While organizing offseason documents, Lin Qi pulled out the notebook from the bottom of a stack of draft contracts.
It's been almost a week since the championship. The trophy has been awarded, the champagne has been drunk, and the media's praise has almost run dry. His desk is now piled high with the next phase of the battle: contract extensions, the draft, free agency, and salary cap space. While the city is still celebrating, he's already fighting his next battle.
Turning to the last page of the notebook, there were only two lines of writing, neatly arranged.
"Nothing is certain. Probability is just probability. Stern was human too."
"Next time, don't treat any signature as if it's already yours."
He stared at those two lines of text for a long time.
Outside the window, the Charles River was a deep blue, and the wind made the trees on the riverbank lean slightly. He remembered that afternoon on May 22nd.
That day, the team was still playing in the playoffs, so it was a rest day without any games. He pulled the blinds down halfway, and there was a TV on the table with the volume turned up low.
At the time, he held the Chicago Bulls ' unprotected first-round pick. Last year it was only worth late first-round picks, but now it's one of the most valuable assets in this draft class.
Lin Qi's assessment of the value of the Chicago Bulls' unprotected first-round pick is doubly reinforced.
The first layer is the objective rules. Jordan suddenly retired, Pippen left, and Zen Master left, and that dynasty collapsed overnight. The Chicago Bulls were rotten to the core this season, at the bottom of the league. The rules are simple: the worse the team, the higher the weight of the draft lottery. The bottom team has a one-in-four chance of getting the number one pick, and at worst, they won't fall out of the top four.
The second layer is a certainty he cannot explain to anyone: in his memory, this lot is for the top scholar. It's not "high probability," not "it should be so," it's a 100% certainty.
The two layers of logic combined gave him a certainty that others could not match.
So he stared at the screen, more like waiting for something already arranged to go through the motions. The host started reading from the fourteenth person backwards, his voice neither hurried nor slow. Lin Qi's fingers tapped lightly on the table; it wasn't nervousness, but a nonchalant rhythm, like waiting for water to boil.
The fourth team has been revealed, and it's not the Chicago Bulls. Lin Qi's fingers didn't stop... It's impossible for the bottom team to be here; everything is as expected.
Then comes the third one.
The Chicago Bulls ' logo appeared on the screen.
Lin Qi's finger hovered in mid-air.
He stared at the bright red bull's head, a brief blank flashing through his mind. It was that feeling of malfunction, a sudden break in some kind of logical chain, before the brain could take over again.
He stared at the screen, waiting for the last envelope.
The last envelope was opened.
The top pick is still the Chicago Bulls.
But it wasn't the draw he had. It was the Chicago Bulls themselves who, with another draw they'd acquired elsewhere—a draw on the verge of the lottery—jumped to the top spot with a negligible probability.
The top pick is still from Chicago.
The cause-and-effect relationship in history has not been broken.
The top spot he held in his hand, which he thought was a sure thing, was unexpectedly pushed down to third place.
With a "snap," Lin Qi turned off the television.
He sat for a while in the room where the blinds were half-drawn, motionless like a statue.
Then, he gave himself three minutes. Three minutes to suppress that uncontrollable feeling of "falling," and then he began to analyze where the problem lay.
The first possibility: pure probability.
One in four is never a guarantee. There's a three in four chance that the bottom-ranked team won't get the number one pick. Falling to third is perfectly within the rules. The Chicago Bulls using a low pick to get the number one pick, even if the probability is low, it's not zero. Low-probability events happen every year.
Don't invent conspiracy theories for something that can be explained by luck.
Moreover, he himself is the biggest variable in this timeline. As a time traveler, he has already caused too many things to deviate from their original course. This unusual lottery draw may simply be the butterfly effect triggered by his flapping of wings...
He changed the initial cause, so naturally he must bear the unknown consequences.
This is usually the most rational explanation, and Lin Qi placed it at the very top of all his deductions.
But the most likely is not the only one to consider.
The second possibility: Frozen Envelope.
In 1985, the league held its first Lotto draw.
Lin Qi knew the true nature of this mechanism better than anyone. On the surface, the league claimed that the reform was to punish teams that deliberately tanked. But in Boston, everyone knew the truth at the bottom... The original intention of that lottery mechanism was for David Stern to counterbalance the Celtics.
The league has had enough of Auerbach the Cardinal exploiting loopholes in the old rules to reap the rewards of talent. Stern needs to flip the table and, with a showy sense of "randomness," forcibly take back control of the game from the league, interrupting Boston's intellectual domination of the league.
The first NBA Draft Lottery was broadcast live across the United States. The league was at a turning point and desperately needed a large market like New York to revitalize itself. Patrick Ewing, who ran for the draft that year, was a once-in-a-decade savior.
Then, in full view of everyone, Stern personally pulled the Knicks ' envelope out of the transparent acrylic cylinder.
That was the progenitor of conspiracy theories. Lin Qi knew the video footage from that day, and the details circulating in the shadows of the Alliance, by heart.
The accountant in charge of packing the envelopes deliberately slammed them against the edge of the drum as he tossed them in, leaving a crease that could be easily identified by running a finger along it. The envelope belonging to the Knicks was said to have been frozen in the freezer for two hours beforehand; among a pile of room-temperature papers, it felt as prickly as ice – that's called freezing.
Some people even scrutinized the video frame by frame, saying that when the drum stopped spinning, the tampered envelope stuck firmly to the drum wall due to temperature or weight differences. When Stern reached in, he even paused slightly, bypassing the other envelopes, and precisely grabbed it.
These stories, passed down for fourteen years, have become ghost stories of the league. For Boston, this system has been burdened with an "original sin" of being targeted from the very beginning.
But that was fourteen years ago. Before the lockout, the league had already changed the mechanism to a ping-pong game: a closed room, an accountant watching, and representatives from each team present. Now, if you want to tamper with it, you'd have to bribe a whole room of people.