Well, as the world knows, they have a point guard now. The feel-good story of Jeremy Lin, the underdog Chinese-American player from Harvard, has made NBA fans of millions who scarcely know the 24-second clock from a goaltending call. Here’s hoping they stick around, because it’s a heck of a show. Meanwhile, how about if we dialed down the ethnic sensitivity meter until the kid settles in?

As a lifelong basketball guy married to a coach’s daughter, I’m bewildered by people who say they love the college game but dislike the professionals. Around our house, the end of the NBA owner’s lockout was cause for celebration. It was going to be a long winter without “Da lig” as ESPN’s Hubie Brown pronounces it.

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I happened to be in New York at the apogee of Lin hysteria, and I stopped into a sports store near Times Square in hopes of scoring his jersey as a Valentine’s Day present for my husband. After swimming through a chaotic but amiable crowd, despite it being near midnight, I was dismayed to find only unwanted XXXXXXXL sizes. A clerk confirmed there were no more; in fact they’d just gotten their first shipment -- and it had been decimated by feral shoppers.

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Lin is a point guard who rocketed to near-instant celebrity when he came off the bench and had a series of monster games, dragging the Knicks to a .500 record while their two biggest superstars were sitting out games. His celebrity then became a "mania" in part because he's Asian-American and a Harvard graduate, two rarities in the NBA. It also obviously doesn't hurt that he plays for the dominant team in the nation's biggest media market (also it's the fallow period between football and baseball). That's basically the whole deal, and if you'd like to learn more read Andrew Leonard's account of the early social media explosion and Alexander Chee's take on Lin and Asian-American identity. Whatever you do, don't read David Brooks' take on the Lin phenomenon, because David Brooks doesn't understand basketball or social media or race or religion or American society in general.

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And, of course, Asian-Americans are going wild.

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Days later, sometime yesterday, in fact, when I caught myself reading a post about the couch Jeremy Lin slept on before his first night as the Knicks' new star point guard, I had two reactions. First, it didn’t look big enough for him. The next one: Wait, who am I -- and more important, what is happening to me? It was like I was in a "Portlandia" sketch about Linsanity.

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Four deeply frustrating seasons in the NBA followed, and the 2005-06 co-player of the year lost his passion for the game. That changed this fall, however -- when he resurfaced in Serbia.

I spotted him in October while sitting in a Belgrade restaurant. He was playing on TV for Red Star, one of the city’s two biggest clubs, in a game against Bayern Munich. A new hairdo marked his new phase: long brown locks fell beneath his shoulders and splashed over his eyes with his every hunched, pigeon-toed stride.

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Despite his unmiraculous performance Sunday, much of the post-game attention has focused on Mavs star forward Dirk Nowitzki -- named Finals MVP.

"Nowitzki has forever been the sun the Mavericks’ planets surrounded, an orbiting galaxy of coaches and teammates that have come and gone. He was the constant, the conscience of a franchise that invoked his ethic, his character, his relentless pursuit of victory. No one worked harder. No one worked longer," the New York Daily News wrote.

"I really can't believe it," an emotional Nowitzki said after the game.

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O'Neal sent a tweet shortly before 2:45 p.m. saying, "im retiring." It included a link to a 16-second video in which he says, "We did it; 19 years, baby. Thank you very much. That's why I'm telling you first: I'm about to retire. Love you. Talk to you soon."

An inveterate pranskter who gave himself a new nickname -- or several -- in each of his six NBA cities, the Big Shamroq did not notify his latest team of his plans. He played just 37 games this year, the first of a two-year deal at the veteran's minimum salary, making just three brief appearances after Feb. 1.

"To my knowledge, he has not informed any of us that he's retiring," Celtics spokesman Jeff Twiss said.

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Speaking Tuesday morning as the Chicago Bulls prepared to face the Miami Heat in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, Noah again acknowledged making a mistake in his back-and-forth with the fan.

The NBA announced the fine Monday afternoon, one day after television cameras caught Noah using a profanity, followed by the slur, after returning to the Chicago bench midway through the opening quarter of Game 3 in Miami.

Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was fined $100,000 for using the same slur in April, directing it toward a referee.

Noah says the fan reaction he'll face "is the least of my worries."

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After the game, Noah issued a statement that "A fan said something, and I said something back. I apologized ... I got caught up. I didn't mean any disrespect to anybody." Noah didn't elaborate on what he said or his personal feelings on the "something" phrase in question, and he admitted, "I don’t know what’s going to happen," regarding the possible consequences he may face for his outburst.

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In Bergman's damning special now available on PBS's "Frontline" website, viewers are shown the side of "amateur" athletics that's almost never discussed inside the beery bubble of sports media. We see, for instance, an NCAA that makes billions off television contracts, while student athletes receive only a tiny fraction of that revenue in the form of scholarships. We see coaches making millions off long-term contracts, while players remain perpetually at risk of losing their meager financial aid. We see, in short, an Athletic-Industrial Complex that turns schools into support systems for sports -- rather than the other way around.

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"The halftime speech was rather interesting," said Calhoun, who has been known to use his loud voice and some salty language to get his point across to his team. "We knew we could really defend them. ... The major adjustment was we were going to out-will them and outwork them, and eventually we outplayed them."

The Huskies answered their coach's demands by holding Butler to 16.2 percent shooting in the second half of their 53-41 victory Monday night that made Calhoun just the fifth coach to win three national titles.

The Bulldogs shot a Final Four-record low 18.8 percent from the field (12 of 64). The 12 field goals were the second-fewest ever in a championship game.

It wasn't as if the Huskies were lighting up the scoreboard themselves. They shot 34.5 percent for the game (19 of 55) but made 10 of 24 shots in the second half (41.7 percent).

"Sometimes shots don't go in, and that's basketball," Butler coach Brad Stevens said. "But I don't want to just say shots didn't go in, because UConn had a lot to do with it. ... Great teams give themselves a chance to win even when they're not shooting well, as UConn did."

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But it wasn't a good city for big-time sports, not as the 1970s began, unless you just wanted to place a bet. There were no professional baseball, football or basketball teams for the locals to rally around. Then, in 1973, Coach Jerry Tarkanian came to the Runnin’ Rebels basketball team. As a new HBO documentary,"Runnin' Rebels of UNLV," explains, the University of Las Vegas, the city itself and college basketball would never be quite the same again.

"In the late 1970s," says comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who grew up in Las Vegas, "I was in seventh or eighth grade and the Rebels were in the top 10 in the nation, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is unbelievable.’ We didn’t have anything like that. We didn’t have an athlete to rally around.

"The Rebels were showtime before the Lakers were showtime."

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Along with passion comes controversy. Orwell explained why in his wrongheaded essay "The Sporting Spirit." People play pickup games for fun, he argued, "but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused ..."

"Serious sport," Orwell thought, "has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting."

Where Orwell went wrong was forgetting that "minus the shooting" is no small distinction. It's the biggest one in the world.

Anyway, welcome to the Sweet Sixteen. Most controversy's harmless, like my man Charles Barkley slamming the Big East conference as overrated -- something most fans residing more than 400 miles from New York City agree about. The league's inflated reputation is all about big city sportswriters and TV ratings. Eleven teams selected, nine gone by the second round. End of story.

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Six-foot-4. One hundred twenty-seven pounds. Eighth grade. It was a miracle of physics that I could walk, let alone run up and down a court bouncing a ball. Luckily, my parents launched a highly successful brainwashing campaign to convince me that being a foot taller than the average American woman was a good thing. My mother enrolled me in ballet. Like a Great Dane among perfect mini-poodles, I learned balance and coordination. My father gently tapped my scapula any time he noticed me stoop. Gabrielle Reece's "Big Girl in the Middle" was required reading.

It worked. Despite compelling genetic evidence (dad: 6-foot-4, mom: 5-foot-11), I believed that I had created this body by mentally stretching my limbs in all directions. I was determined not to let anyone outgrow me. I trained like hell -- summer camps, travel leagues, a personal weight trainer. Anyone could see that the hardwood and I were meant to be.

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The Los Angeles Lakers' five-time champion guard has said he can see the finish line of his career. He has even talked about clearing out of the way, allowing younger superstars to take charge of the NBA.

Those youngsters weren't ready to let this 32-year-old geezer out of the spotlight just yet -- not at his hometown All-Star game, anyway.

Bryant won his record-tying fourth All-Star MVP award Sunday night with 37 points and 14 rebounds in the West's 148-143 win over the East, finishing five points shy of the All-Star scoring record.

Bryant clearly wanted the trophy that would tie him with Bob Pettit in NBA history, but until taking over the starring role on Sunday, Bryant said he spent the weekend attempting to cede the spotlight. He imagines himself sliding into a background role in the NBA cacophony behind LeBron James and his Miami Heat teammates, or the Boston Celtics' four All-Stars, or even Clippers rookie Blake Griffin.

"I've been there, you know what I mean?" Bryant said. "It's not about that for me at this point in my career. It's very important for the game to continue to have young stars emerge. ... It's important for me to step aside. It's about me coming out and performing and staying healthy, and doing the right things after 15 years."

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James, whose decision this summer to sign with Miami as a free agent touched off an emotional response in Cleveland, will make his first trip back as a member of the Heat on Dec. 2 -- a return local fans have awaited since he left.

After numerous discussions with the NBA on how to best handle a potentially hostile environment, the Cavaliers will have extra security personnel in and outside Quicken Loans Arena. The Cavaliers are asking fans to refrain from wearing any obscene T-shirts or signs directed at James, who grew up in Akron and played seven seasons for Cleveland.

Team owner Dan Gilbert took issue with a headline proclaiming the Cavaliers would ban any anti-LeBron shirts. On Thursday, Gilbert said on his Twitter account: "Obviously no profanity, vulgar stuff U wouldn't want kids 2 see but we are not going 2 be the Gestapo (at) The Q."

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