Nets coach Kenny Atkinson once wondered about PG Jeremy Lin: ‘Is this kid any good?’

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NEW YORK — The New York Knicks were on the road at some point during the 2011-12 season and, as Kenny Atkinson remembers it, a fringe NBA player named Jeremy Lin was getting torched during a 3-on-3 practice game … by another assistant coach.

“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Is this kid any good?’” Atkinson said he wondered then.

This, of course, was before “Linsanity,” before the undrafted point guard out of Harvard captivated the world with a stretch of stunningly dominant play later that same season.

The Knicks had claimed Lin off waivers in late December 2011; Atkinson was New York’s player-development assistant at the time, assigned to work with the team’s end-of-the-bench guys.

“He was kind of an afterthought,” Atkinson said of Lin. “He was part of the group that didn’t play, and I was working with that group on a daily basis.”

Kenny Atkinson, right, was an assistant with the Knicks during Jeremy Lin’s stint with that club; the pair has been reunited with the Nets, where Atkinson is now head coach. Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

Because they weren’t getting any in-game minutes, Atkinson pushed Lin and his other teammates who were out of the rotation hard during practices, putting them through rigorous drills, 1-on-1s and 3-on-3s that often included Atkinson himself.

Atkinson and Lin bonded in the gym, arriving early and leaving late.

“I mean, this guy wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning,” Lin said of Atkinson, according to the New York Post. “I’ll text after a game at midnight, 1 o’clock when I go home, and I’ll say, ‘Hey, can I look at those turnovers? Can I look at the upcoming team? How they run pick-and-rolls?’ And he’ll have the film ready when I walk into the facility the next morning.”

Said Atkinson: “I think it was just the trust that I was going to be that guy that was going to be with him every day — even if he was probably going to get cut and go back to the D-League and might be out of the league.

“But one thing about him was he just kept at it.”

Atkinson gives Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni credit for always believing in Lin and …

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