On the first day of training camp, Garnett arrived earliest.
By the time Lin Qi reached the practice facility, dawn was only just breaking. There was only one person inside... the boy who was as thin as a bamboo pole yet absurdly tall, practicing shots alone along the baseline, over and over. Most missed, but he picked the ball up and shot again.
Lin Qi stood in the doorway and watched for a while without speaking. He could tell the kid was nervous. It wasn't stage fright, but the tightly wound strain of "I have to prove I deserve to be here." He came early because he feared he couldn't keep up; he shot over and over because he didn't know any other way to suppress that unease inside him.
One after another, the veterans arrived.
Garnett was almost stiffly polite to every veteran who walked in. He called Sam Cassell "Mr. Cassell," only for Cassell to roll his eyes and correct him: "Call me Sam. None of that." He tried to help Radja move training equipment, only for Radja to wave him off impatiently. This boy whose eyes burned with fire on the court was as quiet in the locker room as a transfer student afraid of doing something wrong.
Leaning against a locker, Cassell surveyed the unfamiliar faces, half joking and half complaining. "Wilkins is gone, Barros is gone... They traded away everyone I could pass to and gave me a bunch of rookies."
No one answered. The atmosphere grew a little stiff.
Garnett kept his head down and tied his shoelaces, not daring to speak.
In the very first team scrimmage, reality taught Garnett a harsh lesson.
He was matched up against P.J. Brown... the toughest wall on the team. On the first possession, Garnett tried to use his height to demand the ball in the low post and overpower him. The moment he lowered his shoulder, P.J. Brown's solid base sent him staggering backward, and the ball was stripped before he could get a shot off. On the second possession, he tried to crash the offensive glass, only for Radja to box him out with a veteran move and squeeze him out of the paint, leaving him to watch the ball fall into his opponent's hands.
These were the bodies of men who had played professionally for years. At only nineteen, Garnett was still too thin to withstand them.
For another high school player, those two plays might have blunted his edge.
But not Garnett.
He neither lost heart nor complained. Pressing his lips together, he committed every setback to memory. On the next possession, he stopped foolishly trying to match strength with P.J. Brown... he started using speed. With a face-up jab step, exactly the move taught in Wilkins's tape, he made P.J. Brown bite, then used those extraordinarily long legs to get past his opponent in a single stride. His finishing was still raw, and the layup caught the rim, but the sight made Adelman instinctively murmur, "Oh?"
"Did you see that?" Adelman moved beside Lin Qi and lowered his voice, unable to conceal his surprise. "He got beaten on two possessions, then adjusted on the third. This kid... he learns way too fast."
A 2.11-meter player who, after being pushed back, didn't keep forcing a contest of strength but immediately used a guard's footwork to get past you; who could grab a defensive rebound and push the ball up himself instead of rushing to hand it to a guard; who could catch the ball in the high post and still spot a teammate cutting on the weak side out of the corner of his eye...
What Adelman saw was a promising prospect who "learned incredibly fast."
As practice neared its end that day, Garnett was drenched in sweat, yet he lingered on the court and refused to leave, working alone on the elbow jumper he could never quite hit consistently.
He simply watched from the side for a while, waiting until Garnett missed again before asking casually, "Did you watch that tape Wilkins gave you before he left?"
Garnett immediately perked up and wiped away his sweat. "I did! So many times! It was all possessions where he got stopped and missed his shot. At first, I couldn't figure it out..."
"And then?"
"Then I think I started to understand." Garnett scratched his head, showing a rare trace of earnestness suited to his age, without quite so much nervousness. "He wanted me to understand first... what the guy guarding me was thinking. Only when you know what he wants to do can you figure out how to break his defense."
Lin Qi smiled. This kid really did have a feel for the game.
"Remember this." Lin Qi offered only that brief pointer, without saying anything more. "It doesn't matter how other people see you. You can play far more positions than you think. Take your time."
Garnett nodded, only half understanding. He still didn't fully grasp the weight of those words.
But Lin Qi knew a seed had quietly fallen into the boy's heart. Time would take care of the rest.
After practice ended that day, Lin Qi stood in the empty practice facility, watching the young players still putting in extra work on the court.
Garnett was practicing elbow jumpers, Finley was working on his one-step jump stop after the catch, Eddie Jones was putting in extra free throws, and Snow rehearsed his passes out of the pick-and-roll over and over. Even Bowen, whom no one thought much of, was alone in a corner, silently doing defensive slides against an imaginary opponent.
The outside world was still saying he had dismantled a playoff team.
But as Lin Qi watched the scene before him, he knew perfectly well...
What he had dismantled was a team whose ceiling was already within reach.
What he was building was a young team whose ceiling no one could predict.
After practice ended that day, Garnett didn't leave immediately. More precisely, most people had already left the facility, but he remained on the court. This time, though, he wasn't practicing elbow jumpers anymore. He was working from the three-point line.
Again and again, the basketball struck the front rim and bounced mercilessly out. His shooting percentage was painful to watch. For a big man standing 2.11 meters tall, that wasn't particularly strange.
The problem was that Lin Qi had given him a nonnegotiable requirement: once the new season began, he had to attempt at least one three-pointer every game.
The first time he heard that requirement, not only Garnett but even head coach Adelman froze for a moment. What nineteen-year-old big man straight out of high school in this league was asked to take three-pointers on his own initiative? But Lin Qi was adamant. He didn't just have to shoot them; he had to practice them.
"I don't care whether it goes in, but you have to dare to shoot." Those were Lin Qi's exact words.
So after practice, Garnett began battling the three-point line. Another ball struck the back rim. Garnett frowned and was about to retrieve it when another basketball came flying over.
Swish. Nothing but net.
Garnett turned around. Tracy Murray was standing in the opposite corner, his wrist still holding its follow-through, the motion as effortless as taking a sip of water.
"Your form is too stiff," Murray said.
"What?"
"Your shoulders." Murray walked over and picked up a basketball. "Every shot you take looks like you're completing an assignment."
Swish. Another clean make.
"That's not how a shooter shoots."
Watching that arc sweep through the air, Garnett's eyes lit up. Everyone at training camp knew how accurate Murray was... two years earlier, he had led the league in three-point percentage at nearly 46%, a number many guards would never reach in their entire careers.
"Can you teach me?" Garnett asked directly.
Murray paused, then smiled. "Of course."
And so a somewhat odd scene appeared in the practice facility: a 2.11-meter rookie straight out of high school following a shooter around to learn three-pointers. What Murray taught wasn't actually complicated: mechanics, hand position... and, of course, a shooter's self-assurance and confidence.
"Don't think, 'Don't miss.' Think, 'Make it.' Those are two different things." The ball in Murray's hands passed through the net again. "If you're wondering whether you'll miss before every shot, you've already lost."
"What if you've missed ten straight?" Garnett asked.
Murray glanced at him as though it were a stupid question. "Then get ready to shoot the eleventh. The one thing a shooter can't do is fear the next shot."
Garnett nodded thoughtfully, then kept shooting.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Swish.
At last, one went in.
In the distance, Adelman, who was tidying up the tactics board, couldn't help smiling. "He really has latched onto Murray."
Beside him, Lin Qi smiled too. "That's good."
Adelman shook his head. "Why exactly are you so determined to have a seven-footer practice threes?"
Lin Qi watched Garnett on the court. The boy was holding the ball as he ran back beyond the three-point line again. His movements were awkward, but there wasn't a trace of hesitation.
Lin Qi was silent for a few seconds. "Because someday, the league will start rewarding this kind of player."
Adelman chuckled. "There you go predicting the future again."
Lin Qi didn't explain. He simply kept watching the court.
Garnett didn't know, Murray didn't know, and neither did the entire league. In an era when everyone still believed centers had to stay under the basket, none of them knew how much a 2.11-meter big man who could dribble, pass, defend, and shoot threes would be worth in the future.
At that moment, they were merely two young men who had stayed behind in the practice facility. One taught, and the other learned.
The basketball kept rising and falling. No one realized that some things had already begun to change quietly.