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Lin Gives an Assist to NBA in China

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Point guard Jeremy Lin's biggest assist of his big week - helping the NBA's business with its biggest overseas market, China.

A second-year man out of Harvard, a Californian of Chinese descent, Lin was an NBA afterthought splitting his time between the Development League and the end of the Warriors and Knicks benches since the fall of 2010. Then suddenly on February 4, guard-challenged New York took a shot and inserted him into the playing rotation. Lin responded with three straight games of at least 23 points and seven assists, leading the Knicks to victories in all three. Invisible a week ago, he's now the toast of the town. Knick fans now see him as the guy who might salvage their season.

What has an Asian player starring in New York meant for business? ESPN outlets in China, Taiwan and the Philippines have added seven Knicks games to the February schedule. The top video highlight this week on the NBA section of Sina.com were highlight's of Lin's 25-point, seven-assist night against New Jersey (1.27 million views).  All together, Knick games accounted for four of Sina.com's eight most popualr NBA video highlights. Meantime, Lin's follower count on twitter is up 60,000 over the past week, to 250,000.

The Linsanity has helped NBA.com/China amass 4.7 billion page views this season, up 43% from a year ago.  Of course, the whole thing could die out as quickly as it started, should Lin prove to be a flash in the pan. But the attention shows how starved the Chinese audience is for a new hero to follow.