Thanks to his dis­man­tling of the defend­ing cham­pion Dal­las Mav­er­icks on Sun­day after­noon, the leg­end of Jeremy Lin con­tin­ues to grow. He has Knicks fans fired up in ways that haven’t been seen since their early 1990s heydey, and he’s cre­ated an entire cot­tage indus­try in the artistry of pun­ning.

By now, even those who don’t know a pick-and-roll from a cab­bage roll have been inun­dated with Jeremy Lin puns. A sim­ple three-letter sur­name that birthed the sim­ple Lin­san­ity! has turned into a full-court word salad press. A quick sur­vey of posters and Post head­lines has unleashed not just Lin­san­ity, but also Happy Va-Lin-Tine!, All He Does is Lin, Lin Lin, Lin­ning Time, The Mighty Lin, Lin-Possible is Every­thing, Lin­sane Asy­lum, Lin­sane in the Mem­brane, Lin­derella Story, May the Best Man Lin, Lin­fat­u­a­tion, Lin Diesel, Lin-tensity, and Jeremy’s per­sonal favorite, Super Lin­tendo.

The prob­lem for local pun writ­ers is that it by all appear­ances, the kid can play. The nov­elty of a Harvard-educated twice-cut Chinese-Taiwanese-American bas­ket­ball savant will wear off, but his skills as a com­pe­tent point guard won’t. Lin may have been over­looked ini­tially, but given free reign in Mike D’Antoni’s offense, he’s thriv­ing. (See: Nash, Steve.)

While this is great for the MSG faith­ful, it poses a major prob­lem for bas­ket­ball writ­ers. That doesn’t mean that the ongo­ing love­fest needs to stop. The fans are lov­ing it, the play­ers are feed­ing off of it, and the NBA blog­ging com­mu­nity are soak­ing it up like a LeBron choke in the Finals. Like the Knicks, the pun train has too much momen­tum to hit the brakes.

All hoop-centric word­smiths need to do is check out the other play­ers on the court. Lin has raised the game of three other Knick recla­ma­tion projects, so let’s keep the pun ball rolling.

Iman Shumpert: Relieved of his point guard role, the rookie out of Geor­gia Tech has gone back to what he does best, smoth­er­ing oppo­nents with sti­fling on-the-ball defense.

Iman I– Can!
Here’s Your Chance, Do the Dance, Called the Shump!
Shump Day!
Iman Believer!
You Da Iman!

Landry Fields: The second-year player out of Stan­ford looked lost in the pre­vi­ously stag­nant Knicks offense, but with Lin at the helm he’s back to zip­ping around the court and fill­ing up the stat sheet.

Blue-and-Orangeberry Fields For­ever!
W! See Fields!
Put on Your Landry Best!
The Killing Fields!
One if By Landry, Two if by Fields!

Steve Novak: The 6’10” Mar­quette marks­man bounced around the league for five sea­sons before find­ing a home rain­ing threes from behind the Gar­den arc.

Novakula!
Cham­pagne Super­Novak!
‘Vak­tory!
‘Vak’s-n-Nation!
‘Vak the Rip­per!

The beauty of expand­ing the pun-ditry to the other reborn Knicker­bock­ers is that Lin can still be part of the equa­tion. Imag­ine if you will, a home game where Lin dri­ves the lane, draws in the defense, and fires a pass to a wide-open Novak in the cor­ner for a game-winning three-pointer.

Here you go head­line writ­ers, this one’s a free­bie:

Lin One For the Rip­per!

Pun intended.