March 18, 1995.
That day, Michael Jordan sent a fax through his agent to media outlets across America containing just two English words, completely changing the course of the sporting world.
"I'm back."
After nearly two years away from basketball playing minor league baseball, the god of basketball officially announced his return. The Chicago Bulls immediately announced that he would return to action the following day in a road game against the Indiana Pacers. Like a storm, the news drained the American media's attention from every other sporting event overnight.
In the general manager's office in Boston, Lin Qi watched the scrolling news coverage on television, his expression calm. For a Celtics team making a push for the playoffs, Jordan's return had both advantages and drawbacks.
The drawback was obvious. The already fiercely competitive Eastern Conference now had another monster, one conventional tactics could not handle and nobody wanted to face early. Lin Qi's original expectation had been to capitalize on the benefits of the new rules and lead the team steadily toward a fourth-to-sixth-place finish in the East. Jordan's return raised the Chicago Bulls' ceiling immeasurably, forcing a reshuffle of the entire Eastern Conference playoff picture.
But for management, the benefits were just as tangible. From that day onward, every spotlight and camera in American sports media was trained on Chicago. The friction in Boston's locker room caused by its recent losing streak, the battle for touches between Sam Cassell and Dominique Wilkins, and the negative coverage of a veteran cornerstone's All-Star snub were all forgotten by the media overnight. All the chatter and attention went to the god wearing a new No. 45 jersey.
"Let him be." Lin Qi switched off the television and told head coach Ford beside him, "Jordan's return will take the heat off us for a while. Let's use that time to get the team working together better."
Yet on the league's packed schedule, an unavoidable tough matchup had already moved into the center of national attention. In late March, the Celtics would host the Chicago Bulls at the Old Boston Garden.
Tickets to the Old Boston Garden that night were almost impossible to get. Twenty thousand Boston fans poured into the aging arena, half to cheer on a home team pushing hard for the playoffs, the other half approaching it as a pilgrimage. They wanted to see for themselves whether Michael Jordan's offensive blade remained sharp after seventeen months away from the court.
Standing at the edge of the stands, Lin Qi had kept his eyes fixed on one person since warmups began.
Not Jordan, but starting shooting guard Eddie Jones.
When the coaching staff laid out the defensive strategy before the game, Ford followed his usual practice and assigned the job of guarding the opposition's best perimeter weapon to the team's "best perimeter defender." But this time, Jones would be matched up against Jordan.
Lin Qi did not place much importance on the final outcome of this regular-season game. He wanted to see whether the ninth overall pick he had selected that summer despite the pressure had enough backbone when facing the best scorer on the planet, and whether there was any fear in his eyes.
Once the game began, the first three quarters became something close to a brutal public lesson.
After his long absence from the court, Jordan displayed an astonishing ability to read the game. With his conditioning and feel for contact not yet back to their peak, he no longer took flight for thunderous dunks as readily as he had in his younger days. Instead, he shifted his offensive focus entirely to his polished low-post game and midrange jab steps.
Catching the ball with his back to the basket, leaning into his defender with his weight, then stringing together jab-step fakes before stopping for a fadeaway jumper, Jordan had no need for brute-force collisions. Simply by precisely dismantling the defender's rhythm at the edges of the rules, he made Jones lose his balance several times on the perimeter.
There was no questioning Jones's effort on defense. He used his terrifying wingspan to contest shots to the limit and deployed every lateral slide he had painstakingly drilled in training camp. But against the seasoned Jordan, the rookie's defensive intentions still looked a little naïve. Through the first three quarters, Jordan repeatedly hit his signature midrange shots over Jones, telling the rookie with efficient scoring: you are still a long way from this level.
But Jones showed not the slightest sign of backing down on defense. Every time a fake shook him loose or Jordan scored on him, he simply gritted his teeth after landing and pressed close again. His jersey had long since been soaked with sweat, but his eyes grew brighter the longer the matchup continued.
Watching the rookie from the sidelines, Lin Qi was not disappointed at all. On the contrary, he was thoroughly satisfied. He had never expected a first-year Jones to shut Jordan down completely; nobody in the league at that point could do it. What he needed to confirm was whether the kid's mental defenses would collapse after repeated isolation attacks from a superstar, whether he would shrink back or become afraid.
Jones withstood that pressure.
In the fourth quarter, the game entered its final, tightly contested stretch. The Bulls spread the floor again, and Jordan settled into the left low post, turning his back and calling for the ball with practiced ease, ready to take Jones one-on-one.
This time, Jones no longer let the deceptive jab steps from the first three quarters easily throw his defensive balance off. Three full quarters of battling had made him like a dry sponge, absorbing the familiar rhythm of Jordan's turn and drive into his muscle memory.
The instant Jordan lowered his center of gravity to begin his signature turnaround fadeaway, Jones moved first with a quick lateral slide. He did not gamble on reaching for the ball. Instead, he gained half a step and used the side of his body to firmly cut off the route Jordan needed to turn and shoot.
Just as the contact forced Jordan to stop the ball and attempt another adjustment, Jones's long arms shot out like shadows with perfect accuracy.
Smack.
Jones knocked the basketball loose with one clean swipe, sending it rolling straight over the baseline.
Although he had only disrupted the possession and the ball still belonged to the Bulls, that clean one-on-one stop instantly ignited the twenty thousand home fans at the Old Boston Garden. Their thunderous cheers nearly tore up the old arena's wooden floor.
Jordan stood where he was and slowly steadied his breathing, then turned his head and gave the ninth overall pick before him a cold look. There was neither fury nor contempt in his eyes. It was the look of an elite scorer finding his form on the verge of the playoffs, reassessing an opponent who had not originally figured into his plans.
Without a word, Jordan retreated to the top of the arc to receive the ball again. But everyone could see that over the next few possessions, No. 45 played with greater destructive force than at any point before. Every off-ball cut and catch-and-rise jumper carried an unmistakable intent to kill.
That was a superstar's highest form of response to a young defender in their matchup.
The final result was what everyone across America had expected. The more experienced Bulls took the road victory, and Jordan finished with a high-scoring performance. But in Boston that night, what home fans talked about most enthusiastically was not the superstar's numbers, but Jones's hard-nosed baseline stop in the fourth quarter.
In the locker room after the game, Eddie Jones sat alone in front of his locker with a towel over his head, silently reviewing the offensive and defensive details of the entire game. Although defense had taken an enormous physical toll on him, his face showed none of a young player's dejection. His eyes shone with the excitement of having just faced the highest level of competition.
Wilkins came over carrying an ice bag and sat down beside Jones. He glanced at his silent junior and spoke in a low voice.
"Know why he played so seriously in that last stretch?"
Jones took off the towel and looked up at the veteran.
Wilkins spoke with the clarity of an old hand who had seen it all. "In that man's book, if he thinks you're a fringe player who's no use, he won't even bother talking trash to you. If he's willing to get serious with you at the end, even use his hardest moves to guard against you, that means he's decided you have something that deserves his full attention."
Jones froze for a moment. In this professional league, being ignored and left unguarded by an opponent was the greatest humiliation. Forcing the newly returned Michael Jordan to bring playoff standards to a regular-season matchup against him was, in itself, an invisible coronation. He said little, simply giving the veteran a firm nod.
With the marquee clash at the Old Boston Garden over, March hurried to a close amid the media storm surrounding Jordan's return.
The Celtics had an up-and-down month, finishing with an 8-8 record. The return of the Bulls' No. 45 had thrown the Eastern Conference into complete disarray. Every team on the playoff bubble was reassessing whether it should go with the flow and tank or make a push for the playoffs.
Lin Qi stood alone at his office window, looking out at the city's silhouette in the night. Jordan was back, the balance of the East had shifted, and this young team's playoff strategy needed more detailed adjustments. But for Boston, this regular-season loss had earned them an asset in the front office's ledger worth more than a win.
Their normally unflappable perimeter defensive cornerstone had finally undergone a true transformation under the league's most elite offensive firepower.
The calendar on the wall had already turned to April. The suffocating footsteps of the playoffs were drawing ever closer.