There’s an inherent flaw in the Jeremy Lin-Tim Tebow comparison: Jeremy Lin isn’t polarizing. Read through a few thousand tweets, and you’ll find people calling him overrated or using a variety of racial slurs. But you won’t see anyone making a logic-driven argument against his success.

Jeremy Lin doesn’t have his own Merril Hoge. He’s won over the traditionalists with his intelligent play and nose for the basket. He’s won over the stat-heads with his…stats. He’s won over the emotional fans with his fairy-tale story. It’s not that you have to like Jeremy Lin. It’s that you have to admit that he’s onto something, even if no one quite knows what that something will become.

Here, we use five stories to break down the Jeremy Lin saga, from his trouble finding a team out of high school to his success at Harvard to his failings in Oakland to his takeover of Madison Square Garden to his status as Asian-American icon.