Two weeks ago, nobody had ever heard of Jeremy Lin.

Today he’s the founder of a movement that is sweeping the country. The Linsanity Movement.

Lin’s sudden ascension from basketball obscurity to security has a far deeper impact than simply his ability to sell tickets, generate tweets or even make good newspaper copy. Lin’s rise is the reason so many of us fell in love with sports in the first place.

Jeremy Lin (pictured at a previous game) scored 27 points, including the game-winner, in the Knicks' 90-87 win Tuesday over Toronto.
Bill Kostroun / Associated Press

His is more than the underdog tale. It’s more like the dog-pound tale. You may root for the underdog, but you’ve at least heard of him before. When Butler first broke through to reach the Final Four two years ago, you thought, “Oh, yeah, Butler. Pretty good midmajor school, located somewhere in Indiana, right?”

But the dog-pound dog is the one nobody wanted, the mutt everybody ignored. Truth be told, we didn’t even know he existed.

In case you’ve been participating in a sports media fast over the past week, allow me to fill you in about Jeremy Lin.

Dude grew up in Northern California, and developed into a pretty talented high school player, garnering first-team all-state recognition as a senior.

Still, there wasn’t a Division I school in the land who offered him a scholarship. A couple invited him to walk on, but no letter of intent.

Lin, a 6-foot-3 guard, ended up at Harvard, which — like all Ivy League institutions — does not offer athletic scholarships. Again, Lin excelled, even scoring 30 points in a game against national power Connecticut his senior year.

Failing to impress

But it wasn’t enough to impress NBA scouts, and Lin wasn’t picked in the 2010 draft.

In the fall of 2010, Lin’s hometown Golden State Warriors invited him to training camp, but he was cut early in the season. This year, after the lockout ended, he landed a tryout with the Houston Rockets, but was again released just before the season to make room for Houston’s signing of Samuel Dalembert.

The New York Knicks claimed Lin off waivers because of injuries in their backcourt. He played sparingly in New York’s first 22 games, just a few garbage time minutes here and there. The most run he got in that span was during the three days he spent in the D-League before the Knicks recalled him.

On Feb. 4, the Knicks finally gave Lin a chance, putting him in early in a game against the New Jersey Nets. Pretty good call. He played 36 minutes, scoring 25 points, delivering seven assists and picking up two steals.

Overnight, a star was born.

He started the next game and put up 28 and 8. The game after that he tallied 23 and 10. By his third start against the Lakers last Friday, the New York Post ran a back-page article evaluating the “star comparison” between the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and the Knicks’ Lin. Kobe, who needs no introduction, was a future Hall of Famer with 28,000 points and five NBA championships to his credit. Lin was still sleeping on his brother’s couch.

Kobe was Kobe, scoring 34. Except sorry, Mr. Black Mamba, sir, but that was still four less than Lin, who guided the Knicks (yes, the Knicks!) to their fourth straight win.

(Note to Jeremy: Forget the couch. You can spring for a futon now. Your contract is secure.)

People who follow sports are natural skeptics of the unknown, the unorthodox. In some respects, all sports fans might as well be from Missouri, the Show-Me State, because an unheralded no-name guy really has to show us something in order to prove he’s not a one-hit wonder.

As NBA players go, they don’t get much more unorthodox than Jeremy Lin. Unsigned out of high school. Played at Harvard. Undrafted out of college.

Throw in the fact that Lin is Asian-American in a league that is 78 percent black, and he might as well be from another planet. He doesn’t fit the cookie-cutter mold of what we think an NBA player should look like.

Throw away the mold

But who needs cookie cutters anyway? Just sink your mitts into the dough and wing it, I say. If your cookies end up being all different shapes and sizes, all the better.

What I appreciate most about Lin is his utter lack of bravado. Perhaps because he came from humble basketball beginnings, his humility shines through.

Asked by a reporter the other night whether he could see how his teammates were feeding off his energy, Lin turned the question around and praised his teammates’ energy instead.

If I wasn’t on board before, I was a full-fledged Linguist when I heard that.

What Lin has done in the last week is nothing short of amazing. His 136 points in his first five starts are the most ever by a player since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976.

Still, the questions linger.

Is he for real? Or is he just unreal?

The answer is yes.

To both.

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