Shortly after Lin was picked up by the Knicks, he visited Ho’s apartment in New York.

“He was very discouraged,” Ho recalled of that meeting. “Everyone thinks NBA life is glamorous, but they don’t understand how challenging it is. Everyone was telling him what to do and what not to do. At that time, I thought this might not be the right path for him.”

To encourage Lin, Ho brought up the sensation of the moment, Tim Tebow.

“I mentioned to him that Tebow is a guy who had been through the same situation. He was someone who didn’t get enough playing time and then busted the seam—and everything he does is a credit to God,” Ho said. “I see a lot of similarities.”

Lin and his college friends talked for the rest of the night before crashing on couches at around 4 a.m. The next morning, Ho and Wu took Lin to the same church where the two had brought the fledgling NBA player when he was trying to get drafted and again when he signed with the Warriors. Perhaps the third time was a charm.

Still, it took another month of uncertainty and another stint in the NBA Developmental League before Lin’s shot at stardom came along.

KING OF NEW YORK

Wu sat down to watch the Knicks game on Feb. 4, as he had done every time the team played since his former classmate joined the squad just over a month earlier. Wu was hoping for a blowout so that Lin might get some playing time.

But for whatever reason, Lin came in early against the Nets on that Saturday night, and the rest is history. While Lin was dropping 25 points, seven assists, and five rebounds on an unsuspecting New Jersey team and a surprised world, Wu was just as shocked as anybody.

“I was ecstatic. I was going nuts in my own living room,” Wu said. “It’s amazing what he did that game. I was texting him every five minutes saying, ‘This is crazy. This is nuts.’ I was shell-shocked.”

The amazement hardly subsided when the final whistle blew.

“Watching the highlights come up, everyone was talking about Jeremy Lin, and it was so surreal,” Wu said. “I couldn’t really believe this was happening. But I knew this was real, because we all knew he was capable of this. That’s his game.”

Halfway across the country, in Indianapolis, Ho was at an NFL party on the night before the Super Bowl and could not watch the Knicks game. When he saw someone at the party scanning NBA scores on his smartphone, Ho leaned over to ask how Lin was doing.

“He said, ‘He’s doing pretty well. He’s scored 19 points so far,’” Ho remembered. “When he said that, my eyes lit up. I was...screaming and jumping around. People thought I was crazy, psychotic. I was beyond thrilled.”

That night, Ho gave Lin a call and learned that the newest NBA hit was just as shocked as his two friends.