A Run Like No Other

What ultimately came next was unimaginable. And as the story progresses—How will he fare when teams see him for a second time? How will the Knicks gel now that Carmelo Anthony has returned from injury?—Ho still sees his friend everywhere in Beijing. As he gets up at odd hours to root on Internet streams of Knicks games, Harvard hoops' former No. 1 fan must tell himself to cool it. Ho feels guilty about wanting to text Lin so much; wanting to call him after every double double; wanting to bombard him with e-mails, out of sheer joy, just as often as marketers and companies of varying repute bombard him out of capitalistic instinct. "Every time he has a good game, I just go nuts," Ho admits, glumly. "And the effect carries on for several hours. I have to tell myself: Cheng, control yourself."

And what's best for Lin, Ho figures, is even more space than he's been giving him. In fact, considering his dangerously high levels of excitement, Ho is now trying to anticipate the future of the Jeremy Lin economy, if only to reassure himself that the madness will die down. And a stressful yet optimistic thought, once unfathomable, has crossed his mind. What if the good games never stop coming? What if a bubble refuses to pop?

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