James Buckley - Rising Star. Jeremy Lin

O n February 3, 2012, only a small handful of die-hard basketball fans had ever heard of Jeremy Lin. He was on less than one percent of Americans fantasy basketball teams.

On February 4, he came off the bench to lead the New York Knicks to a big win. New Yorkers were now paying attention.

On February 6, he got his first start in more than two years as an NBA player and led the Knicks to another victory while scoring a career-high 28 points and playing almost 45 minutes of that game.

Almost overnight, everyone in sports knew Jeremy Lin. Whats more, thanks to his Asian-American heritage, he was becoming a celebrity in the worlds biggest countryChina.

By February 10, he had become an international sensation, outscoring Kobe Bryant when the Knicks beat the L.A. Lakers.

And on it went, game after game, win after win, as what was almost immediately named Linsanity continued to grow. Fans who thought they had seen it all found themselves watching something new every night. Opponents who figured they could teach this kid from Harvard a thing or two discovered that he was the one doing the schooling. He won games with late free throws and last-second three-pointers. He threw perfect no-look passes for alley-oops. He made steals from some of the leagues best point guards. Jeremy was a one-man, do-it-all basketball wrecking crew.

But what made Jeremys sudden stardom so amazing was not so much what he was doing, but how he had gotten there. He had not gone to a big basketball college, he had not been drafted by the NBA, and he had been cut by two teams only a month before he hit it big.

As he led the Knicks to win after win, amazed fans from around the world had one question: Where did this guy come from?

T he story of how Jeremy Lin became the biggest thing to hit basketball since the slam dunk starts in far-off Taiwan. That island nation, located off the coast of China, is the homeland of Gie-Ming and Shirley Lin. The Lin family was originally from mainland China, in the province of Fujian. But Gie-Mings family had lived in Taiwan since the early 1700s.

Gie-Mings father was a translator who spoke several languages. Education was central to their lives, and Gie-Ming studied at Taiwans top university. After learning about electrical engineering, he was invited to move to Virginia by a former teacher. Though Gie-Ming didnt speak any English, he seized the opportunity. While working, he also attended Old Dominion University for an advanced degree. He met a fellow student there and they soon fell in love and married. Wu Xinxin, who later changed her name to Shirley, was also from Taiwan and studied computer science.

The couple moved several times but settled in California, where they had three boys. Neither Gie-Ming nor Shirley are very tall, but both had high hopes for themselves and their sons. They were also fascinated by something else in America: basketball. Gie-Ming loved to watch NBA stars like Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Julius Dr. J Erving on TV. He studied their moves and was impressed with how they worked hard and competed to be the best at this exciting sport.

In 1993, Gie-Ming and Shirley settled in Palo Alto, California. Home to Stanford University, Palo Alto is about 30 miles south of San Francisco.

Gie-Ming decided that he would teach the three boysJosh, Jeremy, and Josephthis new game that he loved. He had started to play a little bit himself. (His friends said his favorite shot was the sky hook.) He knew there was only one way to learnstart at the bottom and work hard.

So the family started regular visits to the YMCA near their house.

I realized if I brought them from a young age it would be like second nature for them, Gie-Ming said. If they had the fundamentals, the rest would be easy.

Jeremys grandmother Lin Chu A Muen often visited from her home in Taiwan. She helped to take care of her grandsons and would feed them fried rice with dried turnips to give them the energy to practice for hours.

My son, when he came home from work, would always take the kids to play basketball, said Grandma Lin. He took Jeremy to the basketball courts as soon as he could walk.

Jeremy didnt mind all the hard work. For him, it was playtime.

In 2010, he told interviewer Tim Dalrymple, When I first started playing basketball, I was five years old, and my dad put a ball in my hands. Ever since I was a little kid, I just loved to play this game. I was always in the gym. I loved playing. Thats what I did for fun, all the time.

Jeremys older brother, Josh, has a slightly different memory of Jeremys early days on the court. He told Time magazine, [Jeremy] stood at half-court sucking his thumb for about half his games that season. After Shirley stopped going to his games, Jeremy realized he had to do his best to get his mom to watch. When she finally came back to see him play, Jeremy led the team in scoring. After that he played hard in every game.

Gie-Ming kept at it, taking the boys to the gym every night after they finished their homework. All the years Gie-Ming spent watching NBA stars paid off. He helped his sons learn the game from the best players in the world. They practiced how to shoot like Larry Bird, the amazing Boston Celtics star who had an awesome three-pointer. They learned dribbling from Dr. J, one of the most exciting players in the game. They even practiced the sky hook like Los Angeles Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Jeremy and his brothers started playing on teams at the YMCA and moved on to teams in the National Junior Basketball league. In fact, Jeremy was in sixth grade when Shirley led a group of parents to bring an NJB league to their town, in part so her boys could have skilled competition. The Lin boys were all hoops-crazy, playing on every team they could.

Pete Diepenbrock, who would later coach Jeremy in high school, said, Jeremy was a youth league legend.

Josh Lin was the oldest by two years and the first to go to high school. He immediately joined the schools basketball team. He played for Gunn High in Palo Alto. Jeremy tagged along to many of the team practices, running sprints with the big boys. He also sometimes worked as a scorekeeper during Joshs games.

Jeremy knew that he wanted to have basketball in his life. He could play the game, he knew all the moves, and he was willing to work hard at it. He loved basketball so much that his room was covered with posters of the players he worshipped. Some of them played for the nearby Golden State Warriors, one of Jeremys favorite teams growing up.

After years of watching Josh play, Jeremy was finally headed to high school himself. But he had one problem. He was still shorter than his 5-6 dad. Jeremy Lin, the basketball-crazy kid, was going to be too short to play in high school.