Lin Qi did something no one had expected.
He took the initiative to let Boston's media into the practice facility.
For a closed-door intrasquad scrimmage, he threw the doors open and let reporters watch, photograph, and write whatever they wanted.
The scouting director had tried to dissuade him. "Lin, this team's barely practiced together for a few days. It's a mess. If you let the media in now and things go badly, won't tomorrow's papers eat us alive?"
"I want them to see it go badly," Lin Qi said casually. "They've spent the whole summer waiting to laugh at me... to watch me ship out the old roster and bet everything on a high school kid. Rather than let them speculate outside, I'd rather bring them in and let them see their fill."
What he left unsaid was that he wanted these people to witness this team's growth firsthand. Even today's ugliness would provide a contrast for the beauty to come.
On media day, the press section was packed. Gaston came too, sitting in the best seat and putting on airs. Auerbach the Cardinal huddled in a corner, smoking one cigar after another.
Lin Qi himself, however, never stepped onto the floor.
He stood behind a second-floor window, looking down from above. He left the floor entirely to Adelman and Thibodeau.
Below, for the first time, the two new coaches properly split the team into two squads.
The green team: Sam Cassell, Eddie Jones, Willie Anderson, Radja, and Magic Johnson. The core of the starting lineup, with experience and reliable scoring options. This was the "present."
The white team: Wesley, Person, Finley, Garnett, and P.J. Brown. Athleticism, defense, and three-point shooting, plus a nineteen-year-old monster. More talent, and more chaos on the floor. This was the "future."
The reporters already had their pens ready. They were all waiting for the same sight: that high school kid making a fool of himself.
In the first quarter, Garnett was overwhelmed.
Not physically. In speed and leaping ability, Garnett could keep up with anyone on the floor.
His mind was overwhelmed. Not because he couldn't understand what he saw. Quite the opposite: he saw everything.
Radja brought the ball to the high post, Eddie curled off the baseline, a handoff, a pick-and-roll, a roll to the basket... He had seen these moves countless times on tape, and he recognized them all. The problem was that, amid the lightning pace of live action, he saw too many things at once.
When Eddie curled out, he wondered whether to close out; after taking just one step, he worried about Radja rolling behind him; when he turned to find Radja, he caught someone cutting on the weak side out of the corner of his eye.
By the time he finally sorted through the clues in his head and made a decision, the ball was already in.
The next possession was even worse. Radja took up position at the high post again, and Eddie came around another screen. This time, Garnett got smart and closed out early. But Eddie never received the ball. It went straight to an open Willie Anderson on the other side, followed by another pass and another cut. In the end, Radja still scored easily beneath the basket.
For the first time, Garnett realized that the biggest difference between the NBA and high school basketball wasn't physicality, but the volume of information.
High school games were like fixed problems worked through one at a time; the NBA was more like ten world-class mathematicians frantically throwing problems at you simultaneously, without giving you a single second to think.
On the sideline, Thibodeau was nearly screaming himself hoarse. "Kevin! Don't watch the ball! Watch the man! Watch the man! Watch the man!"
Garnett shouted back, bewildered and panting, "I am watching!"
"Then tell me..." Thibodeau pointed onto the court and hammered him with a question. "Why did Radja roll just now?"
Garnett opened his mouth, but no words came out.
"Because you only saw the action, not the intent!" Thibodeau pointed at Radja. "He was setting you up from the moment he caught the ball! First he baited you into closing out, then into switching, then into turning your head. By the time you finally made your decision, he was already under the basket!"
Sam Cassell dribbled past him and made sure to twist the knife, his tone begging for a punch. "High school kid, the ball's still in front of you, but the man's already behind you."
Garnett gritted his teeth, his face flushed, unable to muster a single retort. For the first time on a basketball court, something utterly unfamiliar had ground him into the floor... not a stronger body, but a smarter mind.
This was the NBA.
In the press section, some reporters were already scribbling furiously. They probably had tomorrow's headlines figured out.
In the second quarter, the wings caught fire.
What really stirred up the press section was another matchup.
Michael Finley against Eddie Jones.
Both had something burning inside them.
Eddie Jones was the perimeter heir apparent Lin Qi had snatched from West's jaws the previous year. He had played in the playoffs and faced Jordan, and was the team's acknowledged top perimeter player. And Finley? Lottery-level talent, ready to contribute as a rookie, more assertive and aggressive on offense than Eddie.
On the first possession, Finley took the ball, backed Eddie down hard beneath the basket, then turned and banked it in.
On the second possession, Finley pulled up for a jumper and buried it right over Eddie's head.
Someone in the press section whispered to a neighbor, keeping his voice low, though it drifted right to the sideline. "...Do you think Lin Qi drafted Finley because he wasn't satisfied with Eddie? Wanted someone who could play better?"
Eddie Jones couldn't quite make out the words. But he could sense their flavor.
He said nothing. On the next possession, he pressed up against Finley, those long arms tempered in Jordan's furnace closing like a net. Just as Finley lowered his center of gravity to drive, Eddie's hand darted out like lightning. With a smack, he stripped the ball and went coast to coast for the basket.
Finley's expression changed as he ran back on defense.
The two didn't argue or even exchange more than a few words. But the smell of gunpowder was already spreading through the practice facility.
Watching from the second floor, Lin Qi didn't frown. Instead, the corner of his mouth lifted.
This was exactly what he wanted. Eddie Jones carrying the perimeter alone was too thin a foundation. With Finley there as a thorn, these two wings would push each other to grow.
In the third quarter, Sam Cassell refused to accept it.
This quarter's real flashpoint belonged to Sam Cassell.
Sam Cassell wasn't a bad person. But this season, he had carried a thorn in his heart.
Last season, he had dragged this team out of the mud and into the playoffs, taking the Knicks to seven games. On that final possession, he drove inside, ran into Patrick Ewing's help defense, and missed. The team was eliminated. That thorn was still lodged in his heart.
But now? Suddenly, the team had Garnett, Finley, and Adelman's new system, and all anyone talked about was the "future." The voice inside Sam Cassell grew louder and louder: I just dragged this team out of the mire. How did the future suddenly stop having anything to do with me?
Midway through the scrimmage, Adelman called a timeout and asked Sam Cassell to change his approach... to put the ball in Radja's hands at the high post, or even let Garnett facilitate with an extra pass, while he played off the ball.
On the surface, Sam Cassell nodded and complied. But on the next possession, as soon as he crossed half court, he passed to no one, going straight at Snow one-on-one and making a difficult floater.
He landed and turned toward Adelman on the sideline, his eyes carrying an unspoken message: See? This scores points too.
Adelman didn't get angry or argue with him.
He simply replied calmly, "That was what you thought in Game 7 against the Knicks last year too, wasn't it?"
The expression on Sam Cassell's face froze instantly.
Those words were a needle driven precisely into his most painful wound... the Knicks, Game 7, the final possession, an isolation play, the ball bouncing off the rim.
Adelman didn't say another word. He wasn't humiliating Sam Cassell. He was reminding him that a team was a collective.
Sam Cassell fell silent.
Over the next few possessions, he stopped going one-on-one. He began feeding the ball to the high post.
For the first time, this proud man swallowed his retort.
In the fourth quarter, Garnett got one small thing right.
For three quarters, Garnett had been run ragged. But Adelman and Thibodeau had never wanted him to dominate the court on his first day.
What they wanted was to see whether he could learn.
In the fourth quarter, the white team trailed by twelve.
Garnett received the ball at the high post.
Following his instincts, the most primal impulse of a nineteen-year-old high school kid... he wanted to charge, to use all that talent to drive inside himself and win back those twelve points.
But he paused.
In that instant, whether it was something McHale had taught him, something Thibodeau had shouted, or a flash of that Dominique Wilkins tape in his mind... he paused for half a second and raised his head.
He saw Finley quietly cutting inside from the weak-side baseline.
He saw Eddie Jones pulled away from his help position by a screen from Person.
He saw P.J. Brown silently screen off Magic Johnson, who was rushing toward him, keeping him behind Brown.
A group of people had silently paved that path for him.
Garnett didn't charge in himself.
He dipped his wrist, sending a crisp bounce pass through the gap between two defenders and into Finley's hands as he cut beneath the basket.
Finley caught it, went up, and scored.
Not a single person cheered.
Because this was only an utterly ordinary possession in an intrasquad practice game. One assist, two points. Barely anyone in the press section even noted the play.
But behind the second-floor window, Lin Qi's eyes lit up.
On the sideline, the corner of Adelman's mouth twitched.
Thibodeau... that devil who had roared throughout the game... for once, miraculously, didn't curse anyone out.
And Parish the Old Chief, sitting courtside with a jacket draped over his shoulders, slowly gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Lin Qi lowered his head and wrote a line in his little notebook that only he could understand: High-post vision... first appearance.
The biggest gain of this quarter wasn't how many points Garnett scored.
It was that this young man, who had been ground into the floor by the NBA's complexity for three full quarters, finally understood, for the first time in the fourth, the hardest and most precious thing in the sport...
He didn't just see the ball.
He saw the paths people ran.
The future peeked out.
The whistle sounded to end the scrimmage. No one cared about the score anymore.
The reporters put away their notebooks and headed out, talking among themselves. Tomorrow's papers would probably carry headlines like "Garnett helpless in debut" or "Celtics practice a complete mess." Lin Qi couldn't be bothered.
He had seen everything he wanted today: a crack had opened in Garnett's mind, the competition between the wings had ignited, Sam Cassell's pride had taken a knock, and though this team was a mess, at least it was a clearly defined mess...
But what truly sent the entire locker room into an uproar wasn't the scrimmage.
It was the sheet of paper Lin Qi had the analytics group post afterward.
It was the first internal assessment produced by Oliver and Sagarin's team, using an entire set of models no one had ever seen to evaluate every player's true contribution to that day's scrimmage.
A report card twenty years ahead of its time.
The players crowded around it, all talking at once. Everyone wanted to see where he ranked in the eyes of this mystifying new evaluation system.
Then everyone's gaze fixed on the first line of the chart.
The name ranked first silenced the entire locker room in an instant.
That name wasn't Sam Cassell.
It wasn't Radja.
It wasn't Eddie Jones, nor was it Finley, who had run wild that day.
And it certainly wasn't Garnett, on whom so many hopes rested.
Staring at the name, Sam Cassell was the first to shout, his face full of disbelief. "Did this thing calculate something wrong? Today he... how many points did he even score today?"
Lin Qi stood in the locker room doorway with his arms folded and offered no explanation.
He only said mildly, "At preseason practice tomorrow, I'll have the video guy show you something."
That night, the name in first place, and the logic behind it that no one could understand, became the biggest mystery in the entire Boston Celtics locker room.