The atmosphere in the locker room was quite oppressive and somber, with only the monotonous hum of the exhaust fan.
"Thud!" Garnett slammed his sweat-soaked towel onto the floor, splashing water everywhere. His thin face was horribly grim. Gary Payton, while strapping an ice pack to his knee, cursed, "Is this basketball or a lawsuit? I can barely breathe! The whistle blows at the slightest touch!"
Rasheed sat on a bench in the far corner, head down, silent. His large hands gripped his knees, veins bulging on the backs of his hands, and he resembled a volcano on the verge of eruption, the air around him radiating a dangerous aura.
Doc Rivers strode into the locker room and slammed Mark marker on the whiteboard. "Get your focus back on the game! I know the calls were off tonight, but we can't waste our energy arguing with those striped-shirt idiots. Second half, change tactics! Be more decisive on offense, don't drive into the middle! On defense, keep your arms up high, be clear, and don't give them any excuse to blow the whistle!"
After explaining the tactics, Doc Rivers walked up to Rasheed and patted him hard on the broad back. "You controlled the game very well in the first half, Rasheed. Keep it up, the team needs you on the field."
Rasheed slowly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot. He simply nodded stiffly.
In the third quarter, the Celtics were forced to change their usual positional play, significantly reducing the low-post physical battles that were prone to being called fouls.
Pierce received the ball a step beyond the three-point line and pulled up for a jump shot against the defense. After grabbing the rebound, Gary Payton stopped setting up and instead pushed the defense like a mad dog on the fast break. Garnett also abandoned his post-up game and instead punished his opponents with his increasingly refined mid-range and long-range shooting.
"Let's see how you officiate this!" Garnett roared at the baseline referee after hitting a turnaround jumper.
With their superior strength and high shooting percentage, the Celtics went on a 14-6 run, extending their lead to 10 points.
But with just two minutes left in the third quarter, after Rasheed returned to the court, Donaghy's "closing-in operation" began.
Rasheed got into position on the edge of the paint and received a pass. He made a perfect three-threat step, then suddenly accelerated towards the basket. Clifford Robinson moved to help defend, but he was a beat too slow and crashed into the jumping Rasheed, even subtly and hard cutting into Rasheed's shooting hand.
"Smack!"
A crisp sound of a hand hitting the basket echoed under the basket.
Despite being fouled and losing his balance in mid-air, Rasheed managed to flick the ball into the net before crashing heavily to the floor.
There was no whistle.
Donaghy stood less than two meters from the spot where the foul occurred, a whistle between his teeth, his face expressionless.
Rasheed scrambled to his feet, his pent-up rage from the previous three quarters finally bursting through his defenses. He turned and roared at Donaghy like a raging Tyrannosaurus Rex: "Are you fucking blind?! This isn't a 2+1?!"
"Beep!!!"
Almost at the same second that Rasheed swore, Donaghy decisively blew his whistle. Without the slightest hesitation, he crossed his hands to form a glaring "T" and coldly pointed it at Rasheed.
Technical foul.
Rasheed stood there, stunned.
Garnett and Billups on the bench sprang to their feet like springs, while Doc Rivers rushed to the scorer's table and roared. Lin Qi, sitting in the VIP section, narrowed his eyes.
On the field, Rasheed took a few deep breaths, the veins on his forehead and neck bulging. He took half a step forward, his huge fist clenched, as if he was about to rush up and tear the referee to shreds at any moment.
But at the last moment, he bit his tongue hard.
A strong, metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He forced himself to stop, enduring the intense physical pain, and turned around abruptly, walking silently toward the substitutes' bench.
Doc Rivers immediately substituted him to prevent him from getting a second technical foul and being ejected.
Rasheed sat at the very end of the bench, ripped off the wristband from his wrist, and clenched it tightly in his palm. He stared intently at Donaghy on the field with an extremely terrifying, murderous look in his eyes.
Section 4.
Boston's players completely dominated the game, giving the referees no chance to create any suspense. Faced with overwhelming talent, even Donaghy's biased calls couldn't erase the double-digit deficit. Garnett delivered two consecutive volleyball-style blocks under the basket, while Pierce hit a cold-blooded three-pointer from the top of the arc, completely extinguishing Detroit's hopes of a comeback.
The final whistle blows.
Celtics 104:99 Pistons
The Celtics narrowly won Game 2, taking a 2-0 lead in the series. But those five points were earned by Boston battling their way out of a quagmire under extremely dirty officiating conditions.
After the game, Lin Qi stood alone in the shadows at the corner of the players' tunnel, his hands in his suit trouser pockets, watching coldly as the three referees walked off the field side by side.
Lin Qi suddenly spoke as Donaghy passed by him.
"Mr. Donaghy," Lin Qi's voice wasn't loud, but it sounded exceptionally clear in the empty corridor, "The whistling tonight was quite rhythmic."
Donaghy stopped and turned to look at Lin Qi. His eyes were unwavering, and a smug, fake smile played on his lips. "Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Lin Qi. Ensuring a fair competition is my duty."
Lin Qi looked at him as if he were looking at a corpse.
"I hope you can blow just as 'fairly' when you're at the Palace of Auburn Hills."
Donaghy smiled, said nothing more, turned and walked away from the passage at a leisurely pace.
Lin Qi stood still and lit a cigarette.
"Very good." Lin Qi chuckled coldly in a low voice, "Continue your performance."
That evening, Lin Qi returned to his office.
He closed the door, picked up the secure phone on the table, and dialed the private investigator's number directly.
"How's the progress?" Lin Qi went straight to the point.
On the other end of the phone, the private investigator's head sounded excited, "We've got a breakthrough, Mr. Lin. Donaghy's vigilance is lower than we thought. We accessed his offshore accounts through special channels and found several cash flows from unknown sources. Most importantly, we checked the underground betting markets in Las Vegas... Tonight, the betting companies have the Celtics as 9.5-point favorites."
Lin Qi exhaled a puff of smoke. "And we won by exactly 5 points. So, those who bet on the Pistons to win made a killing."
"That's right, extremely precise score control," the person in charge said. "The timing of these large sums of money entering the account coincides perfectly with several upset matches he officiated recently."
"That's not enough to put him out of jail for life," Lin Qi said coldly. "I need the complete chain of evidence. Which underground casino is he working with? The Italy Mafia or private bookmakers on the East Coast? How is the money being laundered? Keep digging deeper."
"Understood. There's another situation," the official lowered his voice, "We've noticed that Donaghy has been in frequent private contact with several other senior referees lately, including Joe Crawford. They seem to be coordinating some kind of 'judgment standard'."
Lin Qi's eyes sharpened instantly, like a drawn blade. "Raise the monitoring level. I need to know exactly what they're talking about. Every phone call, every message, I need a transcript."
"Mr. Lin, conducting unauthorized wiretapping of active referees is a federal felony if discovered by the FBI."
"I didn't hire you to provide legal advice," Lin Qi said firmly. "I'm paying for intelligence. If anything goes wrong, the Boston legal team has the ability to drag the district attorney into court for ten years. Go ahead and do it."
"... clear."
Lin Qi hung up the phone, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the twinkling lights along the Charles River.
Donaghy's intentions were crystal clear in tonight's game. He was disrupting the Celtics ' offensive and defensive rhythm and trying to emotionally provoke Rasheed. This was a carefully designed "points control test" for his own benefit.
Donaghy was testing Boston's limits, testing David Stern's limits, and also testing the extent to which the referee's whistle could determine the fate of a super team.
The third game, two days later, will be played at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit. In the atmosphere of 20,000 fans hurling insults at the Pistons on the road, these biased referees will surely act even more recklessly, trying to make a killing at the Pistons ' home court.
"Trying to pull some dirty tricks?" Lin Qi sneered through the swirling smoke. "Then let's see whose methods are dirtier."