My good friend Alex Belth is not sold on Jeremy Lin as an NBA star. At this point, that’s an extremely reasonable position. He does point to this Wall Street Journal article, however, that speaks to Lin’s talents:

When he’s close to the basket, he starts an “in-and-out” dribble with his knees bent and his arm straight forward, creating the idea he can go inside or outside—and he does both. All of this is combined with what Jerome Jordan calls a “lethal first step.” Lin is, in short, the NBA’s undetectable star.

“He’s got these moves—he’s so fast and he’s not playing high, he’s playing so low that he’s attacking your knees with this dribble. It’s in a place where as soon as you make a move he just blows past you,” Shumpert said. “To be that low, to have it that far out with your arms, it’s pretty rare. I’ve never seen it.”

My freshman year of high school (Central HS, Bridgeport, CT) our basketball team won the state championship. Our team was small, the tallest player at 6′ 3″. They could jump, however. I remember on tip offs, the Central players would get very low, almost in a split. Opponents took a normal jump ball stance, and our players would almost always out jump them. They were coiling springs, and they came to mind when I watched Rickey Henderson hit, and now Bryce Harper. Lin seems to have discovered this trick as well.