Jeremy Lin's First Start: Huge Night for the Knicks (Video)

by NowPublic Staff | February 8, 2012 at 08:25 am

298 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Jeremy Lin Scores 28 Points in 1st NBA Start

Jeremy Lin is a (nearly) overnight hero for Knicks fans. In his first NBA start, Jeremy Lin (#7) scored 28 points and offered eight assists, the first time that has happened in 30 years.

This was Jeremy Lin's first start for the Knicks: Amar'e Stoudemire will be missing several games to mourn the death of his brother, who was killed in a car accident on February 6.

The Knicks beat the New Jersey Nets 99-92.

Let Linsanity Commence

Jeremy Lin, a 23-year-old point guard from Harvard, is also making waves in Asia: his rise to prominence will open new broadcast markets for the Knicks in the far East, and Jeremy Lin's name became a hot search item on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.

The biggest Asian star since Yao Ming, Jeremy Lin is the first-ever American-born Asian to join the NBA. He's also only the second Harvard grad to make the NBA.

Sure, there's a lot of internet hype, which we must take with a grain of salt: anything remotely amazing online becomes the best thing in the history of the universe, at least for a few minutes:

Lin won a state championship as a senior high school and broke all kinds of Ivy League records at Harvard, but he wasn’t drafted by a single NBA team, sat on the bench last year as a rookie for the Golden State Warriors, was cut by both Golden State and Houston before this season, and was playing in the NBA’s developmental league just two months ago. He’s had two great games against two bad teams, and once the league figures him out, he could easily become old news as quickly as he became the news

However, Jeremy Lin's performance last night speaks for itself. Keep in mind that Jeremy Lin was not offered a basketball scholarship to Harvard (because they don't exist), and went undrafted at first. He played 29 games with the Golden State Warriors (his hometown team) before bouncing by waivers to the Knicks via the Houston Rockets.