One week ago, The New York Knicks were 8 and 15 and sinking fast.  Their coach, Mike D’Antoni was on the hot seat for failing to win gems despite having two All-Stars on the team’s roster.  Some think that the only reason he still has a job is that the Super Bowl Champ New York Giants distracted the rabid media for the last month.

Desperate to find a court leader, D’Antoni turned to Jeremy Lin, the last player on his bench.  Lin is a point guard from the perennial basketball powerhouse Harvard University, and has already been cut by two teams during his first two seasons in the NBA.

Since Lin was given his chance to start, the Knicks have been on a seven game winning streak.  Lin was named the NBA’s Eastern Conference Player of the Week, and he became the first player in NBA history to post at least 20 points and 7 assists in each of his first four starts.  Lin’s late game heroics made him an international phenomenon from New York to the Bay Area to Tiawan.  Media buzz, both social and traditional, has catapulted this 23 year old, who only weeks ago was sleeping on his brother’s coach in the LES, into the potential savior of the New York Knicks.

This all coming during a battle between the MSG network and Time Warner Cable that has blacked out games at home for a lot of fans in the Tri-State area.  While MSG stock has skyrocketed and the NBA tries frantically to produce Lin merchandise to meet the demands. This week on Shock and Awesome we asked ourselves, can this poor kid survive?

TJ and The Tux spoke with long time college coach “Turnaround” Tom Penders about “Linsanity”, Coach D’Antoni (Pender’s dear friend), and more.

Former New York Yankee Kevin Maas also joined the show to share his own experience of exploding onto the New York sports scene and becoming the heir apparent to Donnie Baseball.  Maas has the MLB record for the fewest at bats (72) to hit 10 home runs when he did it in 1991. This prompted the New York media in all their wisdom to make realistic comparisons of him with Babe Ruth. Maas provided some insight as to what Lin may be facing as the drama continues to unfold at Madison Square Garden.

The #artistoftheweek is @SaintMotel

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