MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: If your name is Jeremy Lin, you attended Harvard University and you live in New York City, it's understandable that some people might presume you are the NBA star. Jeremy Lin understands that, but...</s>JEREMY LIN: I am 5'2" and not 6'3".</s>MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: Five-foot-two. This is the other Jeremy Lin. He plays cello, not basketball.</s>JEREMY LIN: I have never been all that interested in basketball.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: But he can't avoid it now. He's become caught up in the phenomenon of Jeremy Lin. The two men overlapped for a few years at Harvard and it was there that the confusion about the duplicate monikers began, but they traveled in different circles and never ran into each other.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Now, as Lin-sanity sweeps the nation, this other Jeremy Lin is pursuing a graduate degree in history at New York University with a focus on how linguistics affect a national consciousness. That's a far cry from hoops.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: And yet, Lin is finding it hard to ignore the NBA star. Friends tease him on Facebook. He hears people on the subway saying his name.</s>AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: And, as he told us, sometimes it becomes a full blown case of mistaken identity.</s>JEREMY LIN: I got an email about two years ago from a nice lady in Wisconsin asking if I would autograph a basketball for her children. And I always felt bad that all these people thought that they were talking to him, so I try to write a nice note back and just explain that I'm the wrong person.</s>MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: Well, the deal with all this, the diminutive Lin says he may have to cultivate an interest in the game of basketball, but until he does, he's going to focus on his studies in the field of linguistics.
We hear from a non-basketball-playing Harvard grad named Jeremy Lin, who has to deal with the fact that a classmate with the same name is now an NBA star.