Jeremy Lin: From left out to legend

He was painfully skinny, an indifferent shooter and not very interested in playing defense. Now he's the talk of the town, and possibly the salvation of the Knicks.

But six years ago, that was the first impression that Bill Holden, the man who brought Jeremy Lin to Harvard, had of the player who has taken the NBA by storm. Holden, a former assistant coach for the Crimson, remembers calling Lin's high school coach to deliver the bad news after watching Lin in a tournament. "I left him a message that they should start looking at Division III schools," Holden recalled this past week.

The next day, Holden was watching another game when he heard a commotion on the adjoining court, where Lin's team was playing.

"It was like I was watching a different player," Holden said. "I called his coach back as quickly as I could and said we were making him our No. 1 recruit . . . You watch him work out or you watch him once, you might not be impressed. But he plays big in big games. He knows what to do with the big stage."

Does he ever.

In the space of his first four games -- in only 155 life-changing minutes of floor time -- the 6-3 Lin went from an obscure fourth-string point guard to a global phenomenon. With his 20 points and eight assists in Saturday night's 100-98 win over the Timberwolves, he has averaged 26.8 points and 8.0 assists in leading the Knicks to a five-game winning streak. He contributed at least 20 points and seven assists in each of those games.

The morning of the Super Bowl, the day after coming off the bench for 25 points and seven assists against the Nets in the first game of that streak, the undrafted 23-year-old became a top-trender on Twitter.

SEE PHOTOSLong Island in the pros: NBA edition

In the first two games after Lin joined the starting lineup, MSG Network reported that the Knicks were averaging a 2.55 rating, up 36 percent from their season average.

The NBA's Asian TV partners are scrambling to add Knicks games to their broadcast schedules.

Coming up with a creative Lin headline/hash-tag/poster has become a virtual cottage industry, resulting in "Lin-sanity," "Lin-sane Asylum," "Lin Your Face,'' "All-Lin,'' "Just Lin, Baby!'' and others.

"I didn't know that you can turn Lin into so many things because we've never done it before,'' Lin said. "Me and my family were just laughing. I guess we underestimated how creative everybody can be.''

"It's crazy," coach Mike D'Antoni said Friday morning as he peered at the 30 or so reporters who had turned up for the team's morning shootaround.

Crazy? Yes. And a bit humbling. Especially to the hundreds of basketball coaches and scouts along the way who misjudged Lin's talent.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lin's journey from a player who couldn't get a Division I college scholarship to a key member of the Knicks' starting lineup is the fact that it happened at all. At almost every stage of his journey, he has been passed over by those who are paid to judge basketball talent. And those who have followed his career closely believe that his style of play, Ivy League roots and ethnicity all had something to do with that.

Lin is the first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA. He is the league's fourth Asian-American and the first since Rex Walters, who played for the Nets, 76ers and Heat from 1993-2000. The first was Wat Misaka, a Japanese-American who was with the Knicks in 1947-48. Raymond Townsend, a Filipino-American, played for the Warriors and Pacers (1978- 82).

Walters, who is half-Japanese and now the head basketball coach at the University of San Francisco, believes that part of Lin's struggle was that he didn't fit the image people have of a basketball player.

"There's no question that he's breaking down barriers," Walters said. "You just don't see a lot of guys who have his skin color and nationality who are from the Bay Area fitting the basketball stereotype. He was definitely overlooked."

That's something that Peter Diepenbrock, who coached Lin at Palo Alto High School across the street from the Stanford campus, saw happen repeatedly.

Diepenbrock recalled the first time he sent Lin down to Kezar Pavilion in Golden State Park to play in a Pro-Am league. Diepenbrock said Lin walked into the gym and was told by someone, "Sorry, there's not volleyball here tonight. It's basketball."

Lin's parents, both engineers, emigrated to the United States from Taiwan before he was born. His father, Gie-Ming, introduced Lin and his two brothers to the game at the local YMCA when Jeremy was 5. His mother, Shirley, also took the game seriously.

"She was our team mother every year," Diepenbrock recalled. "Before every game, she would show up early with a computer breakdown of the team we were playing."

Diepenbrock said Lin was never a great practice player but that no one was cooler when the pressure was on. He recalled a time in the state championship game in 2006 against Mater Dei, a powerhouse Catholic school, when Lin hit a killer three-pointer with two minutes left and followed it with a layup in the waning seconds to clinch the win.

"He's really just a gamer," said Diepenbrock, who talks daily with Lin. "He does things you just can't teach. He just sees things out there that other people don't."

Lin wanted to play for Stanford or another Pac-10 school. But no Division I school would offer him a scholarship or guarantee him a spot on the team although he led Palo Alto to a 32-1 record his senior year. "I never thought much about it being an Asian thing until the following year, when I had a 6-foot-5 player who transferred in from the inner city," Diepenbrock said. "He could jump and run but he wasn't very good. And I had like eight college coaches in the gym checking him out."

Lin continued to be passed over coming out of college. Though he gained some national attention his senior year when he scored 30 points against No. 12-ranked Connecticut -- the Harvard Crimson quoted UConn coach Jim Calhoun as saying, "He's one of the better kids, including Big East guards, who have come in here in quite some time" -- no one thought much about his chances to make it in the NBA. The last Ivy Leaguer to play in the NBA was Yale's Chris Dudley in 2003, and the last Harvard player in the league was Ed Smith -- in 1954.

Said Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, "I'm thrilled for him, as you can imagine. I'm proud for him, for what he's accomplished. He's a first-class young man and he's very deserving of what's coming his way. I'm anxious to find out how he did tonight.''

Oh, only 38 points and seven assists against the Lakers.

"You can have these opportunities,'' Amaker said, "and if you're not ready or prepared for them, then there's no need. He's been a kid that's been ready and prepared for when the opportunity has presented itself, and boy, has he run with it. We're very pleased.''

Lin averaged 16.4 points and 4.4 assists as a college senior and 17.8 points and 4.3 assists as a junior. Said Harvard junior forward Kyle Casey: "Personally, I'm not so much surprised as I am proud of him. I've seen his dedication and he spends hours upon hours in the gym, honing his craft and really chasing his dreams. I know he's always ready and I'm just really happy that he's where he wants to be.''

"It's inspiring and it's motivation,'' Harvard senior forward Keith Wright said. "Those are the two words I would use. His work ethic is tremendous. I'm not surprised at all by his success. I'm just so happy for him.''

Lin, who earned a degree in economics at Harvard, went undrafted by the NBA. He signed a two-year contract with his hometown team, the Golden State Warriors, but was cut in December after one season in which he rarely left the bench. The Houston Rockets signed and cut him, and the Knicks signed him off waivers Dec. 27.

"Getting waived twice. Going to the D-League four times. Just fighting for a spot in any rotation. Being basically the 15th guy on the roster. That's tough at times when it becomes a numbers game,'' Lin said Friday.

Lin was so far down the Knicks' depth chart that they sent him to the Development League for six days in January. He promptly had 28 points, 12 assists and 11 rebounds in his only game for the Erie BayHawks.

If not for an elbow infection that set back Baron Davis in his recovery from a herniated disc, Lin still might be playing for Erie or sitting on the end of the Knicks' bench. It's a thought that is stunning to almost everyone now, including D'Antoni.

"I'd like to think it would all work out that a guy who is true to his profession and works hard would eventually get a chance," D'Antoni said. "I don't think it always works out that way. There's some randomness in the world. It's crazy.''

Make that Lin-Sane.

With Mark Macyk,

Neil Best and Al Iannazzone