at high school, college and professional level. But when you see Lin play, it is easy to understand why. Sometimes he just looks delicate out there. He thrives on oblique rather than obvious skills.

He has exceptional court vision and uses a brilliantly unorthodox series of fakes and stutter-steps to blow by quicker defenders. When he drives to the basket, he looks as if he is about to lose his balance, which makes it impossible for the defender to read. It is too early to say whether this is going to become his patented move or whether he really is on the verge of losing his balance a lot. But he has this preternatural calm and, as old-school coaches like Hubie Brown have been rhapsodising, he has a great “head” for the game (as you’d expect from a Harvard man).

And everyone from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin has been disarmed by Lin’s enthusiasm and energy and by the fact he is clearly having the time of his life. (Everyone, that is, except Lloyd Mayweather, who sulkily pointed out on Twitter that plenty of black point guards post numbers like Lin with no hue and cry.)

Mayweather’s opinion provoked a flurry of counterpunches even he could not elude. But Mayweather’s point, though clumsily put, has substance. As it is, Lin didn’t quite come from nowhere. He was among the highest-scoring high-school players in California but nobody could see him making the next step.

After scraping into Harvard’s basketball scholarship programme, he became a serial scorer and a cult hero. But afterwards, nobody could see him fitting in as an NBA player.

Now he has made it happen. As of last night, the Knicks had won seven straight games since Lin started. When he hit his game-winning shot against Toronto Raptors, the LA Lakers were watching in an airport lounge and after the basket went in one of their party, Word Peace ran around screaming “Linsanity”.

On one level this could be interpreted as being condescending. But on another, it takes something special for any NBA player to drop the mask of affected boredom they all wear. Lin has done that.

Can it last? There were signs, even as Lin eclipsed Kobe Bryant in Madison Square Garden, that the Lakers star was tolerating the night at best. At times he seemed to regard the new darling as he might a rag on his manicured fingernails. Afterwards, Bryant was generous in his praise and made the sensible point that Lin clearly had possessed fundamental basketball skills all along, it was just that they went unnoticed.

One quality that is not illusory is his toughness. Just to get this far, he had to be steely in his self-belief. Now, once the adrenaline rush of being thrust into the spotlight wears off and he has one or two nights were the shots won’t drop and when big-name guards give him their full attention and, most importantly, when the speed and pressure and attrition of the play-offs elevate the game to a new level, Lin will have to prove himself all over again.

It could well be that Lin is out there on the tightrope and just hasn’t looked down yet. When he does, the fall could be as swift as the rise. But there is still something magical about the story of an Everyman-type ball player coming from nowhere in the middle of an NBA season and mixing it with the superstars. It simply shouldn’t happen. It is enough to deceive other ball players who were just that step too slow or inch too short from thinking: that could have been me.

But, of course, it never could. What Jeremy Lin has done simply doesn’t happen.