The rules are simple: You get five seconds to make a basket. If you make it, the defender is out; if you miss, you’re out.

Throughout the Toronto Raptors’ quest to their first NBA championship, I regularly arrived roughly three hours early. Given the choice between hanging out within the downtown Orlando radius of the Hamptons Inn or taking in the calm before the storm in the empty gym filled with just third stringers and assistant coaches, the choice was obvious. Let me see what Jeremy Lin was up to.

And there he was, the great Asian-American sporting icon of our generation, draped in drab warm-up gear as if he were a ball boy. Lin was in a group with three G-Leaguers in Malcolm Miller, Eric Moreland and Jordan Loyd. None of them expected to play, so they maintained fitness through endless rounds of one-on-one. It became so repetitive that Loyd and Moreland would often pound each other over foul calls like annoyed brothers in the backseat of a long road trip.

Having played more NBA games than the other three combined, Lin should have shined. What I saw instead made me profoundly sad. Lin would probe, pivot and power his way to the basket but he couldn’t consistently shake his man and get his shot. He lacked the craft to finish over the 6-foot-10 Moreland, Miller matched him for quickness, and he didn’t have the handle to elude Loyd. Eventually, Lin just started firing jumpers without even attempting to make a move, and even those shots failed to land with any level of regularity.

When the featured rotation players started to trickle in, the third stringers stopped sparring and headed for the locker room. As the media filed in — “planting their sticks” as they call it in the industry — at least a quarter of the eyeballs stayed glued to Lin as he exited the floor. Those stares belonged members of the Chinese media stationed half a world away for rare flashes of a fading star.

If my Mandarin was above a level of playing mahjong with my grandma (I really should have stuck it out in Chinese school) then I would have asked them the question that was ringing through my mind: Is this the end of Jeremy Lin?

View photos Jeremy Lin was an attraction for many, even when he wasn't playing. (Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images) More

I remember the exact moment it was reported that Lin was negotiating a buyout with the Atlanta Hawks with the intention of joining my hometown Raptors. I was at the airport, about to board a flight from Toronto to Bogota and truth be told, I was more excited about that latest tweet from Adrian Wojnarowski.

As a fan, I was ecstatic. The Raptors had just traded Delon Wright in a deal for Marc Gasol, and virile underdog Fred VanVleet was very much playing like a 5-foot-11 basketball player with a back problem. Lin wasn’t just a nice addition after coming off a strong showing with the Hawks, but at the time, he was also a necessary one. Lin didn’t have to be just a fill-in, he could have been an upgrade. I realize that this sounds ridiculous in hindsight given how poorly Lin fit into the Raptors’ schemes, but circumstances were different in February.

As an Asian-American, this mattered to me for obvious reasons, although many have since scoffed at this as if it’s trivial. To those who express that cynicism, I propose a quick thought exercise: Name seven Asian celebrities in 15 seconds without saying Jeremy Lin. I’ll bet that most of them won’t even get past five. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Yao Ming, Sandra Oh, maaaybe Jet Li, and that’s about it. That’s the significance of Lin, and in my case, it was two worlds colliding as he was going to play for my team. It would be like if Bill Murray was a reliever for the Cubs, or if Spike Lee coached the Knicks. It’s a big deal.

I wasn’t delusional — I didn’t think that Lin would make or break the championship run, but I was bursting with excitement. Seeing an Asian player on the Raptors was always a pipe dream and never once did I actually think it would come to fruition. I spent the entire five-hour flight to Colombia picturing what would come next, and writing down my thoughts.

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