It’s February 2012 and New York City is overcome by ‘Linsanity’.

Jeremy Lin, who all 30 NBA teams had declined the opportunity to draft and had failed to make any real impact in the league during his first two seasons, is all of a sudden the centre of attention.

From absolutely nowhere, the point guard is the star of the show in Madison Square Garden as, night after night, he is suddenly leading an incredibly average New York Knicks team to an unlikely run of victories.

The attention was extremely intense, he was carrying his team and his story was an incredible one. Everyone was rooting for him during a special period which quickly became known as ‘Linsanity’.

Sadly for Lin and the Knicks, his stunning form lasted just 26 games before the point guard required surgery, which ruled him out of the play-offs. He went on to play for six different teams in the next eight years, without ever finding anything like that form again.

Linsanity was over as quick as it started but Lin’s star still shines bright. His intense, glorious run is still spoken about now, even though he’s out of the NBA at 33 and playing in China for the Beijing Ducks.

The same is going to be true of Macauley Bonne and his time with Ipswich Town.

Maybe comparing Bonne’s loan spell at Ipswich Town, in the third tier of English football, with a basketball star in the world’s biggest media market is a little bit of a stretch.

But there are a lot of similarities.

Ever since Bonne was unveiled as an Ipswich player, using photos taken in Christchurch Park, it was clear emotion was going to play a big part in his year in Suffolk.

Many of us will have known the striker, who truly made his name with Colchester, Leyton Orient and then Charlton, had once been on the books of Ipswich. But few will have been aware quite how strong his emotional attachment to the club was.

That all began to become clear in Bonne’s early Ipswich interviews, with all of that emotion pouring out as he came off the bench to score a last-gasp equaliser on his long-awaited debut against Morecambe.

‘Bonne Mania’ was off-and-running and didn’t show any signs of stopping.

Yes, there was a horror miss against Cheltenham in the early days of the campaign but his goals more than made up for that, with a stunner coming as part of his brace against MK Dons, which began a run of eight goals in seven matches.

He struck in six of those games, but it’s the one he didn’t actually score in which provided the most memorable moment of his year back home. Portman Road hushed as one as Bonne stalked Sheffield Wednesday keeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell, before he mugged the Northern Irishman once he’d put the ball on the ground. Bonne show great composure to lay the ball back for Scott Fraser who crossed for Conor Chaplin to score. This was Bonne’s goal, though.

Within a couple of weeks, the moment has been immortalised on the back of the North Stand. Not bad for a loan player just a few weeks into his temporary stay.

Bonne’s goals came in the big moments. He scored the winner as Town finally won at Lincoln, netted twice in the 6-0 thumping of Doncaster and helped the Blues secure memorable big wins at both Portsmouth and Wycombe.

He could do no wrong. In many ways he had carried his team. The start to the season had been hugely underwhelming, following a summer which brought such great expectation. But Bonne’s goals and the emotion attached to them meant it was easy to look past the negative aspects to Town’s start and enjoy the positive wave Bonne was generating.

He thumped his chest and kissed the badge and we all knew it was completely genuine and authentic. He was living so many of our dreams. Most notably his own.

So many highs and so much on his shoulders. He must have thought he was walking on air but, at the same time, all of that expectation and attention must have been tough to handle. There were weekly pictures of fans mobbing his car as he left the stadium.

Bonne had netted 11 goals in his first 16 league games as a Town player and it seemed unthinkable he wouldn’t reach the 20-mark at the very least. Talk quickly turned to how much it would cost to make his loan move permanent in January.

That didn’t happen, of course, though news that negotiations to keep him at Portman Road for the rest of the season had been successful was greeted with huge positivity on January 14.

Little did we know, though, that he’d already scored his final Ipswich goal. That came in Kieran McKenna’s first game at Gillingham just a few days earlier.

Bonne had his struggles, revealing some in his personal life and others on the pitch clear for all to see. There was interest from elsewhere during the January window, which the striker himself seemed to suggest at least got him thinking.

The confidence which looked to be pouring through him during those early months of the campaign dried up.

He still gave his all in every game. He’ll always do that. But he wasn’t having the impact he once was. He missed two good headed opportunities at Morecambe on a day where you began to feel the Bonne of old may not return.

He ended the season with just one goal in his final 30 games for the club and often on the bench.

It was tough to watch at times, given how invested we all were in a young man who had brought so many smiles just a few short months prior.

Bonne returns to QPR with his future uncertain, given the Loftus Road club are searching for a new manager to replace Mark Warburton. Does he have a future with the Championship club? That remains to be seen.

His struggles in the second half of the season mean he’s not top of Town’s summer shopping list, with McKenna certain to bring in at least one new striker. He surely would have been priority No.1 back in November.

Things are different now, but until all of Ipswich’s vacancies are full then the Chantry boy will surely at least remain in consideration. Even if that’s for a supporting role to an incoming frontman.

The chances are, though, that Bonne’s big return to his boyhood club will end after just one year of two extremes.

And if that’s the case, and as the years pass, his Suffolk loan will surely only be remembered for the good times and the smiles he put on so many faces during those early months of ‘Bonne Mania’.

The biggest smile of all, though, belonged to him.

That’s why it was so enjoyable.