This coming NBA season will mark the five-year anniversary of “Linsanity,” that glorious fortnight stretch when Jeremy Lin averaged 24 and nine for the surging New York Knicks in February 2012.
It’s impossible to understate just how larger than life Lin became almost overnight. In a matter of a month, he went from D-League afterthought to global icon. There were a confluence of events that influenced the sensation, among them that he was playing in New York City, that he was a Harvard kid pursuing basketball as a career and — undeniably — that he was an Asian-American in the NBA.