Then Jeremy Lin happened.  So much has been said about the 6 foot 3 inch Harvard graduate, about how he garnered nearly no interest from hometown Stanford, meandered through two NBA teams and a couple of stints in the D-league, and is now lighting up the NBA while playing in the most high pressure environment in the league. This has all been well established by the talking heads and pundits on ESPN, and with good reason. The story has every component of the underdog that we all love to consume 24 hours a day, but my favorite part of this many-layered cultural phenomenon is the passion that Lin plays with. After every big shot, Lin and his teammates can be jumping up and down and celebrating like it’s the state playoffs. The intensity of Lin’s face after every spectacular play shows me that this matters to him. It may sound like a simple idea, but take it from a Knicks fan, we haven’t really seen too much of that at the Garden in recent years. There are few worse things in sports then watching a team that is uninspired and doesn’t care. That has been the plight of the post-Ewing Knicks fans. The youthful, ecstatic joy with which Jeremy Lin plays basketball has been my favorite thing to observe in the NBA this year.