In June 1995, Lin Qi mentally marked off the week before the draft as a "four-day window."
In other general managers' eyes, June meant only one thing... the draft.
But Lin Qi saw an entire interwoven web: in the June 24 expansion draft, the Raptors and Grizzlies would snatch players from every team's unprotected list for nothing; over the next few days, more than twenty teams would be busy assessing their losses, clearing contracts, and agonizing over protection lists; and all those anxieties and openings would converge on draft night, June 28, into leverage points he could exploit.
Others saw the draft. He saw the expansion draft, protection lists, salary pressure, rebuilding teams' psychological price points, and a ticking countdown.
And the first knot in that vast web came knocking before the window even opened.
The visitor was Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs.
The previous summer, Popovich had been the man who had almost won this game.
Back then, the Spurs had just negotiated a bargain deal with the Pistons for Sean Elliott... an All-Star forward with kidney disease whose price the entire league had driven into the ground. In Popovich's calculations, as long as Elliott's body held up, pairing him with David Robinson would give them a piece for a championship run. In the actual timeline, that year's Spurs would finish with a league-best 62-20 record.
But Lin Qi had intervened.
Using Dee Brown, a 25-year-old dunk champion in his prime who averaged 15 points and 5 rebounds, he had snatched Elliott right out of the Spurs' jaws. The whole league had laughed at him: a healthy, elite combo guard for a sickly player who might retire at any moment because of kidney disease? That lunatic in Boston had gone crazy again.
A year had passed.
In Boston, with Lin Qi carefully managing his workload and nursing his health, Elliott had not only avoided breaking down but completely overcome the threat of his kidney disease, once again showing the quality of an All-Star wing... he had been the crucial lubricant in the Boston Celtics' run to the Eastern Conference semifinals.
And what about the Spurs, who had lost out on Elliott?
Opponents doubled Robinson ever more aggressively inside, with no secondary star on the wing to space the floor and share the scoring load. Instead of the league-best record they should have had, the Spurs had slipped to just over fifty wins. Worse still, the hidden danger that Elliott's presence had barely kept in check had exploded right on schedule... Dennis Rodman, the rebounding champion, had completely fallen out with Spurs management: missed practices, suspensions, and a toxic locker room.
Popovich sat across from Lin Qi in his office, looking grim. He had come to make peace, but his deep-seated pride kept him from lowering himself too far.
"Lin Qi," Popovich said without preamble, "I want Sean Elliott back."
Lin Qi smiled. He had waited a full year for this day.
"Gregg," Lin Qi said, slowly leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the edge of the desk, "let's settle last year's accounts first."
Popovich frowned.
"You wanted Sean last summer, too." Lin Qi looked at him. "It wasn't that you couldn't see his value. You just... couldn't bear to pay the corresponding price. You thought that kidney of his was a bottomless pit, and you weren't willing to stake a healthy starter like Dee Brown on him."
Popovich said nothing. It was true.
"So I paid it." Lin Qi's voice remained unhurried. "I put up Dee Brown... a 25-year-old dunk champion, our starter at the time. I shouldered a full year of medical risk and a full year of public criticism for 'trading a healthy player for a sickly one.' The entire league was waiting to see when he would waste away under my care."
He paused, leaning forward slightly.
"And the result? He's now a star wing averaging nearly eighteen points a game."
Lin Qi's tone abruptly hardened.
"Now you come here empty-handed and expect to get him back at the original price? Gregg, you owe me last year's debt, principal and interest."
Popovich stared at Lin Qi in a long silence. He knew Lin Qi was right. This was no ordinary matter of "buying back a wing"... it was a gamble he had not dared to make, while the other man had placed his bet and won. Now he had to pay for his hesitation back then.
"Name your price," Popovich forced out through clenched teeth.
"First, I'll solve a problem that's been giving you headaches." Rather than rushing to quote a price, Lin Qi offered a carrot first. "Rodman."
Something shifted in Popovich's eyes.
"I know exactly what kind of bomb he is in your locker room right now," Lin Qi said. "Skipping practice, getting suspended, burning bridges with your management. You want him gone, but a troublemaker on a $2.5 million contract isn't that easy to move."
"You can move him?"
"I can." Lin Qi was fully confident. "But I won't be taking him on myself. I'll bring Chicago in."
Popovich froze for a moment.
"Jordan is back, and what the Chicago Bulls need is precisely someone to fill the rebounding and defensive hole Horace Grant left behind." Lin Qi laid out his analysis clearly. "A repeat rebounding champion like Rodman, high risk and high reward, is exactly the final championship piece Jerry Krause dreams of. I'll make the connection... you give Rodman to me, and I send him straight to the Chicago Bulls. You clear the bomb out of your locker room without having to haggle with Jerry Krause yourself."
This was the outline of a three-team trade. The Spurs would unload the hot potato that was Rodman, the Chicago Bulls would get their dream championship piece, and Lin Qi would play the middleman, threading everything together and collecting a toll along the way.
Popovich's expression softened somewhat. Rodman was his biggest worry that summer. With this move, Lin Qi was effectively removing the fuse for him.
"So," Popovich asked, "how much is your toll?"
Lin Qi smiled. They had finally reached this point.
"Elliott's contract isn't large," Lin Qi began breaking it down. "But in this deal, you want to clear out Rodman and salvage something from the jaws of the expansion draft at the same time. The salaries will need a somewhat more complicated package."
He began writing on a sheet of paper.
"I send you Sean Elliott... your lifesaving elixir. I'll throw in Marty Conlon and Aaron Williams, two tough guys who can add depth to your frontcourt, plus Haskin, who's sitting on the injured list, to help match the salaries."
Popovich nodded. He had no objection to this part... Elliott was his central objective, and Conlon and Williams could bolster the Spurs' frontcourt rotation.
"You send me..." Lin Qi's pen changed direction. "First, Dennis Rodman, whom I'll move on. Second, Willie Anderson."
Popovich's brows rose again.
Willie Anderson... a 28-year-old swingman, six-foot-seven, once an All-Star-caliber prospect averaging 18 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists. A major injury had reduced him to a blue-collar role, but his gritty defensive skills remained.
Lin Qi struck precisely at another of Popovich's anxieties. "Gregg, 1995 is a big expansion year. The Raptors and Grizzlies are about to come poaching, and each team can protect only eight players. Your roster is so deep, and Anderson has a contract worth over two million plus an injury history. Do you protect him or not? You know perfectly well that you probably can't protect him... in a few days, the Raptors will snatch him off your unprotected list for nothing."
Popovich fell silent. This, too, was true. Anderson was another awkward asset he could not make up his mind about that summer.
"Instead of letting the Raptors take him for free," Lin Qi spread his hands, "put him in this deal and turn him into a bargaining chip for Elliott while he still has value. I'll help you squeeze out every last drop of his trade value. You lose nothing. You should be thanking me."
The Anderson move was exquisite to its core.
For the Spurs, it meant turning an asset destined to be taken for nothing by an expansion team into a bargaining chip in the Elliott trade.
Not only would they lose nothing, they would plug the loss.
Popovich quickly ran through the accounts in his head.
Elliott was the core wing they had wanted back in the first place.
Rodman was a bomb in the locker room that could explode at any moment.
Conlon and Aaron Williams were spare parts Boston was using to match salaries, but they could also fill out the bench.
Then there was Anderson... a tough role player they could not have protected anyway, who might be taken outright by an expansion team.
Calculated that way, the Spurs would effectively be trading the problem that was Rodman for Elliott, while preserving the value of an asset they were about to lose.
The Spurs would not lose on this deal.
They could even be said to be making a killing.
Popovich's expression finally eased a little.
He looked up at Lin Qi, but did not entirely relax.
He knew all too well that the young man sitting across from him was absolutely not someone who helped others for free.
If Elliott and Anderson really were all Lin Qi was after, they could already finalize the deal.
Yet he still had not closed the folder.
Sure enough.
Lin Qi reached out and tapped the bottom of the trade proposal lightly, his tone as calm as if he were adding an inconsequential remark.
"And two picks."
Popovich's brows, which had just relaxed, instantly knitted again.
"What picks?"
"First, your first-round pick this year," Lin Qi said. "Number twenty-one. Give it to me."
Popovich frowned, but the twenty-first pick was not a painful price for a team that believed it was still in its championship window. It was negotiable.
"Second," Lin Qi's tone remained flat, though deep in his eyes lurked a gleam only he understood, "your 1997 first-round pick. Top-three protected."
Popovich froze.
"Our 1997 pick?" He almost laughed. "Lin Qi, you're overthinking this. We're getting a healthy Sean Elliott back, and we have David Robinson in his prime. We'll be major title favorites for the next two or three years. Our 1997 pick will most likely be some worthless twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth pick. What do you want it for?"
"I like stockpiling picks. You know that." Lin Qi smiled breezily. "Since you think it's worthless, giving it to me should hurt even less, shouldn't it? Add top-three protection, and if you have an off year, you can still keep the pick. If you can't show even that much sincerity, I won't help you defuse the Rodman bomb."
Popovich stared at Lin Qi, calculating rapidly.
To him, this was practically a windfall... a worthless pick he was certain would land somewhere in the twenties, with the added insurance of top-three protection that was almost impossible to trigger. Giving it away would get him the lifesaving Elliott and clear out the Rodman bomb. However he calculated it, he came out ahead.
Little did he know...
Little did Popovich know just how clearly Lin Qi understood the devastating "natural disaster" San Antonio would suffer in the 1996-1997 season.
David Robinson would suffer "a severe back injury and a fracture," playing just six games all season. Without their centerpiece, the Spurs would collapse overnight from a championship favorite in the entire league's eyes to a franchise-worst 20-62 record.
In this scenario, Lin Qi's shrewdness lay in the fact that he had never intended to compete for Tim Duncan in 1997. His precisely designed "top-three protection" was by no means a kindness to his opponent, but a way to sidestep the league's unwritten political rules and fashion a linked series of nooses specifically for the Spurs.
First, this was a firewall for David Stern. One of the most important strategies of that commissioner's life was to "de-Cardinalize" the league and support small-market teams. If Lin Qi took an unprotected first-round pick outright and the Spurs landed the first overall pick in 1997, Stern would never let Tim Duncan end up in Boston, even if he had to exercise the highest level of administrative intervention. With top-three protection in place, Stern's iron fist would not come crashing down early.
The true killing blow lay in how this clause would drive Popovich into a corner in the future.
When Spurs management decided to tank strategically for Tim Duncan in the 1996-1997 season, they would discover that Boston held them by their vital point. Under the lottery rules, even the team with the league's worst record had a substantial chance of falling outside the top three, even to fourth or fifth. If they did not tank, they would simply waste a year of Robinson's prime. But if they tanked desperately and a little bad luck dropped them outside the top three, that immensely valuable lottery pick would lose its protection and be stripped away overnight, handed straight to Lin Qi!
Unable to tank without reservation, yet forced to grit their teeth and gamble on the odds of a top-three pick, Popovich could not bear the fear of doing all the work for someone else's benefit. He would never dare stake San Antonio's next ten years on a few randomly bouncing ping-pong balls.
More frightening still, as the Spurs kept losing, the entire league would assume David Robinson's injury was extremely severe, regardless of its actual condition. At that point, other teams' general managers would eye the "likely top-five" pick in Lin Qi's hands with burning greed. The greed of the entire league would help Lin Qi drive the pick's market "expectation premium" sky-high.
The higher its market price, the more the Spurs would have to pay to regain control.
So Popovich absolutely could not wait until the lottery in May 1997. Before the February trade deadline, the moment the Spurs had completely bottomed out, Popovich would have to grit his teeth and come to Boston of his own accord.
He would have to beg Lin Qi to sell back that draft pick with its "constricting headband," so that he could tank openly and without reservation. By then, Lin Qi would have no need to battle Stern's behind-the-scenes manipulation. He would merely have to name an exorbitant price, exchanging a pick he had never intended to keep for the core assets truly needed to build a Celtics dynasty.
"...Deal."
Popovich finally made up his mind and extended his hand. He merely thought that although the young man before him was greedy, he handled business properly and could resolve an urgent crisis. How could he have imagined that he had just personally signed off on a noose that would strangle him in the future?
Lin Qi took that hand and shook it firmly, his face bearing the impeccable, sincere smile of one businessman to another.
"A pleasure doing business, Gregg."
He lifted the coffee on the desk and took a sip, his gaze passing over Popovich's shoulder to the summer heat haze spreading beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The first deadly knot of the four-day window tightened fast, while the other man remained complacently unaware.