Story By: by Margot Adler

Jeremy Lin items are for sale before the basketball game between Lin’s New York Knicks and the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday in New York.

Jeremy and Zach Allen, fans of basketball player Jeremy Lin, attend the Knicks game Wednesday. The 16- and 12-year-old are from Oceanside, Long Island.

As crowds of people entered Madison Square Garden, excitement mounted.

Damir Hot is a Sacramento fan but said he’s still rooting for Lin. “I have been following basketball since as long as I have been living. You don’t see this,” he said. “Look at the smile on my face. See that smile? I just can’t wait to see him play.”

Twelve-year-old Zach Allen of Oceanside, Long Island, held up a Lin towel and said he likes Lin’s style: “I like how he doesn’t dunk that much and he’s not cocky.”

There’s more media here than anywhere else, and Lin is a great story: a rare Asian-American and Harvard grad in the NBA, unnoticed, dropped from two teams. But something else is going on in this city with all this “Linsanity,” “Divine Lintervention” and so forth.

There’s a wistfulness that suddenly, out of nothing comes something; a team that was nowhere comes into the light.

“Madison Square Garden is the most famous arena in the world, and it has been a little bit shameful that we have had a team like this for the last 10 years,” said fan Jason Kimi. “Finally we are showing everybody in the whole world what New York is all about.”

Outside the entrance, Casey Dinkin stood with her guitar. A lifelong Knicks fan, she was hoping that playing some songs might gain her a ticket. She even made up a song about Lin.

“Scoring so many points per game, and no one knew your name,” she sang. “We are going to win a championship now, thanks to you. Jeremy Lin, we have been waiting for someone like you.”

As sports blogger Bryan Harvey wrote the other day: “In a world of infinite data and endless observation, Lin has now broadsided us like an unseen torpedo, fired from a submarine we didn’t even know existed.”