The rise to fame of Knicks' Lin

During an otherwise unremarkable game several winters ago, long before Jeremy Lin would arc like a brilliant comet through the NBA sky, the Harvard basketball player lit up Yale's defense.

Afterward, Lin's mother approached Bulldogs coach James Jones, who like so many others had been unmoved by a video the then-unheralded California youngster had sent to the nation's top schools.

"She came over and I didn't know if she was mad at me or not," Jones recalled this week. "I told her Jeremy had played a great game. And she said, 'Yes, but you didn't want him.' "

A mother's devotion aside, it seems incredible now that anyone could have passed on Lin. The NBA's first Chinese American has transformed himself into a national phenomenon with a string of unexpectedly spectacular performances for the New York Knicks.

And as marketers, the media, and a wildly enthralled Asian American community flock to this 23-year-old whose personal resumé is unlike any the NBA has ever seen, it's become clear that this astonishing and unfinished story is as much about lost opportunities as a newfound star.

In a five-game stretch, Lin averaged 26.8 points, including a 38-point outburst against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. He had 10 assists to go with 23 points in a win over the Wizards.

Lin's spree has come while two of the Knicks' stars, Amar'e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony, have been missing. But Stoudemire was in the lineup Tuesday night when Lin made a tiebreaking three-pointer with less than a second to play as the Knicks rallied to beat Toronto, 90-87. Anthony is expected to miss the next couple of games. Knicks Nation is holding its breath that Lin's magic continues with both back.

"There are a lot of schools and a lot of NBA teams kicking themselves right now," said Ed Gor, an executive with the San Francisco-based Chinese American Citizens Alliance.

Between his senior year at Palo Alto High School in California and his late-December signing with the Knicks, Lin was rejected by dozens of colleges and the NBA. Those oversights bring to mind a familiar Confucian proverb: There is beauty in everything. But not everyone sees it.

What they all missed seeing was not only a surprising basketball talent, but perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach an Asian American community that is growing as rapidly as Lin's statistics.