Linsanity!

To measure the immediate sociological impact of Jeremy Lin–the electric New York Knicks point guard who has jolted the NBA–start on the weekend-warrior basketball floor. In a gym near New York City’s Chinatown two days after Lin torched the Los Angeles Lakers for 38 points and a day after the Knicks won their fifth consecutive game with Lin running the show, a group of African-American players prepped for a rec-league game. Most of the competition was Asian American. The message: Ditch the stereotypes of the Asian dudes as pesky players who nevertheless won’t be hard to beat. “We’ve got to play these guys,” one of the men barked to his teammates. “They might have a team full of Jeremy Lins.” The pep talk fell short. The Asian Americans won by a bucket.

If you’ve played a minute of pickup or rec-league basketball, admit it: You’ve racially profiled. I’ll convict myself, a native New York gym rat, guilty as charged. The NBA’s demographics make it difficult not to–83% of this year’s NBA All-Star roster consists of black players. Face a team of black guys and you think, We might be in trouble. White guys: We’ll take them, but watch the jump shooters. Asian players: No sweat. They’re physics grad students, right? “You do stereotype,” Shavar Stewart, a hospital tech from uptown in the Bronx, tells TIME in the Chinatown gym after losing to the Asian Americans. “You do profile. But I think Jeremy Lin will start changing stereotypes. He already has.”

With his sudden rise from NBA benchwarmer to must-see TV, Lin, 23, has crushed all kinds of conventions–like the one that said he was a nice Ivy League player but would never thrive in the NBA. How many Harvard grads and how many Asian Americans were in the current NBA before he arrived? Zero and zero. Harvard has produced more U.S. Presidents (eight) than NBA players (four, and until Lin, none since the 1950s). Lin’s bottom-feeding team, the Knicks, began this lockout-shortened season in shambles, done in by ugly point-guard play. The desperate head coach, Mike D’Antoni, finally gave the ball to Lin–apparently the Coke vendor wasn’t available–because of injuries to key players and the inability of anyone else to dribble and pass the ball. So all Lin did was go out and score more points in his first five starts–136–than any other player since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976. “I can’t explain it,” Lin, limping slightly from exhaustion, told a Knicks official in a Madison Square Garden hallway after he outdueled the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant on national television. “If I could, I would.”

He doesn’t have to for Asian Americans, especially the subset who proudly call themselves ballers but have never seen one of their own in the NBA. “You know when you believe in something?” says David Liu, 25, an avid Taiwanese-American pickup player who has followed Lin since his Harvard days and had told everyone within earshot–Asian American and otherwise–that Lin was destined for the NBA. “And people challenge you about it and mock you for it? And then you see it all pay off? That’s an amazing feeling.” Lin has lifted the psyche of Liu and others both on and off the basketball court. “Whenever I see him do any of his moves, my heart is just pounding,” says Bryan Peng, a computer tech and rec-league junkie who grew up playing in Chinatown. “He’s like our Obama.”

The Global Baller

Lin initially demurs when asked about that sort of reaction. But then he flashes a familiar grin–the one fans see when he dishes passes to appreciative teammates or hits spinning layups and deep shots no one thought he could convert. “I’m just thankful to them,” Lin says of his fervent supporters after a Knicks practice. “I’m humbled, really. I still feel like I have a long way to go and a lot more to do. But if I can inspire people along the way, you know, I’d love to do that.”

Linsanity has global reach. His No. 17 jersey is now the top online seller in the NBA. Sales and traffic at the Knicks’ official online store rose 3,000% in a week. The NBA’s television partners in China, Taiwan and the Philippines rushed to add Knicks games. Lin’s name was the third most searched term on Baidu.com China’s leading search engine. Taiwan’s President, Ma Ying-jeou, has implored his new Cabinet to act Lin-like–in other words, to work as a team. In Taiwan, Lin is known as “the little guy from Harvard,” even though at 6 ft. 3 in. (191 cm), he’s taller than most Taiwanese. It’s a term of endearment.

As a high school prospect, Lin never got such love from college coaches, who couldn’t imagine the pencil-necked point guard expanding his razor-thin frame. He was raised in Palo Alto, Calif., where his father, Gie-Ming Lin, a computer engineer, would study film of Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and other NBA stars and tutor young Jeremy at the local YMCA–after his son finished his homework. “I cannot explain the reasons why I love basketball,” Gie-Ming told me a couple of years ago. “I just do.” Lin led his high school team to a state championship, but even Bill Holden, the former Harvard assistant who recruited him, first thought Lin was destined for small-college Division III. Then Holden stumbled on a Lin game against some serious competition in a Las Vegas tournament and saw a serious competitor. “The bigger the stage, the more he brings it,” says Holden. “He’s always had that.”

In college, Lin faced additional challenges, including frequent racial taunts–real original stuff, like a fan yelling, “Sweet-and-sour pork!” Opposing Ivy League gyms housed the worst offenders. One rival player even called Lin a C word that rhymes with ink.

Despite a strong senior year, in which he rang up 30 points against perennial NCAA championship contender the University of Connecticut, no NBA team picked Lin in the draft. “Truth be told, we were devastated,” says Lin’s agent, Roger Montgomery. Did Lin’s ethnicity work against him? “Absolutely,” says Montgomery. An impressive showing in an NBA summer league earned Lin a contract with his hometown team, the Golden State Warriors, where he rode the bench and shuttled to the minors on three occasions. Skeptics wondered if the Warriors had signed Lin as a marketing draw, to appeal to Bay Area Asian Americans. “Oh, my, he was frustrated,” says Lin’s high school coach, Peter Diepenbrock.

The ascent of Lin reaches beyond ethnicity to religion. He is a devout Evangelical Christian, drawing inevitable comparisons to the NFL’s Tim Tebow. While we haven’t witnessed any prayerful “Linning” after a layup, Lin has considered the pastorate as a post-NBA calling. “There’s a sense in New York that Jeremy is the savior of the Knicks,” says Stephen Chen, a Lin mentor and a pastor of the Mountain View, Calif., church the Lin family attends. “He doesn’t want people to think of him that way. He wants them to be able to know his Saviour, Jesus Christ.”

His flock will keep growing as long as the Knicks keep winning. There’s a plot twist, however. When New York’s leading scorer, superstar Carmelo Anthony, returns to the lineup after a groin injury, fans wonder, can the pair coexist? “I can see why they are questioning it, because he’s a playmaker as well and he has the ball in his hands a lot,” says Lin. But the two say they relish the chance to play together, since Anthony is another passing option for Lin, and with Lin handling the ball and drawing attention, Anthony can find more open shots. “That’s our Rudy, man,” Anthony says of Lin, referring to the movie about a Notre Dame football player who inspires his teammates with his hard work and records a sack in his only game. “People love the underdog.”

Lin’s success has also unveiled Asian Americans–a heavily urbanized ethnic group–as passionate hoopheads. Every year players from cities across the U.S. gather for Chinese-American, Korean-American and pan-Asian-American national tournaments. Many Asian Americans enjoy playing together because they feel they have to prove that the city game is theirs too. “We have a chip on our shoulder,” says David Liu. When guys like Liu walk into a gym, eyes often move right past them, and black and white players of similar height and build get picked before them. When other teams start trying fancy behind-the-back passes and going for every steal, Asian Americans can tell the competition isn’t taking them seriously. “It’s mentally draining,” says Noh-Joon Choo, 31, who plays in Chicago. They hope Lin can correct such ethnic slights.

Many Asian-American players are children of immigrants who were not exposed to U.S. sports back home. They tell recurring tales of friends with true basketball talent who suddenly gave up the game. Their parents wanted no distractions from academics. The players are convinced we’ll see more Jeremy Lins as more parents, inspired by his success, allow their kids to pursue sports.

But why hope that parents take that track? Hitting the books can set you up for life; the NBA is a long shot–for anyone. “There’s nothing wrong with being engineers, doctors or lawyers,” says Bernard Chang, a prominent Chinese-American comic-book artist in Los Angeles who played ball in college at the Pratt Institute. “I just think we should be represented in balance. Sports like basketball are a huge part of our culture. Success will help us stake our claim as Americans.” Maybe the Linsanity has just begun.