Consider me skeptical of Jeremy Lin’s shooting star. A practice squad player turned Garden hero after two impressive performances, Lin makes for a nice story, but I’m not sold on him yet. That said, check out this informative article on Lin by Kevin Clark in the Wall Street Journal:

Conventional wisdom pegs Lin’s recent success as inexplicable. He was undrafted, has been released by two other teams, is rail skinny and before this week, he’d been considered a novelty who many assumed survived with only a Harvard-educated basketball I.Q. But here’s the unusual twist in Lin’s story: His success has little to do with smarts. He is, according to players, virtually unguardable.

Those who have defended him say that Lin has an extremely rare arsenal of moves—the byproduct of posture, bent knees and peculiar fundamentals. And while being a dribbling expert sounds as exciting as being a chef who specializes in porridge, Lin has made it a devastating art. Knicks guard Iman Shumpert, who first guarded Lin during lockout exhibition games and now does in practice, said his possessions play out like this: When he’s close to the basket, he starts an “in-and-out” dribble with his knees bent and his arm straight forward, creating the idea he can go inside or outside—and he does both. All of this is combined with what Jerome Jordan calls a “lethal first step.” Lin is, in short, the NBA’s undetectable star.

“He’s got these moves—he’s so fast and he’s not playing high, he’s playing so low that he’s attacking your knees with this dribble. It’s in a place where as soon as you make a move he just blows past you,” Shumpert said. “To be that low, to have it that far out with your arms, it’s pretty rare. I’ve never seen it.”

Let’s see how he does on the road tonight.

[Photo Credit:  Kathy Kmonicek, AP]