[MikeWaters]

If you missed the Knicks vs. Lakers on Friday night, you missed one of the very special moments in sports. Asian-American kid, who did nothing but excel in high school and college, passed over time and time again, gets an opportunity to play for the Knicks due to a series of injuries. He excels in his first game with significant minutes. Then he starts the next two games, and has all of New York buzzing, with excellent performances. But they were against mediocre teams, and now Kobe and the Lakers are coming to town. The hype was intense. Could this kid (whom some are now calling Roy Hobbes-esque, because of how he came out of "nowhere") perform yet again, on the biggest stage in the world, with all the naysayers predicting failure?

Of course it's all history now. He slayed. He absolutely slayed. 38 points is more than he ever scored at Harvard. He had the night of his life and actually outshone Kobe, who loves to perform in front of the MSG crowd, just like Jordan did. It was absolutely brilliant, and so pure. Jeremy Lin had me hooting and hollering, jumping out of my chair, doing fist pumps, and rewinding time and time again. The interplay between the crowd and Lin was just incredible. It was electric. The crowd wanted to be dazzled, it wanted to reward, and it did.

I had the feeling that I was watching something special, something monumental, that I would rarely ever see again in my life. Hyperbole? Time will tell, but I feel like this game was a watershed moment in sports. By itself, the story of a kid who comes out of nowhere and lights the world on fire is awesome. But you throw in that this kid is Asian-American and it's a whole different level. It's the equivalent of some white trash kid from Kentucky showing up at the olympics and winning the 100m dash against all the West Africans, black Americans, and Jamaicans. Think about it? How many Asian-Americans can you think of who have excelled in the big three (football, baseball, basketball)? We've had Yao Ming and a couple of other tall Chinese players, but they weren't Asian Americans. Friday night was the Jackie Robinson moment for Asian Americans. I'm not trying to diminish the historical importance of Robinson, I'm just saying that Asian Americans have never had a moment of any kind! Thus, this is the one great moment.

My wife attended a dinner party that Friday night, and as it turns out almost all of the husbands of these women (mostly Asian, but at least one white woman) are Asian-Americans. The women all commented that their husbands were at home watching Jeremy Lin and this game. I know some of these men, and I doubt very much they are big basketball fans. I don't think of any of them play, for example. But that all were tuned in to that game Friday night? That tells me that something important happened. That this story had already caught on with all those Asian Americans out there.

The Asian American male occupies a strange niche in American society. He is regarded as smart, competent, professional, likely to excel in medicine or science. But even this professional competence is dismissed as a kind of "Asian borg"--can do work, but isn't creative and lacks personality. Doesn't play sports, doesn't fish, doesn't hunt. And most important, doesn't get the girls. The Asian American male is on the very bottom of the ladder when it comes to the attractiveness scale. The white male is the default choice. The black male is stereotyped as masculine, with sexual prowess. The Hispanic male commands a certain kind of maschismo, the "Latin lover." But the lowly Asian American male commands nothing. The Asian American female on the other hands is widely regarded as attractive, even fetishized. You probably know more than one white male who was primarily attracted to Asian females ("yellow fever"). But how many white women do you know who were primarily attracted to Asian American males, compared to white women who were attracted to other races (white, Hispanic, black)? The same kind of phenomenon is widely reported regarding black females--lowest on the attractiveness scale. Black males/white female relationships are much more common than white male/black female ones. And the same applies to white male/Asian American female vs. Asian American male/white female.

The Asian American male can feel both successful and kicked around at the same time. Thus the importance of a Jeremy Lin, the Asian-American everyman who just kicked over the can, who embodies the cultural hope of many Asian American males. To kick ass. On their own terms. To not be judged by their appearance, but by their abilities. To dunk it in your face. To get the girl. And not just because he helped her with her math homework.

This cultural touchstone may not be recognized by the greater body of Americans right now, but I think something very important happened on Friday night. Something that will reverberate going forward. Lin described an immigrant father who fell in love with basketball and taught his sons. Not that many Asian American kids have that father. But more will. And they will come. And someday it will seem quite quaint and strange that there was a time when the NBA had no Asian-Americans. Until Jeremy Lin.

After the game, when Lin was being interviewed mid-court, to see this kid's unaffected joy held back by a kind of humble reserve, but the smile said everything, and I couldn't help but feel joy for this young man as I wiped away a tear.

That is what sports is about. That is why we care. For moments like this that teach us something about the human condition.