Lin Qi flew to Minnesota.
Kevin McHale, the legendary power forward from the Celtics' Big Three era, had the sort of low-post footwork that belonged in textbooks. He now worked in the Minnesota Timberwolves' front office.
The atmosphere at their meeting was a little delicate at first.
"Lin Qi." McHale looked the young man up and down, half joking, half genuinely regretful. "I have to tell you something. That high school kid this year, Garnett... I originally wanted to draft him."
Something stirred inside Lin Qi. He knew this was no joke. In the original timeline, McHale had selected Garnett with the fifth pick and personally paved his road to greatness.
"He ranked very high in our scouting reports." McHale shook his head. "I had everything ready. Then you went and snatched him away with the third pick. I sat in that room cursing for ages... That kid should've been mine."
"Mr. McHale," Lin Qi said, without a trace of smugness. Instead, his sincerity caught McHale somewhat off guard. "That kid is exactly why I'm here today."
"Hm?"
"I snatched him away," Lin Qi said. "But something has been weighing on me. I found an offensive coach and a defensive coach. This kid has all that talent, but there's one thing I can't give him..."
He looked at McHale.
"A truly elite set of back-to-the-basket footwork in the low post."
McHale froze.
"Plenty of people around the league understand post play," Lin Qi said, emphasizing every word. "But when it comes to the art of low-post footwork, to using fakes, footwork, and rhythm to toy with men stronger than you in the paint... very few people on this planet understand it better than you do. You were the most elegant low-post killer of your era."
"I don't need to turn him into a center who can only play with his back to the basket... That's not the kind of player he is," Lin Qi said. "But if an all-around forward can threaten opponents from the low post too, he becomes impossible to stop. I've come here shamelessly to ask you a favor-not the Timberwolves, but you personally... Could you give this kid a few lessons during the offseason?"
The office fell quiet.
McHale looked at the young general manager who had snatched away the player he wanted, only to turn around and ask him to teach that player. His expression was complicated.
He should have been annoyed. Yet somehow, that lingering irritation over being beaten to the punch slowly melted in the face of such sincerity.
Besides... Garnett had once come so close to being his. In a sense, something of the Celtics, something of McHale himself, ought to have flowed through this kid.
And there was another unspoken understanding Lin Qi had left unsaid: the kid had gone to Boston, after all, to the very Boston Celtics team where McHale had made his name. Somehow, the passing down of these skills had taken a long detour and returned to where it began.
McHale was silent for a long while, then suddenly smiled.
"You bastard." He shook his head. "First you steal the kid I wanted, then you come asking me to teach him. Lin Qi, your skin is thicker than Barkley's ass."
"Then... you're saying yes?"
"It's only a few lessons." McHale stood and patted Lin Qi on the shoulder, his tone carrying a veteran's particular appreciation for talent. "I'd like to see just how much that kid who should've been mine can do. If he really is as incredible as you say..."
He paused.
"Then teaching him well would mean... I haven't let that green uniform down."
Bringing in McHale only filled in the "low post" section.
There were still a few corners of Lin Qi's blueprint that outsiders could not begin to understand.
Adelman would unleash his offense, Thibodeau would forge his defense, and McHale would teach him lethal low-post moves... Those were the visible pieces. But Lin Qi was also preparing things for Garnett that lay deeper, things whose power would only emerge ten years later.
He quietly brought in three more people.
The first was Jack Sikma.
An old center who had retired only a few years earlier. Most people remembered him as nothing more than a big man from the previous era who could shoot a little. But that was precisely what Lin Qi valued... Sikma had been one of the rare early 6-foot-11 centers who could extend his range to the perimeter. His free-throw shooting was absurdly accurate; at his peak, he could lead the entire league in free-throw percentage.
"Jack, I don't need you to teach him to run out and shoot like a guard," Lin Qi told Sikma. "I need you to teach him something only a big man like you understands... For someone who's 6-foot-11, the shooting advantage isn't speed. It's height, stability, and a release point so high nobody can truly contest it. Teach him how to use that advantage."
Sikma was hired as a "special big-man shooting consultant." Every summer, he would spend two or three weeks in Boston working specifically with Garnett: popping out for catch-and-shoot jumpers, expanding his range from the elbow to the top of the arc, positioning after pick-and-rolls, trailing threes in transition, and that crucial lower-body balance when a big man shot.
The second was Chip Engelland.
In 1995, Engelland was still relatively unknown and had only just started his own shooting camp. But Lin Qi knew this man would become a universally recognized elite shooting teacher in the league, the most precise sculpting blade for refining shooting mechanics.
Lin Qi did not give him a big NBA assistant coaching contract. He only hired him as a "shooting mechanics consultant"... He did not have to be with the team every day; he would fly to Boston for one week each month to work specifically on Garnett's ball path into his shot, free-throw rhythm, and footwork after the catch, while also fixing Finley's and Eddie Jones's spot-up threes along the way.
And Engelland's work was practically a match made in heaven for Lin Qi's data company. Each player's release point, the difference between his shooting percentages from the left and right corners, the differences between catch-and-shoot and off-the-dribble shots, the gap between practice and game percentages, the breakdown of shooting form under fatigue... Oliver and Sagarin's models would record and quantify all of it, turning it into repair checklists precise to the millimeter in Engelland's hands.
The third was Pete Newell.
The old man's "Big Man Camp" dated back to the seventies, and he was a recognized master of fundamental footwork for big men. Lin Qi brought him in for one reason alone: to build Garnett's foundation... pivot feet, balance on turns, establishing position before the catch, and finishing around the basket. These dullest, least conspicuous fundamentals were the bottom layer of firebricks in a furnace.
Sikma would teach him how a big man could extend his range, Engelland would fix his mechanics, Newell would build his foundation, and McHale would pass on lethal low-post moves... Four men, four dimensions, with no conflict between them.
The scouting director stared at the ever-growing list of consultants, utterly bewildered.
"Lin, we've put together an entire college town's worth of professors for one nineteen-year-old rookie?" he said in amazement. "How much is this going to cost? Besides, he barely even takes a three in a game right now. Why work on his shooting?"
"I don't need him to become a shooter right now." Lin Qi watched the tall, thin figure on the practice court and spoke slowly. "My requirement for him is very simple... For these next two years, you don't have to shoot threes in games. But you have to practice them every single day."
"Why?"
Lin Qi did not answer. He could not say the answer aloud.
He only silently recited to himself the blueprint that even Adelman and Sikma could not see.
...Five years from now. When everyone in this league is still stubbornly stuffing every 6-foot-11 big man into that bloody battleground beneath the basket; when every defensive coach is still drawing up defensive maps using the same old methods for handling traditional centers...
Kevin Garnett will stand at the top of the arc.
With one composed jumper after another, he will drag the opposing center, step by step, out of the paint he depends on for survival. Then the entire league will suddenly discover, to its horror, that the defensive map it has used for decades has been torn straight down the middle by a power forward who was supposed to stay beneath the basket, leaving a hole that can never be patched.
And the seeds of all of this have to be quietly planted today, while this nineteen-year-old kid still only dares to attempt half a three-pointer per game.
"Practice," was all Lin Qi repeated to the scouting director. "Not needing it now doesn't mean he won't need it later. I've never been betting on today."
In the stretch between that offseason and training camp, a remarkable sight unfolded inside Boston's practice facility, unseen by outsiders.
Forty-year-old Kevin McHale rolled up his sleeves and personally taught a tall, thin nineteen-year-old how to run defenders in circles with footwork and fakes in the low post. On another court, white-haired Pete Newell watched the kid's pivot foot, correcting him over and over; beyond the free-throw line, Sikma demonstrated a big man's frighteningly high release point; and Engelland held up a video camera, recording every shot Garnett took so he could later compare it frame by frame with the data company's reports.
Garnett was like a sponge that had gone hungry for nineteen years, ravenously soaking all of it into his body.
On the sideline, Adelman sketched out his high-post playmaking system, Thibodeau frowned at the defensive heat map, Willie Anderson waited to get out there and teach the kid a lesson with his 104-kilogram frame, and Sam Cassell stood with his hands on his hips, ready to ignite the kid's competitive fire with trash talk.
Lin Qi stood at the highest point in the practice facility, quietly watching everything below.
Adelman, Thibodeau, McHale, Sikma, Engelland, Newell...
One by one, he had brought almost everyone he could find in this era who best suited Garnett into Boston.
To have them polish a genius, sculpt a genius.
When all of this truly took shape, the Garnett who stood before the league might be greater than the one in Lin Qi's memory.
Or perhaps, because of the careless fluttering of his butterfly wings, he would grow into someone entirely different.
Yet in that moment, Lin Qi suddenly felt that this uncertainty might be the most precious thing about his journey through time.