In his three bolt-from-the-blue games with the Knicks, Jeremy Lin has proved too quick for opposing defenders, too quick for professional basketball’s marketing machine, even too quick for New York’s black market in counterfeit goods.

On Thursday, a savvy fan who wanted to be the first on his block sporting a Jeremy Lin jersey was, for the most part, boxed out. No official merchandise bearing Lin’s name or number — 17 — was on sale at the shops in the lobby of Madison Square Garden or at any authorized retailers of Knicks merchandise. A search of the shops and sidewalk peddlers along Canal Street, often the place to go for imitation goods in Manhattan, proved fruitless.

The city may be in the early stages of what has been called Linsanity, a mass hysteria especially prevalent among residents who share Lin’s Asian heritage, like the chef David Chang. The owner of the Momofuku restaurants, he said the emergence of Lin as the Knicks’ starting point guard in the past week was “the most important event for Asian-Americans in sports history.” Mr. Chang said that dressing like a superfan was not his style, but that even he might feel compelled to buy a jersey.