Jeremy Lin not only outscored Kobe Bryant by 38-34 on Friday night at Madison Square Garden, but he also had the audacity to better by a point Carmelo Anthony’s team high this season.

“He got 38 points in the context of team basketball,” Coach Mike D’Antoni said after his Anthony-and-Amar’e-Stoudemire-less Knicks beat the Lakers, 92-85. Was that a message to the injured Anthony, who watched from the bench, where he could not disrupt the resurgently fluid D’Antoni offense with isolation play?

It turns out the much-maligned Knicks bench isn’t that bad, as long as it is starting and Lin is facilitating. Surely more plot twists are ahead in a season that continued Saturday in Minneapolis with the Knicks’ fifth straight victory, 100-98 against the Timberwolves. But the new Disney-like paradigm stars some guy off the street who found a pair of magical sneakers.

Stories like Jeremy Lin’s rarely happen in big-money professional sports, and especially with a franchise like the Knicks, long known for big-ticket acquisitions like the none-too-compatible forwards Anthony and Stoudemire last season.