A third possibility: Helping the Chicago market, and helping the league itself.
This best aligns with David Stern's consistent underlying logic.
The league has just weathered the harsh winter of the lockout, and without Michael Jordan, viewership is experiencing a precipitous drop. Chicago is not only the third largest market in the United States, but also the core symbol of the NBA's global commercial value over the past decade. A completely rotten and unwanted Chicago Bulls is nothing short of a disaster for the league's overall broadcast contracts.
Stern desperately needed Chicago to bounce back. He couldn't simply invalidate the legally held, unprotected draft pick in Boston's hands, but he could easily pull off a different trick: have another marginal draft pick in the Chicago Bulls ' own pocket miraculously become the number one pick after a few rounds of ping-pong ball collisions.
Lin Qi placed his hand on the table, his fingers gently tracing the wood grain.
He had to admit that if he were Stern, if he were sitting in the top seat of this league, looking at the financial statements riddled with problems after the lockout, he would have made the exact same decision.
This isn't even favoritism. It's a necessary allocation of resources to maintain the overall ecosystem of the alliance.
Stern wasn't targeting Boston; he was simply saving one of the league's most valuable assets. It wasn't about fairness, it was about business. Getting the number one pick for Chicago was in the common commercial interest of all teams in the league.
This reasoning makes sense. This is Stern's most effective macroeconomic control method: the motivation is strong, the overall situation is reasonable, and there are precedents to follow.
If the deduction ended here, Lin Qi would feel at ease. Because as long as it's business, as long as it's driven by clear commercial interests, everything is predictable.
But he stared at the paper on the table, hesitating to cross out the next line.
But the fourth type took Lin Qi the longest.
He stared at the words he had written on the paper for a long time.
This is directed at the Boston Celtics, and specifically at myself.
This one seems similar to the third one on the surface, but they are fundamentally different. The third one is that Stern was helping Chicago, which is positive. The fourth one is that Stern was suppressing Boston, which is negative. Different directions mean completely different things.
Lin Qi tried to get himself into Stern's chair.
What did he see?
He saw Boston's record of 39 wins and 11 losses this season, the best in the entire league. He saw the person behind it all... nominally the president of basketball operations, but actually controlling every aspect of the team.
Lin Qi is an anomaly in this league. He's not a traditional owner, he doesn't have a family business, he doesn't rely on media connections, and he's not the kind of person who would exchange pleasantries at league dinners. He hides behind a title, but his reach extends far beyond that title.
How much did Stern actually know?
Lin Qi's thoughts suddenly flashed back to a few days earlier, to the championship parade that ended on the Charles River.
As the duck boat docked, a man in a suit stood on the pier, a small league badge pinned to his chest. The man walked over, shook hands with him, and said, "A fantastic season..." But before letting go, the man paused for an extra second.
In that split second, the man glanced at Lin Qi.
That was like a warning.
Now that he was being watched by the eyes of the highest authority, Lin Qi asked himself another question: What is the greatest fear of a leader of a professional league?
The worst thing is when an overly powerful team kills the suspense, and without suspense, ratings plummet. A too-shrewd operator can render the league's balancing mechanism ineffective... Drafts, salary caps, trade restrictions—these rules are meant to maintain competitive balance, not to allow one person to exploit every loophole before it's completely closed.
If Stern wants to suppress Boston, what tools does he have in his toolbox?
Lin Qi began listing on the paper.
Drawing lots is possible. The rules allow for a certain degree of flexibility in the results, creating room for manipulation, even though it's very difficult to prove.
Referees with a mission can do it. The whistle is an invisible hand; calling a few more match-fixing fouls in a series won't leave any evidence on video, but it can keep a team's key players on the bench.
A trade veto is possible. The league chairman has the final veto power over a trade, citing reasons such as "it is detrimental to the competitive balance of the league." No one can question this reason, because it's like a rubber band—it can be stretched very long.
Rule changes are possible. Stern has done this more than once in history, overturning the table from the ground up in an attempt to limit an uncontrollable behemoth. Once the rules are changed, the impact will be devastating. If Stern were to redefine the boundaries with a stroke of his pen, many teams' entire team-building logic would be completely rendered useless, and the entire foundation would have to be dug up and rebuilt.
He turned the paper over and wrote a sentence.
"He has more than one card. Drawing lots is just one of them, and it might even be the least significant one."
Then he stopped, looked at the sentence, and felt a sense of unease.
Lin Qi realized that he might have been playing a game of chess all along, without understanding how big his opponent's chessboard was.
Lin Qi and the Celtics won the NBA Finals. But if Stern really treats him as a variable that needs to be managed, then the boundaries of this game are much wider than he thinks.
The fifth type, the sixth type...
He declined other offers as well. Perhaps he was overthinking it; losers always find excuses for bad luck. Maybe it was all just a series of coincidences; the world doesn't have such a strong will, only a large number of random events.
He listed these possibilities one by one, and then crossed them off one by one.
In the end, Lin Qi admitted one thing: nothing could be proven.
Fourteen years have passed since the Frozen Envelope, and to this day, no one has produced a single piece of evidence. He has no video recording of that locked room, no record of Stern's phone calls, nothing. He only has a result that is "too perfect," and a bellyful of unspoken doubts.
This is the smartest part of the system. It doesn't need to actually cheat. It just needs to make cheating seem "possible," and then let every loser mentally write the script for it.
But Lin Qi didn't intend to pretend that possibility didn't exist just because he couldn't prove it.
He had seen too many "impossibilities" become reality. He knew one thing: when a person has enough tools at their disposal, they don't need to exert any force at all; they only need to give a gentle nudge at the right moment, and the result will fall in the direction they want. Stern had been in that position for so many years that his toolbox was deeper than anyone else's.
If Stern really did notice him... that's not a relaxing thought.
Lin Qi closed the notebook.
He won once, but he knew better than anyone that this was by no means the end.
An obstacle that has stood in the way of the throne year after year is a major problem for everyone.
Lin Qi's ambition was precisely to become that obstacle. He wanted to turn Boston into an insurmountable wall, so that anyone who wanted to touch the championship trophy would have to crash and bruise their head first.
This is bound to anger everyone...
Including the person sitting at the very top, responsible for making this business and market bigger and bigger.
He didn't know if Stern was targeting him.
But he has already factored this worst-case and most dangerous variable into his future actions.
Next time, on this chessboard, there will be nothing he thought he had already obtained.