Jeremy Lin (AP)
HOME COURT ADVANTAGE: Knick point gaurd Jeremy Lin, a fan of “planking” (left) had been spending his nights crashing on his brother’s back-stiffening couch. (
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He’s no longer a couch potato.
Breakout Knicks star Jeremy Lin — who currently sleeps on his brother’s couch on the Lower East Side — is looking for more permanent digs, sources told The Post.
A broker has already shown the NBA’s first American-born player of Chinese descent at least two high-end properties.
One is in the city and belongs to a current Knicks player looking to sell, sources said.
The other is in Westchester County, closer to the team’s practice facility in Greenburgh, according to sources close to the 6-foot-3 point guard.
But Lin isn’t very picky — not surprising, given his current living situation.
The Harvard economics grad is also open to buying or renting condos and co-ops in the city, sources said.
He’ll finally be able to afford it. Because Lin was not cut by the Knicks earlier this week, he’s guaranteed the league’s minimum $613,567 contract for second-year players.
Ever since the Knicks recalled Lin from basketball’s minor leagues, he’s been crashing on the couch of his brother Joshua, an NYU dental student.
That’s not exactly the pad one would expect for the player responsible for the Knicks’ three consecutive victories.
In his last three games, he’s scored 25, 28 and 23 points — the best start ever recorded by a Harvard grad.
“We never expected anything like this!” Lin’s father, Gie-Ming Lin, told The Post yesterday.
“It’s like this happened overnight. We can’t believe it!”
Lin’s parents, both 5-foot-7 engineers from Palo Alto, Calif., are in town to watch their son’s big game tonight against the Lakers at Madison Square Garden.
The elder Lin said he never discouraged Jeremy from pursuing his hoop dream, even after he was cut from his hometown Golden State Warriors in December.
“We just wanted to see what he could do, whatever he could tackle [in the NBA],” said Gie-Ming, who is crashing at his mother-in-law’s Elmhurst home this weekend.
“But we didn’t foresee anything like this.”
Gie-Ming said he eagerly pushed basketball on his kids, introducing them to church leagues at an early age, but always stressed homework over hardwood.
“I always told my kids academics are first,” said Gie-Ming, who has a third son at Hamilton College.
“After you do your homework, after dinner, then by 8:30, we can go to open gym or YMCA.”
Lin’s arrival from the NBA’s scrap heap — he went undrafted after graduating — has given weary Knicks fans a ray of hope in what’s been a dreadful season.
The team store is loaded up with “Linsanity” T-shirts, Lin posters and Lin’s Knicks jerseys for what’s expected to be big sales today.
“I definitely want to buy [a jersey]!” Knicks fan Edward Pajewski, 25, of Colts Neck, NJ, said outside the Garden yesterday.
“He brings electricity to the game. It’s nice to see a kid who was undrafted come out of nowhere.”
Lin’s success has left his doubters embarrassed.
Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob squirmed to explain why his woeful team — with a record even worse than the Knicks’ — had kicked Lin to the curb.
“I would be lying if I thought . . . he’d be this good — all of a sudden, explode on the scene,” he told San Francisco radio station KNBR.
“It’s just one of those things. It’s a great, perfect situation where he got an amazing opportunity. None of the other guards in New York were playing well.”
He added: “So I give him all the credit in the world, and obviously we wish we had him.”
Additional reporting by Natasha Velez and Frank Rosario