Jeremy Lin Quantitative Analysis

The WSJ analyzes the various factors that have made the Jeremy Lin story an international phenomenon. As a public service we have re-sorted the list using the Journal's scoring:

Chinese/Taiwanese/American background                  25%
The novelty of Lin's Harvard roots                     18%
The fact that he happened to land in New York          13%
Injuries to Knicks players and faulty 
    scouting of other teams                            10%
Sleeping on his brother's couch                         9%
A last name that's a headline writer's dream come true  8%
His Tebow-like religious conviction                     5%
Making his debut during the post-Super Bowl malaise     4%
The phenom-amplifying power of social media             3%
The Knicks' schedule has some lousy teams               3%
When asked, Kobe Bryant said he knew nothing about him  1%
Lin's struts, head nods and tongue waggles              1%

                                                      100%

The article is clearly tongue-in-cheek, so one ought not to be too critical. That said, I believe the importance of #4, "faulty scouting", to the story has been under-rated and even misnamed.

Throughout his life, not just in the NBA, Jeremy Lin was overlooked. Stanford, UCLA, and other March madness schools wouldn't recruit him out of Palo Alto High. He was undrafted by the NBA though he was all-Ivy and helped Harvard beat college powerhouse UConn.

The real story, in my humble opinion, is his persistence in the face of adversity. He refused to abandon his chosen path, though his talents were not recognized by most basketball experts. In a time when we wonder if it still exists, Jeremy Lin shows that the American dream is still alive.