Name: The CRAZIEST Month In NBA History (Linsanity)
Uploaded: 2025-09-01T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 15 min 22 s
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In his first five games as a starter, he scored more points than anybody since 1975.

Adverbs of degree

But just two weeks earlier, Jeremy Lin was sleeping on his brother's couch, expecting to get cut.

Adverbs of manner

If you don't play well tonight, it'll probably be your last game in the NBA.

That's what Lin's agent told him on February 4, 2012, hours before the Knicks played the Nets at the Garden.

Depleted by injuries, New York's coach Mike D'Antoni was forced to give a chance to his fourth-string point guard, not expecting much.

Before that game, Lin was a virtual nobody, constantly being mistaken for a team trainer by security guards at Madison Square Garden.

A month later, he was arguably the most famous basketball player on Earth, with more jersey sales than Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

This is the story of Linsanity, breaking stereotypes and the craziest path to NBA superstardom of all time.

Jeremy Lin was overlooked his whole life, by scouts, coaches, even by his own parents.

His parents were both 5'6", and they never understood their son's obsession with basketball.

But as long as he got good grades, they let him play.

And because he loved playing so much, Jeremy always had good grades, and eventually, he became really good at basketball.

Even though he averaged 16.4 points, 4.5 assists, and 2.4 steals as a senior, leading Palo Alto High School to a 32-1 record, and defeating the favorite Mater Dei in the finals to clinch the Division II championship, college offers for Jeremy were nowhere to be seen.

Lin grew up across the street from Stanford, but their coaches didn't recruit him.

Neither did the coaches from UCLA, or many other prestigious universities.

And it wasn't that college coaches were entirely unaware of Lin.

Jeremy actually sent his highlight reels, as well as full quarters of play to various programs, but with no result.

No Division I program offered Lin an athletic scholarship, and it was easy to see why.

Lin was a two-star recruit, ranked 426th nationwide, standing at 6'1", barely cracking 170 pounds, and he wasn't athletic.

You don't see a lot of Asian point guards making it in Division I basketball.

Skinny white point guards get stereotyped, but for Asians, it was a whole different level, as no Asian point guard ever had a meaningful role in the NBA.

Lin was battling racist remarks his whole life from opposing players and fans, and was always viewed as the weak link.

But his confidence never wavered, and after they saw him dominate Division I players at an AAU tournament,

Lin's talent was finally recognized by Harvard's coaches, who decided to offer him a scholarship.

Harvard's underwhelming basketball program was desperate for talent, and Lin was also a great student with a 4.2 GPA, so he fit their mold perfectly.

However, as a freshman, Lin was physically the weakest player at Harvard, and he barely played.

But in 2008, his sophomore season, Lin got stronger, averaging 12.6 points per game, and was named to the All-Ivy League second team.

In his junior year, Jeremy improved across the board, averaging 17.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 2.4 steals, with excellent shooting percentages.

Lin was the only Division I player ranked in the top 10 in his conference in all major statistical categories, and was a consensus selection for the All-Ivy League first team.

As a senior, Lin's numbers stayed virtually the same, but due to his experience, better decision-making, and leadership, Harvard finished the season with a 21-8 record, the best result in the program's history at the time.

Lin finally gained national attention, mainly for his performance against the 12th-ranked Connecticut, where he scored a career-high 30 points and grabbed 9 rebounds against Kemba Walker.

Jeremy graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics, a 3.1 GPA, and was an Ivy League all-time leader in points, rebounds, assists, and steals.

Lin put his name into the 2010 NBA draft, but the same pattern emerged, as he was once again overlooked by everybody.

If I don't get drafted here, I probably won't get drafted.

I'm thinking like, oh, if I get drafted, what's gonna happen? I'm just gonna run around, like, hugging everyone, I'm gonna fly to New York tomorrow.

Most scouting reports viewed him as a smart passer with a flawed jump shot and a thin frame, who might not have the strength and athleticism to defend, create his own shot, or finish at the rim in the NBA.

Daryl Morey, the then-general manager of the Rockets, put Jeremy's stats and draft combine results into a complex computer model, which projected Jeremy to be the 15th best player in the draft.

But Morey and his staff weren't prepared to place blind trust in their model, because as an Asian-American kid, Lin simply didn't pass the eye test.

A year after Houston and every other team let Lin go undrafted, the Rockets began measuring the speed of a player's first two steps, and Lin had the quickest first step of any player measured.

He's incredibly athletic, but the reality is that every person, including me, thought he was unathletic, and I can't think of any reason for it other than he was Asian.

However, despite all the stereotypes, one general manager saw past his ethnicity, Donnie Nelson of the Dallas Mavericks.

Nelson offered him a spot on the Mavs summer league team, and Lin used his opportunity to the fullest, averaging 9.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.8 assists in 18.6 minutes per game, while shooting a team-leading 54.5% from the floor.

After his strong summer league showing, Lin received offers from the Mavericks, Warriors, and two other teams, ultimately deciding to sign with his hometown Warriors, who offered him a two-year contract.

I was like, ah, you know, I picked my little brother up, I'm like, I'm signing with Golden State.

But in the 2010-2011 season, Jeremy saw little playing time behind Steph Curry and Monte Ellis, appearing in just 29 games, averaging 2.6 points in less than 10 minutes per game.

During the offseason, Lin worked hard to improve his game. He restructured his jump shot by abandoning the shooting form he had used since the 8th grade.

He also increased his strength, doubling the weight he could squat, from 110 pounds to 231 pounds, and almost tripling the number of pull-ups he could do, from 12 to 30.

Lin increased his body weight from 200 pounds to 212, and the added muscle helped him add 3.5 inches to his standing vertical jump, and 6 inches to his running vertical jump, while his lateral quickness improved by 32%.

However, during the NBA lockout, Jeremy never got a chance to work out for new Warriors coach, Bark Jackson.

On his first day of training camp, the Warriors waived Lin and his $800,000 contract to free up salary cap space.

I went in there and the general manager and assistant general manager were like, we gotta let you go, we're trying to get DeAndre Jordan.

Three days later, Lin was picked up by the Rockets, but before the start of the season, Houston waived him too.

On December 27th, 2011, after injuries to guards Iman Shumpert and Baron Davis, the New York Knicks claimed Lin off waivers to be a backup point guard behind Tony Douglas and Mike Bibby.

Essentially, Jeremy was the backup's backup, but he was used to being overlooked.

During practice, Jeremy would stand right beside me on the side of a court and not really get in, even in practice.

He was just there in case one of these guys got hurt.

And he kept working extremely hard to get a chance to play.

Lin was the first to arrive in the practice facility and the last one to leave, but the Knicks still played him just 6 minutes per game off the bench in his first 9 appearances for the team.

But then, out of sheer desperation, as the Knicks had an 8-15 record, coach Mike D'Antoni decided to give Lin more opportunity to play, telling Jeremy that he'd play more minutes in a back-to-back game against the Nets on February 4th.

Up until that point, Jeremy was sleeping on his brother's couch, not willing to rent his own apartment out of fear of getting cut again.

And the night before that February 4th game against the Nets, Lin's brother asked Jeremy to find another place to sleep, because he and his wife expected guests, and they needed their couch in their one-bedroom apartment to be available.

Evicted from his brother's home, Jeremy spent the night at Landry Field's house.

You know, I was like, yeah, sure, man, come.

I was giving him forewarning, though, that my couch wasn't huge. It was actually a rental couch at the time. It might have been maybe 6 feet long.

And what happened the next day was something beyond his wildest dreams.

Playing against All-Star point guard Darren Williams, Lin exploded for a game-high 25 points, including 12 points in the fourth quarter, to seal the 99-92 win for the Knicks.

For the game, Lin shot 10 for 19, dished out 7 assists with only 1 turnover, and he also had 2 steals and 5 rebounds.

So much stuff had to come together at the right moment. My back was against the wall. That was going to be it for me.

My agent had actually called me before the game and said, if you don't play well, tonight will probably be your last game in the NBA.

The amount of anxiety, the pressure, just the embarrassment that I was facing.

If I would finally make it to the NBA and then just completely underperform and fizzle out, that would have really been a tough pill to swallow.

In the most important game of his life, Lin passed with flying colors. But that was only the beginning.

In the following game against Utah, D'Antoni promoted Lin to a starter. However, without Carmelo Anthony, who left the game after 5 minutes due to injury, and Amare Stoudemire, who was out due to death in the family, nobody expected the shorthanded Knicks to win.

Enter Jeremy Lin, the third-string Asian point guard playing out of his mind.

Lin led all scorers with 28 points on 10-for-17 shooting, with 8 assists and 2 steals.

Jeremy did have 8 turnovers, but nobody cared, as the Knicks won another game.

Despite the unbelievable turnaround from the most unexpected source, the naysayers said that everybody can have a couple of good games.

But then, Lin did it again, playing against another all-star point guard, John Wall, arguably the fastest NBA player at the time.

And then we hit the road and go to Washington, and it's like John Wall again, you know?

Like, I played against John Wall in the Summer League, and now it's like a rematch. Now I'm playing against him again.

Lin scored 23 points and dished out 10 assists, shooting 9-for-14 from the field in another victory.

Lin was becoming a national sensation, and the word Linsanity was already coined by national media.

But before the next game against the Lakers, Kobe Bryant brushed him off.

I don't even know what he's done. No idea what you guys are talking about.

Who is this kid? Yeah, I've heard about him and stuff like that. I don't know, what's he been doing?

However, after the game, Bryant definitely knew all about Linsanity, because Lin torched him.

And the Lakers, with a career-high 38 points on 13-for-23 shooting, with 7 assists and 2 steals.

Jeremy outscored Kobe 38-34, including a dagger 3 in front of the Lakers' bench.

After that game, Linsanity was in full effect, with Knicks merchandise having to order vast amounts of Lin jerseys and t-shirts to satisfy the growing demand.

After the game, it was impossible to buy Lin's number 17 jersey.

Because there weren't any to buy, as nobody could have predicted that a guy who wasn't even on the Knicks roster at the start of the season would become their most popular player.

But Jeremy didn't stop there. Following the Lakers game, Lin dropped 20 in another win against Minnesota.

And a few days later, he had another double-double, with 27 points and 11 assists against the Raptors.

In the final seconds of the game, with the score tied, Lin waved away every incoming screen like a 10-year veteran, because he wanted to hit the game-winner himself.

In the next game against Sacramento, Lin had another double-double, with 10 points and 13 assists, leading the Knicks to their 7th straight victory, and becoming one of the most recognizable athletes on the planet.

Less than two weeks after he was sleeping on his brother's couch, Lin scored 20-plus points in the next three games.