"You could say Jed Kaplan bought the right stock. Or you could say he never made it to the initial public offering.

Either way, the one thing you can't take away from the owner of Shearson Financial Services, the Boca Raton-based brokerage firm, is his own special place in Jeremy Lin lore.

A fleeting place, but a meaningful place, nonetheless.

Kaplan, you see, also is an owner of the Erie (Pa.) BayHawks of the NBA Development League, which also happens to be the D-League affiliate of the New York Knicks.

His Lin story begins on Jan. 17, when the Knicks sent Lin and journeyman center Jerome Jordan down to Erie for seasoning, with the lockout-compacted NBA schedule limiting practice time with the parent club. At the time, Lin had appeared in five games for the Knicks, with a grand total of nine points and two assists. He was headed nowhere.

A basketball connoisseur, Kaplan, 47, actually thought it was a move in the right direction for his BayHawks. A former owner of the USBL Florida Sharks and Long Island Surf -- "just a basketball junkie," he says -- he was familiar with Lin from his play a year earlier with the D-League's Reno Bighorns."