In late January, he played in just one game during a seven-game stretch. That appearance was the definition of garbage time: The final six minutes of a 33-point win against Charlotte.

That's when the Knicks came to AmericanAirlines Arena on Jan. 27th. This is where Haslem tells his story.

"Before each game, I go to chapel," Haslem said.

It is held an hour before tip-off in a small room between the two teams' locker rooms. A handful of players attend. A pastor oversees it and typically asks the players if there's anything they want to pray for.

Often, players talk of health or loved ones or maybe a friend going through a tough time. Haslem has been attending these chapels for eight NBA seasons and has heard it all.

Until this one.

Lin did something Haslem never heard before.

"Can you pray I don't get cut?" Lin told the pastor and other players.

This wasn't a joke or a passing thought. Lin already was cut twice, after all. He felt he was at the end again.

Haslem never had played against Lin, never talked with him, never even seen him before this chapel. But he looked at him that night and immediately appreciated his story.

Haslem knows what it's like to go undrafted, to be not wanted by any team and forge a career through hard work and self-belief.

"I understood where he was coming from," Haslem said.

The pastor prayed for Lin that night. Haslem did, too. Then Lin went out and did what he usually did. He didn't play in the Heat's win.

"But a week later it was da-da-da," Haslem says, giving the ESPN SportsCenter entry noise.

Lin scored 25 against the Nets. He then had 38 against the Lakers. And hit a game-winner against Toronto.

He kept the improbable on the court by leading the Knicks to victory and the impossible off it by making them a lovable team for the first time in decades.

Now he's a known story. Something called the Harvard Sports Collective Analysis compared his effect on ticket prices to Tim Tebow's effect (Lin has made a greater effect). There's a movement for him to play for China in the Olympics.

Haslem will go to chapel again before Thursday's game. He expects Lin will be there, too. Maybe they'll trade hellos. Maybe not.

But Haslem is sure one thing has changed in 27 days since they last sat there.

"I don't think he'll be praying not to get cut," he says.

I never would have imagined I would look up to Jeremy Lin for inspiration.

Lin's combination of humility, hard work, faith, and relentlessness is rare. Just today I compared my own life journey to the overnight sensation. We need more humble, straight headed players like Lin for the youth to look up to and pattern their own journey after.

Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the touch and other popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google’s actions amounted to “grand theft.”

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google’s Internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.

“I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.” The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.

Whenever I pick up or even see someone use an Android device, I cringe a little inside. Sachin has a great post on his experience using an Android device for a week - a feat I admit is pretty impressive.

I'm an Apple fan - not because I'm "brainwashed," a brand bigot, or because I haven't given other products a chance. I built PC's and before I switched to a MacBook Pro, was a diehard Blackberry user before switching to an iPhone, and have Google TV alongside my Apple TV.

Apple understands design, experience, and execution. That's what keeps me using their products. I realized it after years of building walls of being anti-Apple before I realized that people weren't drinking the kool-aid, people were seeing the difference in product design and experience.

Will I stay an Apple fan a couple years down the road? Who knows, but for now, after the remembrance of Steve Jobs in the wake of his passing, I do know that the gap between Apple's products and its competitors is wider than I previously thought.