Linsanity is at the Movies

A documentary about basketball star Jeremy Lin premieres next week.

For a while, he was a great unknown. Now Jeremy Lin is merely great -- and the whole experience was caught on camera.

Lin, the Bay Area native and onetime castoff of the Golden State Warriors, catapulted to international acclaim as the NBA's biggest star of Asian descent since Yao Ming. His unlikely rise from Harvard player to bench warmer to the New York Knicks' surprise catalyst last season is documented in "Linsanity," a film which has its Bay Area debut next week at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival.

Evan Jackson Leong had special access to Lin -- the filmmaker harassed Lin in his Harvard days to let him do a movie about the basketball player, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

"We started it before I had ever gone to New York. That was the coolest part of it. We have the whole journey," Lin toldESPN.com at the movie's world premiere at the Sundance film festival earlier this year. "We have me being cut, me getting waived, me going to the D-League -- the moments when I basically had to be dragged in front of the camera to be filmed, even though I didn't really want to. Looking back, it was one of the best things ever."

Leong jokes now that he was looking for an ending after Lin, the former Warrior, had been cut by the hometown team. Lin provided several.

And the story's not over yet. Lin and the Houston Rockets, with whom he signed a $25 million, three-year contract, visit Oracle Arena tonight. Think the Warriors want a do-over?

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