NBA

Lin took cross-country journey to Knicks

On a freezing-cold night in early January, Jeremy Lin sits anonymously in an upper row of bleachers at Fordham’s Rose Hill Gym, hunching slightly toward the court, clad in a ski jacket and sweatpants, still cloaked in relative obscurity.

Though he has been picked up recently off waivers by the Knicks — despite getting cut in the past three weeks by the Warriors and Rockets, he still is an active NBA player — he is not approached by autograph seekers or pestered by local reporters.

It would be weeks before the 23-year old would revive the Knicks’ season with a trio of near-mythic point-guard performances, becomes a trending topic on Twitter, spawns a cottage industry for punsters and emerges as the toast of New York.

He’s here in the stands as his former Harvard team takes on Fordham. He’s here to watch the first team to give him a shot when no one else would.


Flash back six years to Palo Alto (Calif.) High School, which if you cross El Camino Real, is just the distance of a few long 3-pointers from Stanford’s Maples Pavilion. Lin, Palo Alto’s point guard, who led his school to a 32-1 record and improbable state title as a senior in 2006, didn’t want to travel far to achieve his college dreams.

But Lin, who learned the game playing with his Taiwanese immigrant father, Gie-Ming, and brothers Josh and Joseph on the courts of the sunny university town on the southern side of San Francisco Bay, was not seriously recruited by Stanford, and Cal and UCLA had just a passing interest. His underdog story gained more legs in the state finals, when he scored seven straight fourth-quarter points to help seal Palo Alto’s 51-47 upset of Southern California sports juggernaut Mater Dei.

“He was just a person that totally got it was about winning,” Palo Alto coach Peter Diepenbrock told the Harvard Crimson. “Especially at the high school level, that’s very rare. Kids are normally caught up in their own deal and have their own agendas, but that’s what made him stand out.”

Longtime Harvard coach Frank Sullivan deserves credit for recognizing a potential standout in Lin and bringing him east to the non-scholarship Ivy League. A source said Yale was the only other Ivy with eyes on Lin.

“I think people are very interested in stories like this where there’s a player who seems to have excelled at every level, but for whatever reason has not gotten the opportunities you’d hope he would get,” said Paul Okada, a co-founder of the active fan site JeremyLin.net. “It happened to him coming out of high school, and now we’re seeing it again on the pro level.”


Jeremy Lin at HarvardAP

Lin finally got the chance to play in front of family and friends at Maples Pavilion as a sophomore when Harvard, in its first season under coach Tommy Amaker, ventured to the Stanford-hosted Basketball Travelers Classic. Lin’s fervent followers packed the arena for his homecoming, many of them sporting green “Jeremy Lin Show” T-shirts. Stanford coach Trent Johnson was none too pleased at the crowd support for the opposition, recalled Lin’s Knicks teammate Landry Fields, then a sophomore for the Cardinal.

Enraged, Johnson directed his Stanford players before the game to hold Lin scoreless, Fields remembered. And they did. Lin later called it his worst night in recent memory.

But with many of the green T-shirts back the next day, Lin rebounded with a career-high 15 points against UC Santa Barbara. He topped that with 17 in the tournament finale versus Northwestern State.


It took Lin’s best shot for “SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays’’ to find the inside of Lavietes Pavilion, Harvard’s home court.

Lin had attracted consideration for the Wooden and Cousy Awards (presented to college basketball’s top player and top point guard, respectively) going into his senior season at Harvard after finishing in the Ivy League’s top 10 in points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, field-goal percentage, free-throw percentage and 3-point percentage as a junior.

But a hopeful campaign in Cambridge was off to a tooth-and-nail start on the night of Nov. 15, 2009, when visiting William & Mary forced the Crimson to triple overtime, and took a one-point lead on a layup with 4 seconds left. Lin collected the inbounds pass at the 3-point line and raced ahead. He was fouled on the floor at midcourt — no call — and fouled again as he released a runner at the buzzer from more than 25 feet out.

It was a no-doubter out of his hand. Final: Harvard 87, William & Mary 85.

His senior year highlights included a vengeful two-handed dunk in traffic when Lin scored 30 points in a narrow loss at UConn the following month.

“He’s a hard-charging, fearless competitor,” Amaker told The Post this week. “He happens to be Asian-American, he happens to have gone to Harvard. … He gains respect in any basketball environment because he’s going to bring it every day. He has a contagious spirit.”

That spirit engendered devotion from fellow students who suddenly had good reason to choose hoops over hockey or Heineken or homework and cram the roll-out bleachers for Friday and Saturday night home games. On his Senior Night, with his family in attendance, Lavietes’ unadorned, low-hanging rafters echoed with an update on the “I believe that we will win!” chant:

I believe in Jeremy Lin!


Jeremy Lin with the KnicksNBAE/Getty Images

Close friends stressed that Lin’s Christian background is as important a part of his game as his nifty dribbling or keen court vision.

Becoming the first Chinese-American in the NBA has not come easily — but Lin’s struggle to prove himself has only deepened his Christian faith and raised his game, friends said.

“His experience growing up playing basketball, the way he’s been treated, that people give him no chance — that’s the story of his life in high school, college and now the NBA, he’s just always had to try harder than normal people to get to where he wants to be,” said Lin’s former roommate and Harvard running back Cheng Ho.

“That experience also made him stronger as a Christian. He has passion for the game, but also he recognizes basketball is an area he can use as a platform to promote the gospel.”

During his time at Harvard, Lin convened and led a Bible study group, picking out and analyzing verses in sessions that could last upwards of two hours. He has talked of becoming a pastor when his playing days are through.

This past November, in down time during the NBA lockout, Lin filmed a humorous YouTube video providing tips for getting into college, while admitting Harvard was his second-choice school after Stanford. The video ends with a selection from Proverbs 3:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”


This is how quickly a basketball player’s arc can change direction: Six years ago, Lin was deemed unworthy of a Division I scholarship, and gave up on his Stanford dream for a Harvard hardwood education.

“If he had gone to a bigger-name athletic school, who knows if this all would have happened?” Amaker said. “Maybe he wouldn’t have had some of that burning fire to prove people wrong. You don’t know if things would have been the same. It’s all part of his journey.”

Six weeks ago, Lin went unnoticed at a basketball game in The Bronx. And now he’s the subject of “Linsanity,’’ — he’s the Knicks’ savior and one of the most popular athletes in town.

“A lot of things had to happen,” Lin said Wednesday, “a lot of things out of my control. So I’m very thankful.”