NEW YORK // Linsanity lives. Forget the off night that had NBA fans worldwide wondering if the Jeremy Lin story was too good to be true. It is still plenty good, all right.
The Harvard sensation was back at his whirling ways Sunday, and thestage could not have been better - against the defending champions on national TV.
Lin was Lin, and that was good enough for the New York Knicks to win.
Hours after the opening of "Saturday Night Live" spoofed the Lin phenomenon, the point guard had 28 points and a career-high 14 assists to carry the Knicks to a 104-97 victory that ended the Dallas Mavericks' six-game winning streak.
Lin is the NBA's first American-born Taiwanese player. His parents moved to California in the 1970s.
The Lin era got its launch when the former part-time player was called upon with two starters missing and the Chinese-American star answered with the most points of any NBA player in his first five starts since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976.
Lin's fairy-tale rise to fame is further enhanced because he was cut by two clubs before the season started.
"Looking back, it's like I was watching them win the championship last year, and that's obviously where this team wants to go," Lin said.
"This is helpful to us, not just to me but to us, just to be able to see where our team can go and what we can become, and I think that's the biggest takeaway from tonight," he said.
Lin already owns the highlights and headlines, and now he has some new admirers after bouncing back from a nine-turnover performance against lowly New Orleans by dominating a Dallas defence that made even LeBron James look ordinary in the NBA finals.
After the final buzzer, Lin got a hug from a fellow Bay Area product, and someone who knows a thing or two about playing the point - Jason Kidd, the Mavs' key man.
"He looks a little bit like Steve Nash out there," Kidd said, referring to the two-time MVP of the Phoenix Suns.
In a game of wild momentum swings, the Knicks reeled off 17 straight points in the first quarter, fell behind by 12 in the third, then pulled it out to beat the Mavericks for only the third time in the last 20 meetings.
"I think they found something in Lin, and they're starting to piece together a team that can beat anyone," Mavs guard Jason Terry said.
Dirk Nowitzki scored a season-high 34 points for the Mavericks, who had been playing championship-level defense but became the latest team who could not stop Lin.
"I was talking to them before the game and they were saying they had an answer for Lin," said Knicks center Tyson Chandler, who played for the Mavs last season, "I guess they were dead wrong on their scouting report."
The Mavs came in holding opponents to an NBA-low 41.4 percent shooting. They were limiting teams to 39.2 per cent during the winning streak, but the Knicks carved them up for 54 per cent in the first quarter as Lin ran the offence flawlessly.
Lin actually started his NBA career with the Mavs' summer league team in 2010. But owner Mark Cuban said Lin preferred to play closer to home, and he signed with the Warriors, who cut him, as did Houston in December. The Knicks claimed him off waivers.
"It wasn't luck because there were how many other teams that could have signed Jeremy and the Knicks were the ones who went out and got him," Cuban said. "So they saw something and they were smart enough to go out and get him."
