The moment the ball went in, time seemed to stand still throughout Madison Square Garden.
The sound of the basketball swishing through the net was somehow clearly audible in an arena filled with twenty thousand cheering fans.
It was the sound of fabric tearing, of water splashing, of a heart being struck. Then the stillness shattered, and time began to flow again.
Twenty thousand people sprang from their seats at once, like a volcano erupting for the first time after tens of thousands of years of silence.
Some were shouting, their voices indistinguishable from cheers or sobs; some were jumping, leaping even higher than the players on the court;
Some simply stood there with their hands on their heads, their mouths wide enough to fit a fist, their eyes as round as saucers, unable to make a sound.
The arena's roof trembled—not physically, but with the kind of shudder that made you feel the roar of the crowd might rip it off at any moment.
A middle-aged man wearing a Li Fei jersey knelt in the stands, hands clasped, looking up at the replay of the game-winning shot on the big screen. He murmured something under his breath, as if praying—or giving thanks.
His eyes were red, and tears ran down his cheeks, but he didn't wipe them away.
The young man beside him wrapped his arms around him. They held each other like father and son—or like two strangers who had become brothers in that moment.
An old man with white hair sat in the front row, holding up a sign that read "THREE-PEAT." His hands trembled, and so did the sign, but his eyes were steady.
He watched Li Fei, who stood on the court with his hands on his hips, his expression as calm as if he'd