As dawn on the East Coast had just pierced Long Island's thin mist, Los Angeles on the West Coast had only just seen off its raucous midnight.
But for this city's basketball fans, sleep was out of the question tonight. They were waiting for the opening movement of the Purple and Gold dynasty's revival.
New York's media was still running endless coverage of the Knicks-Bulls season opener, turning Li Fei's poster dunk over Jordan and Malone into every kind of poster and magazine cover, with sensational headlines—The Old Gods Step Down, the New King Is Crowned!, <A 26-Point Massacre! The Final Tombstone of the Chicago Dynasty Has Been Raised!>.
Yet just one day later, the league's attention swiftly shifted from the East Coast to the West Coast.
Staples Center, the brand-new arena that had just been completed at a cost of $375 million, hosted its first regular-season game tonight.
The air still carried the scent of fresh leather seats and faint paint fumes, but stronger still was a scent that had been suppressed for far too long—a scent called "hope."
Los Angeles Lakers versus Orlando Magic.
The moment the schedule was announced, the anticipation surrounding this game had been whipped to a fever pitch.
The Magic were where Shaquille O'Neal's dream had begun—and where he had personally buried that old dream.
Back then, if not for Orlando management's shortsightedness and arrogance, perhaps there would have been no "Big Shark" leaving for Los Angeles, nor the birth of today's OK Duo.
And after the growing pains and struggles of the mid-1990s, the Lakers had finally completed what they considered their most important piece of the puzzle that summer—they had brought in Phil Jackson, the "Zen Master" who had built the Bulls Dynasty.
When the arena DJ called out the home players'