In a little more than a week, Jeremy Lin went from being a backup point guard at the end of the Knicks’ bench to the Eastern Conference Player of the Week.
The NBA announced Lin had won the award yesterday, which was all but a foregone conclusion after the way “Linsanity” enveloped the Knicks, and the rest of the league, over the past week.
Playing without Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, Lin started four games and averaged 27.3 points, 4.0 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 2.0 steals in four Knicks wins. He became the first player in NBA history to finish his first four starts with at least 20 points and seven assists, and his 109 points over those four games are the most by any player in his first four career starts since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976.
Lin also becomes the first player to win the award in both the NBA and the NBA’s Development League, after he won it last year with the Reno Bighorns while playing for Golden State.
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When Baron Davis was signed by the Knicks, he was expected to be the player whose insertion into the starting lineup would galvanize the team’s offense and allow coach Mike D’Antoni’s trademark style to flourish.
Instead, Linsanity has given the Knicks life and made Davis an afterthought. Davis continues to work out on his own as he tries to recover from a herniated disk in his back, but there currently is no timetable for when he will return to the court.
“Not really, other than he’s looking good, better,” D’Antoni said after yesterday’s practice. “That’s all I keep hearing, but I don’t know a specific date yet.”
Davis has not practiced since he was diagnosed with an elbow infection late last month that caused him to have back pain, setting back his rehab.
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As Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony begin to assimilate back into the new-look Knicks this week, questions already have surfaced about how they will fit in and how their addition will impact players who have been key to the team’s five-game winning streak.
Yesterday, D’Antoni went out of his way to say one of those players, 3-point shooter Steve Novak, won’t be going anywhere after averaging 15.5 points and 4.5 rebounds in just over 25 minutes over the past four games.
“[Minutes] might spread out a little bit, but Novak has proven, mostly on the defensive end and rebounding, that he needs to be on the floor,” D’Antoni said. “We knew he could shoot it, but now he’s doing the other things. That helps.
“If guys are willing to move [the ball], and they are, then it should all blend in. But it starts with a point guard that gets everybody in the right spot, and I think, right now, we have that.”
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Linsanity continues to have an impact on the bottom line as well as the win column. Saturday’s win in Minnesota scored a season-high 4.17 Nielsen rating, the highest Knicks game on MSG since Anthony’s debut last Feb. 23 (6.75). Through four games with Jeremy Lin starting, the averaging rating on MSG is up 70 percent (3.08) from the previous 20 games (1.81).
According to Forbes, Lin is the fastest-growing athlete brand in the world — worth an estimated $14 million, tied with Kobe Bryant for sixth-best. Since Feb. 4, MSG’s stock price has increased 6 percent, adding $139 million to the company’s market value.
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Lin’s presence prompted the Raptors to stage their annual Asian Heritage Night for tonight, an event staged even more his stardom. Toronto’s population is 11 percent Chinese and many here have followed Lin since he played at Harvard.
Additional reporting by Brian Lewis and Marc Berman