While playing in an intensely hyper-competitive pickupbasketball game late Tuesday evening at Reily, I heard someoneshout “Linsanity” for the first time on the courts and cringed.

You might have guessed it: A player of Asian descent happened tomake a good play, cutting through two defenders and finishing witha high shot off the glass. I wasn’t surprised by it; I was onlysurprised that it had taken such little time to take hold. Beforeour eyes, New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin is erasing stereotypesand rewriting some record books in the process.

Lin is the first Chinese-American basketball player to play inthe NBA, which makes him an extreme novelty. Lin has both Taiwaneseand Chinese ancestry, significant considering the troubledrelations between the island and the mainland from the lastcentury. Lin’s story resonates throughout the world because of hisethnic background and his sudden success, which has left no pickupgame safe from his example of proving stereotypes wrong. Part ofLin’s story is the fact that he didn’t get an opportunity to shine- which may have been influenced by perceptions of race – untilseveral Knicks were placed on injured reserve.

The implications of Lin’s play are clear. He currently dominatesNBA headlines, and took over roughly 47 minutes of Sportscenter’shour-long segment Wednesday morning following his buzzer-beating3-pointer against the Raptors the previous evening. The biggestpart of Lin’s story, though, is breaking through the stereotypes ofour social constructions regarding race. Other Asian andAsian-American players have succeeded on the hardwood, but no onehas created a sensation like Lin has.

Lin is an anomaly in more ways than one. The fact that he is anNBA player hailing from Harvard is noteworthy, let alone that inhis first five starts he has scored more combined points than anyother player in NBA history. His 136 points scored through fivegames (27.2 points per game) is more than Michael Jordan, WiltChamberlain, Larry Bird or Kobe Bryant scored in their first fiveoutings as NBA starters.

The sudden intrigue created by an Asian-American basketballsuccess story has drawn a lame comparison to Tim Tebow from ESPN,while drawing praise from NBA commissioner David Stern and theworld’s most powerful hoops fan, Barack Obama himself. White Housespokesman Jim Carney earned his way onto sports columns nationwideby discussing Lin’s exploits, saying that Lin’s story “transcendsthe sport itself.”

It’s quite a splash for a guy who was nearly cut from the Knicksafter failing to stay on the Houston Rockets’ active roster. Fornow, the question on many people’s minds is if Lin can live up tothe newly created hype and keep it up with more 30-pointperformances.

My question is, however, if Lin’s meteoric rise will establishnew racial stereotypes as he continues playing. Not everyAsian-American deserves to typecasted as the next Jeremy Lin, justas not every black quarterback in the NFL should be compared toMichael Vick.

Lin admits that he thinks race played a factor in how nobodygave him his opportunity as an NBA basketball player, which is notaltogether surprising. Hopefully, his play will make us confrontour most primitive preconceived notions and initial assumptions -whether on the slippery floors of Reily or in an NBA trainingcamp.