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Friday was a glorious night for fans of Jeremy Lin, the breakout NBA star who led the New York Knicks to their fourth straight win. Count MSNBC's Chris Hayes as one of the many people who have been swept up by "Linsanity."
Lin stunned crowds when he went from the bench to starting point guard and scored 25 points for a Knicks' victory last Saturday. Since then, Lin -- the only Asian American in the league and an undrafted Harvard graduate -- has become a sensation. On Friday night, he scored 38 points and led the Knicks to a 92-85 victory against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
Hayes was loving it. The MSNBC host excitedly tweeted his praise for Lin throughout the game, and called the "Jeremy Lin phenomenon" his "favorite thing that's happened in sports in a while." He said that he should have been in bed, but was "too in the grip of #linsanity to sleep" ("Up With Chris Hayes" airs at 7 a.m. on Saturday). Hayes joked that he would be talking about Lin for the entire first hour of the show.
The next morning, he moderated a serious discussion about the week's hotly debated issues. He was wrapping up the program when he slipped his shout-out to Jeremy Lin in between reflecting on Rick Santorum's Super PAC and the Syrian uprising.
"We now know that undrafted Harvard-educated second year New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin is the real deal. We know the only Asian American in the league manages to simultaneously confirm and confound every shopworn stereotype of Asian Americans and we know above all else, if he keeps doing things like this--" he said, pausing to replay Lin's spin move from Friday night, "he's going to continue to be the toast of the town."
Chris Hayes' tweets about Jeremy Lin and some of his followers' responses: