Comment: The power of Lin

Everyone loves a fairy tale. The Jeremy Lin story is one to believe in.

He’s magic right now. He can make the meaningless matter. The last time a match-up between the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors mattered to anyone outside New York or Toronto was 11 years ago, give or take a few months.

Lenny Wilkens was strolling the sideline in his mock turtlenecks. Vince Carter was still the next big thing. The Knicks were coached by Jeff Van Gundy and the two teams met in the first round of the playoffs for the second straight year and had a hint of a rivalry going.

The 11 years since? Not so much, as both franchises have mostly stumbled along at the low ebb of basketball relevancy.

Until Lin — the Knicks out-of-nowhere point guard sensation — began his loaves and fishes act this particular Tuesday night in February was to be no exception. Valentines it may have been, but it was just another lonely-heart night for NBA fans.

Except on this Tuesday night Lin delivered perhaps the best Valentine a basketball fan could ever have asked for as the Taiwanese-American gift to sports fans everywhere gave the world one more reason to love this game.

The most unlikely sports story — ever, maybe? — continued to unfold in the most unlikely ways as Lin, ball in his hands, game on the line, counted down the seconds before draining a game-winning three-pointer with 0.5 seconds left. It will last in NBA lore much longer. It was the previously death-spiraling Knicks sixth straight win since Lin went all truth-is-better-than-fiction on the NBA’s ass.

“I just wanted to make sure I got a good shot at the end of the clock,” he said on the television broadcast afterwards. “He [Raptors point guard Jose Calderon] backed up a half a step and I thought that was a good look for me.”

This was not supposed to happen. Not to make the story about me or anything, but until Linsanity struck it seemed reasonable to skip a February Knicks-Raptors matchup and take the family to Orlando for a few days.

But Lin is happening. He’s selling out the Air Canada Centre on a weeknight in February, the first sellout not involving the Miami Heat on a weeknight in three years.

He got me in a sports bar on Valentines night, on my vacation. For his next miracle maybe he can keep me not being Lin-vorced. He got said central Florida sports bar serving a Linsanity Bomb: a shooter featuring hot vodka and Red Bull. He got John, the bartender, handing them out for free, because Jeremy Lin is that rare.

The Knicks 90-87 win over the hard-luck Raptors was a new chapter in Lin’s unique career arc. Until he scored the Knicks final six points Lin was having an interesting, but certainly not overwhelming fifth career NBA start.

Now? The Lin’s body of work continues to grow, defying the small-sample-size crowd.

“It’s the greatest story in sports right now,” the Knicks Jared Jeffries told reporters after the game. “People compare him to [other unlikely heroes] but other players were NCAA players-of-the-year. Other players were all-American … he was five or six days from being cut by another team, now he’s the catalyst for a team that’s playing as well as any team in the NBA.”

Lin’s run into NBA history — no one has enjoyed a five-game run as a first-time starter like he has — was bound to run into some hurdles and did in the form of the Raptors aggressively over-playing him in the pick-and-roll, forcing the ball from his hands early and often.

But he ended up with it his hands at the end as the Knicks finished on a 13-1 run to win. He swept in first for a back-bending drive and a free throw to draw New York to within three and set the stage for his signature moment triple. In between there was 11 assists and — it can’t be overlooked — eight turnovers.

But even those mistakes can’t take the shine off what Lin represents which, in a nut shell, is what we all hope to be true: that there is an inherent fairness in the world; that character and determination can count every bit as much or more than the gifts others are born with; that great things can happen to good people.

We know that to be a fairy tale most of the time, but we can’t help but want it to be otherwise.

The power of Lin’s story has been measured in many ways but the way he has captured the public’s imagination is probably the best.

For me — other than being there in person — perhaps the best place to see Lin take Toronto may well have been Orlando, an entire city devoted to making fairy tales come to life.

After all Lin’s success is a parable as much as a sports story and people can’t help lap it up.

The hard truths will emerge. He’ll have to clean up his turnovers — he’s averaging six a game over his five-game streak — and improve his long-range shooting. And if he could penetrate as confidently going left as he does going right his chances of becoming (remaining?) an elite player will increase significantly.

He’ll need to do all of that while integrating Amare Stoudemire — who played his first game in a week last night — and an injured Carmelo Anthony into the Knicks offence while attacking the basket the way he has in the previous five games.

But nothing that’s happened until now suggests he can’t manage it. Lin’s story really speaks to character more than anything else. Professional sports — and perhaps basketball more than any other — has become an arms race where one bundle of nuclear-powered athleticism begets the next in a human game of détente. The little things in between — skill, selflessness, modesty, effort — get steamrolled sometimes.

And there is no question that as basketball fans we crave those who we can’t relate to; the other-planet types that make us go “wow”.

But there’s no harm in celebrating the one’s that make us go “Yay”. As people it’s nice to believe miracles happen. It gets you through.

Let Linsanity reign.

Twitter @michaelgrange