Chinese sports fans had been looking for a new hero to call their own. Their top football league was upended in the past two years by a vast match-fixing scandal (39 players, referees, owners and officials were recently sentenced to jail for their part in it). Chinese basketball had seen no heir to Yao Ming as international standard-bearer. Then along came Jeremy Lin, a Taiwanese-American phenomenon who has been the story of the season in the National Basketball Association (NBA). American basketball is hugely popular in China, as are successful foreigners of Chinese origin. Mr Lin ticked both boxes, as he set about amassing an awful lot of points on the court. On February 20th Chinese time, Mr Lin's team, the New York Knicks, played a game against reigning NBA champions, the Dallas Mavericks. The game appeared to pitch two very different players against each other: Mr Lin against the once-hyped, Chinese-born-and-trained Yi Jianlian of the Mavericks. Mr Yi, it had been hoped, would succeed Mr Yao as a Chinese star in the NBA.

Mr Lin's popularity in China exposes a number of curiosities about the country's attitude to sport. Most obvious is that he is an American who is proud of his family's roots in Taiwan, an island that China claims—and a fact that complicates China's efforts to claim Mr Lin (and they have tried). But there are three other reasons Mr Lin's stardom could fluster the authorities. First, he is openly Christian, and the Communist Party is wary of the deeply religious. Second, he is not a big centre or forward, the varietals which are the chief mainland Chinese export to the NBA, including the Mavericks' Mr Yi (who stands at 7ft, or 2.13m tall). And third, in a sporting sense he emerged from relative obscurity, having been educated not in a hothouse American sports college but at Harvard, a prestigious but somewhat less sporty American university.

Mr Lin is everything that China's state sports system seems unable to produce. As a young boy, he might even have been denied entry into China's sports machine because of his modest height (he now stands at 6ft 3ins). One look at his parents, each of unremarkable stature, might have made evaluators sceptical. The Chinese machine excels at identifying and churning out physical specimens, rather than point guards (Mr Lin's position), who must be quick-witted, tactical maestros.

Indeed, Mr Lin's parents might never have allowed him anywhere near the system. To put a child (usually an only child) into the Chinese sports system is to surrender his upbringing and education to a bureaucracy that demands sporting success at any cost. If a child were to be injured or fail to make the grade as an athlete, he would for nothing have been separated from his parents for lengthy stretches—and given up his chance at an all-round education, to boot. Although poorer parents from rural areas may welcome the chance for their child to attend a sports school, with the chance of upward mobility, most middle-class Chinese parents prefer to see their children focus on schooling and exams. So China almost certainly has its own Jeremy Lin, but there is no path for him to follow.

China Central Television (CCTV), the national monopoly that usually broadcasts NBA games, has not joined in the "Linsanity", as American commentators have called the fever surrounding Mr Lin. CCTV told NetEase, a Chinese internet portal, that most Knicks games could not be shown owing to the time difference. But if the timing allows, it said, the games "will definitely be broadcast preferentially." It remains to be seen if that will happen.

Fortunately for Chinese sports fans, the internet provides a ready-made alternative to the state television system. Most of Mr Lin's games are being made available by live stream on the portal Sina.com. The game against Mr Yi's Mavericks was an exception, a mysterious black hole on Sina.com's NBA schedule. Frustrated Chinese fans had to go looking for dodgier streams elsewhere online. What they found was a closely fought game between the two teams, with Mr Lin again starring and leading the Knicks to victory 104-97. More poignantly, they saw their countryman, Mr Yi, remaining on the bench for the entire game, reduced to the role of spectator. As a glimpse of the Chinese sports system versus American soft power, it was perhaps deemed not fit for viewing.