Why was Lin overlooked?

The compressed NBA season has delivered a rare run of exciting basketball for beleaguered Toronto basketball fans of late.

On Friday, the Raptors hosted legends-in-waiting Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen as Toronto got a rare win over the aging Boston Celtics. Sunday, the Los Angeles Lakers arrived and the Raptors took them to the wire before falling victim to another Kobe Bryant magic act.

And now the city's basketball fans are scrambling over themselves to get their first glimpse of the biggest draw of all: New York Knicks' supernova … Jeremy Lin.

It's crazy but true: the biggest story in basketball is the Knicks' undrafted, minimum-wage point guard who has emerged from something beyond obscurity into a record-setting, mold-breaking, pun-inspiring icon.

Lin -- until recently (barely) known only as the Harvard grad who became the first Asian-American to play in the NBA -- has started four games for the Knicks and led them to a 4-0 record while averaging numbers that 2011 NBA MVP Derrick Rose would envy: 27.3 points, 8.3 assists and two steals while shooting 51.3 per cent.

The question is why?

And not: why is Lin tearing up NBA defences?

That seems obvious: he's got elite ball-handling skills and enough athleticism to penetrate and finish at the rim -- the calling card of all the best point guards.

The more probing question is: why Lin was passed over by every team in the NBA at least three different times only to explode when he finally saw the floor?

"There are always success stories that jump out. There are a lot of very good basketball players out there and it shows that the difference between being in the NBA and being a playground legend is a very thin line," said Raptors president Bryan Colangelo, who had Lin in Toronto for a pre-draft workout but passed on the chance to draft him as every other team did in the summer of 2010. "But you need to be in the right situation for your talent to shine."

And there is no way to overstate how brightly Lin has lit up the sport. Since the NBA-ABA merger in 1976-77, no one has scored more than the 109 points Lin racked up through his first four career starts: Not Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal or Kobe Bryant.

No one.

There really aren't any comparisons. It's as if Tim Tebow himself came from above and only played the last three minutes of football games.

That Lin's four starts were preceded by the 25 points and seven assists he chipped in off the bench that sparked the five-game winning streak the Knicks will bring to the Air Canada Centre Tuesday only adds to the Linsanity.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Lin's tale is that there is no obvious gap in his resume to explain how he fell through the cracks.

The NBA has seen its share of undrafted players carve out long and important careers, but most had a clear flaw -- too small for their position; couldn't shoot; too slow; suspect character -- that kept them at the bottom of the pile. And when they have emerged it's usually a gradual process of opening eyes around the league.

Lin has been a moon shot with a crossover. Before Lin, a native of Palo Alto, California, faced Kobe Bryant of the Lakers on Friday night, Bryant allowed he didn't know anything about him.

Lin dropped 38 points on him and got his attention: "Testament to perseverance and hard work," Bryant said. "Good example for kids everywhere."

It's also a testament that despite millions spent on finding NBA players, if you don't fit in the right box -- and a Chinese-American point guard from the Ivy League is not that box -- it's easy to be overlooked.

And it's not just an NBA thing: Lin won the state championship of California in high school but didn't earn a single scholarship offer from schools in his own backyard. He wasn't even heavily recruited in the Ivy League.

And if you're looking for the heart-warming back story of the one scout, general manager or coach who believed in Lin when no one else did, forget it.

The reality is no one single talent evaluator executive can claim credit for believing that Lin's success at Harvard -- where he was a candidate for NCAA player-of-the-year honours as a senior -- would translate.

He opened some eyes when he tore into No.1 pick John Wall of the Washington Wizards in the NBA's summer league but his only contract offer came from the hometown Golden State Warriors where the signing was thought to be a gimmick to connect with Asian fans in the Bay Area. Lin got limited playing time and was waived in the off-season as the Warriors tried to clear cap space.

Is this basketball's Moneyball moment, where teams realize their missing great talent because they don't pass the eye test?

Maybe it will -- now. As one NBA talent evaluator said: "We do get enamoured with athleticism and size and that may create a predisposition to a certain kind of player."

But Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Moray, considered the NBA's leading 'Moneyball' practitioner, had Lin on his roster briefly and waived him too.

"We should have kept (Lin). Did not know he was this good," Morey tweeted. "Anyone who says they knew misleading U."

And the Knicks? Surely point guard guru Mike D'Antoni, the same guy who brought out the best in Steve Nash in Phoenix (or maybe it was the other way around?) knew what he had when New York signed Lin to a non-guaranteed contract to be their third guard.

Umm, no. Lin was on the verge of being waived a couple of weeks ago as D'Antoni cast about for a veteran point guard to hold the fort as their third point guard until Baron Davis returned to health, when it was inevitable Lin would be cut again. Lin knew it too: he's been sleeping on his brother's couch rather than get his own apartment in Manhattan.

Lin's opportunity wasn't inspiration but desperation.

The Knicks had lost 11 of their past 13 games and Lin had made just five appearances playing more than six minutes just once.

With nowhere to turn and the Knicks outside the playoffs, D'Antoni put Lin on the floor against New Jersey and looked like a genius when Lin began running through the Nets defence like a river.

There's the natural tendency to make Lin a story about a plucky kid who seized the moment.

And there's some truth in that. "If you love sports you have to love what Jeremy Lin is doing," Steve Nash tweeted. "Getting an opportunity and exploding!!"

But celebrating Lin's emergence is like saying the system worked when a guy wrongfully convicted of murder is finally freed because of DNA evidence: sure, justice has been served and the wrong guy didn't spend his life in jail, but should it have ever come to that?

Michael Grange will provide insight and analysis on all the top stories in sports.