We can’t get over Jeremy Lin’s Asian-ness. And David Stern LOVES that.

I’ll be the first to admit that even when he was making Harvard slightly less irrelevant in college hoops than it ever had been, I didn’t expect much out of Jeremy Lin in the pros. Let’s be honest, the pipeline of talent that does run from the Ivy League goes to Wall Street, not the NBA. Forgive me for thinking that Lin had a better chance of distinguishing himself at Goldman Sachs.

Linsanity is running rampant

Now you’ve got every pissant mid-major blogger out there taking credit for knowing about Lin way before you did, because they’re the kind of people who actually get off on dissecting every nuance of a Dartmouth at Harvard matchup. But knowing the dude’s name and predicting his future are two totally different things. They didn’t predict Linsanity any more than you did.

In two years, Lin has been waived by two different NBA franchises. And even his current team, the New York Knicks, thought so much of him that they brought in Baron Davis to share time at the point with Toney Douglas. You know, the same Baron Davis whose best days are a tiny speck in the rear view mirror.

But here we are with Lin being the most buzzed about story that the NBA has produced since LeBron’s free agency courtship. And there are a lot of cool angles going on here. There are seeds of Tom Brady in this in terms of a guy being picked up almost as an afterthought and then achieving largely unexpected success.

Granted, Lin’s impact has only been in the last two weeks, so I’m not comparing bodies of work here. But right after he was drafted, did you predict that Tom Brady would become this Tom Brady? No, you didn’t, just like you didn’t expect two-time reject Jermey Lin to become toast of the NBA Jeremy Lin.

There’s also the aspect of the Knicks actually making noise for doing something other than sucking ass. And once Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire are back in the lineup, the process of them coming to grips with and trying to coexist with this wave of Linsanity will be fascinating to behold. Here’s a hint: Amare will handle it better.

And then there’s the race issue. In case you haven’t noticed, Lin is Asian-American. Even if you don’t really care about that, you end up caring, because it’s all a lot of people talk about. Here’s Jason Whitlock tweeting after Lin dropped 38 on the Lakers:

Floyd Mayweather took time out from ducking Manny Pacquiao to weigh in on the racial aspect of Linsanity:

What Mayweather and others with this flawed point of view fail to understand is that the hype surrounding Lin doesn’t necessarily serve as a slight to African-American athletes. In the context of the NBA, they are the majority and Lin happens to be the first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to compete in the league. THE FIRST.

What’s at play here is an athlete being claimed by a very specific demographic. Asian-Americans see someone they identify with, just as Evangelicals see that with Tim Tebow. And in this age of cable TV and the 24 hour news cycle, untapped demographics are what broadcasters, sports leagues and advertisers thirst for. Think Fernando-mania, this time on steroids.

That makes David Stern the big winner in this Lin craze, just as Roger Goodell benefited from the all the Tebow jerseys that were bought by semi-casual fans who previously didn’t give two shits about the NFL. When he sees Lin on the cover of the Daily News, I bet the shitting eating grin on Stern’s face rivals that of any 9-year old tearing open that first present on Christmas morning.

When Yao Ming pulled up lame and had to call it career, Stern lost his best entree into the massive and still mostly untapped Chinese market. But Yao was an import whose actions were dictated by the government that still claimed him as its own. In Lin’s case, Stern has found an export that he can offer up without having to take orders from a bunch of commies. Yao was big business, but if he gets to call the shots, Stern can turn Lin into an even more effective ambassador to China.

ESPN is no different, either. They sucked every drop they could of Tebowmania and they’re hellbent on doing so with Linsanity as well. It’s a shameless ploy to cater to a very specific demographic simply for the sake of making more of them more than just casual watchers. And from a dollars and cents standpoint I can’t blame them one bit.

Your cable or satellite bill is by and large dictated by what Disney wants to charge for ESPN. And right now they charge the highest per-household subscription fee of any cable channel, approaching $5. Viewership has to be sustained or somehow increased to justify that cost. And when an athlete like Lin or Tebow provides the opportunity to gain new converts, ESPN jumps on the opportunity. You want the fires of your Linsanity stoked? Then the Mothership has you covered.

All the while, Lin dribbles away as an innocent bystander. He didn’t mean for his rise to show that one of the few things that a lot of white and black people can agree on is making fun of Asians and Hispanics. And he most certainly couldn’t have predicted that he’d become David Stern’s next pawn in the latter’s quest for world domination.