Lin's meteoric first week makes history

Bigger than Shaq? Larger than LeBron? The Knicks as NBA champions? Nothing seems too Lin-possible now after Jeremy Lin's incredible first week as an NBA starter. The undrafted player from Harvard made a 3-pointer with five-tenths of a second left on Tuesday to give the Knicks a 90-87 victory at Toronto. The Knicks returned home on Wednesday to host Sacramento, posting their seventh straight victory that got them back to .500 after an 8-15 start. Lin joined the rotation only then, starting the last five games, so hold off on making him a Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal or LeBron James just yet. But the Knicks have seen enough to believe this ride may last a while longer. "I don't know when there's an ending, maybe there won't," coach Mike D'Antoni said. Lin's story has blown straight past the New York sports pages and all their cute headlines like "Va-Lin-tine's Day," all the way to a basketball-crazed continent on the other side of the world, where he's been "kind of like the great Asian hope", said Orin Starn, professor and chair of Cultural Anthropology at Duke. Lin has done wonders for shares of Madison Square Garden Inc, the company that owns the Knicks, the Garden and the namesake sports network. The stock has surged 9 per cent since Lin began his heroics on February 4, reaching an all-time high of $33.18 this week before retreating slightly to close at $31.91 on Wednesday. "Rangers and Knicks fans do tend to buy the stock when the teams are doing well," said Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce. And Linsanity has reached America's most powerful basketball fan, with President Barack Obama talking about Lin's winner on Wednesday. White House spokesman Jay Carney called Lin "just a great story, and the President was saying as much this morning". Lin arrived in New York in December with no guarantee he'd last more than a few weeks. Even an Ivy League education couldn't help him explain what's happened since the most points in any player's first five games as a starter since the NBA merged with the ABA in 1976, and a contract that's guaranteed for the rest of the season. "No, but I believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing God who does miracles," Lin said. The Knicks were 40-1 odds to win the NBA championship on Bovada.lv before Lin's run began. Now, they're down to an 18-1 shot. Not everybody is convinced. Boxer Floyd Mayweather jnr played down Lin mania on Twitter, saying Lin is just doing what plenty of black players do but is getting more attention because of his Asian heritage. And Lin is certain to cool off. It's one thing to beat teams such as the Nets and Wizards when they've barely had time to learn your name. It's another when NBA defences are prepared to stop you. "He's a marked man now, he's not going to sneak up on anybody, and every night's going to be tough," D'Antoni said. Then again, Kobe Bryant had said he wasn't familiar with Lin's game and would have to study him. The next night, Lin burned the Lakers for a career-high 38 points in a nationally televised victory. That was a huge moment in Taiwan, which Lin's parents left in the 1970s. Asia lost its biggest basketball star when Yao Ming retired last summer, but ratings are up in China, and TV stations around the continent have rushed to add Knicks games to their broadcasts. Lin has been gaining followers on social media and had the NBA's top-selling jersey online in the first week it was available. Lin is the NBA's first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent. Starn called his emergence sort of a "coming-out party for Asian-Americans", who he said haven't had a significant presence in entertainment. And certainly not on the basketball court. "I think it is appealing to a lot of Americans when somebody comes along that seems to break out of this set of stereotypes and in this case, an Asian-American from the heart of the Silicon Valley," Starn said. "I think Jeremy Lin has this special kind of attraction because he seems to capture this visibility of Asian-Americans." But Lin will have to have lasting success to be more than just a short-term phenomenon. Yao was beloved because he proved to be a star player here. Yi Jianlian, drafted in 2007 and now with his fourth NBA team, has seen his popularity wane because he isn't a star.