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Borrowing from Devin Lenda's morality play, one assumes, ESPN/Grantland's Jay Caspian Kang demonstrates a solid grasp of the tendency of people with no control over a situation to imagine they are the person with control over that situation and then justify practically anything the actual decider does even when it hurts them because the projector's actual self is not part of the fantasy so, like any non-existent character in a drama, can't be hurt.

Imagined control is intoxicating. Without this type of projection, the Democrat versus Republican show would be impossible. The (inevitably very inaccurately) imagined perspective of Obama is the lens through which Obama fans view Obama's actions. Same for Romney fans, of course, and so on.

Here's Kang:

When, exactly, did fans start to believe that their best interests and the best interests of team owners were the same? When did, "Well, I don't think [INSERT NAME OF REALLY RICH GUY] should spend his money in a way that would provide maximum entertainment value for me, the paying fan" become the go-to response? We have no idea how much money Jim Dolan stands to lose and how that affects the Knicks' future. And Knicks fans shouldn't care. They should just want the most entertaining, best product on the court. A team with Jeremy Lin is a better product for consumers than a team without Jeremy Lin. That should be 99 percent of every fan's calculation...

Jeremy Lin owes Jim Dolan? In what America does that make sense, except in the America where every employee owes every rich guy undying loyalty for life because the rich guy happens to sign his checks? Especially when said employee was the linchpin in a TV contract and when his popularity was the leading factor in a $600 million increase in the value of said rich guy's company? Oh, wait, that's exactly what Jim Dolan's America looks like. We are all just paying witnesses...

But hey, adding salary money when you're already paying the luxury tax for FLAT, Melo, Tyson Chandler, Marcus Camby, and others doesn't make "basketball sense," right? And spending Jim Dolan's money wisely has become the burden of every Knicks fan, right? And the logical move, empirically speaking, would be to blindly side with the one rich owner who has done more to disgrace the good name of logic than anyone else in the history of the NBA?

From a logical fan's perspective, the decision to keep a wildly popular, potentially transformative player should never be about money. It's true that Jeremy Lin started in only 25 games for the Knicks, but I challenge anyone to come up with a more telling, dynamic 25 games. More important, we — meaning everyone who is not Jim Dolan and his investors — are not paying the luxury tax.