And on the ninth day, Jeremy Lin rested.

He needed it. The fatigue was showing Saturday night, when his jumpers came up short in Minnesota against the Timberwolves and his drives didn't quite get to the basket. He had six turnovers and missed two-thirds of his 24 shots.

Of course, Lin was also the Knicks' co-leading scorer, and he hit the free throw that gave his team the lead with 4 seconds to play on the way to its fifth consecutive victory.

The T'wolves defended him like a piñata, bodying him when he attacked the rim, muscling him whenever they could. It's understandable if he was tired after starting on consecutive nights in different cities for the first time as a pro. Heck, before last week, he hadn't started any two games as a pro.

Or one, for that matter.

Pro basketball players don't come out of nowhere. No college is under the radar. No country is too far away or so obscure that its best passers, quickest dribblers and deadliest shooters are unknown to the sharp-eyed fans, never mind the professional scouts.

Yet no one saw this coming.

The numbers are almost too familiar already. In New York's last five games - five of just seven in Lin's 43-game NBA career in which he has logged more than 20 minutes - the second-year guard has scored 134 points with 40 assists and 21 rebounds. He developed instant chemistry with Tyson Chandler on the pick-and-roll, teaming with the veteran center for Chandler's highest point total of the season against Washington on Wednesday night.

Lin single-handedly solved the Knicks' point guard woes and has electrified New York fans and blown up the Twitterverse with his exploits. His spin move against the Lakers was one of the greatest "are you kidding me?" moments on the Madison Square Garden court.

The Lin tale has everything:

Unusual background. Check. One of the few Asian-Americans to make it to the NBA, child of two engineers who moved to California in the 1970s.

Overcame adversity. Check - sort of. His main "hardship" was attending one of the nation's most prestigious institutions, Harvard. The school started playing intercollegiate basketball less than 10 years after the game was invented. Eleven Harvard players have been taken in the NBA draft, according to Basketball-Reference.com, but Lin was not one of them. He was cut by two teams before latching on with the Knicks and was sent down to the NBA Development League two weeks before becoming a star. (In his one D-League game with Erie, he had a triple-double: 28 points, 11 rebounds, 12 assists.)

Subtle skill. Check. For all his ability to drive into the paint and to hit the open jumper, it's his court awareness that draws raves. "I just think in order for someone to understand my game," he told The New York Times in 2010, "they have to watch me more than once, because I'm not going to do anything that's extra flashy or freakishly athletic."

Quirky personal detail. Check. With his NBA life up in the air until very recently, he has been staying at his brother's apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side, sleeping on the couch. That'll do.

Ideal context. Check. Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni's preferred up-tempo style calls for a point guard with vision - Steve Nash perfected the role in Phoenix - and then helps ratchet up the statistics of that guard and his teammates.

Timing. Check, check and recheck. Lin's initial scoring breakout took place the night before the Super Bowl. His first start came the night after the New York Giants' victory, when a happy New York fan base was looking for more things to get excited about. He has stepped into the often-vacant spotlight in the usually dead time between the end of football and the onset of March Madness.

It probably doesn't hurt that he plays for a team in the media capital of the world, though a certain Denver quarterback managed to get plenty of attention without that advantage. In the modern decentralized media age, it doesn't matter where you play. You can be just as overhyped in an average-size market as you can in a big one.

Especially when your sport is on ESPN.

Still, it's stunning to consider that a week and a half ago, Jeremy Lin was a third-string NBA point guard who would likely be bumped to fourth-string if Baron Davis ever got healthy. Now, after five games in which he at last got the chance to show the full measure of his abilities, he's the toast of New York (Eli Who?) and a national story.

Fortunately for him, the best place to be in a hurricane is in the eye, as everything swirls around you.