November 3, 1995.
Boston, FleetCenter.
That night, Boston's diehard fans did not actually like their dazzling new home.
Back in 1993, when construction on the new arena began, the locals had wanted to give it the simple name "New Boston Garden," hoping to preserve a trace of the old arena's lineage.
But arrogant capital left no room for sentiment. The sponsor, Fleet Financial Group, shelled out an enormous sum to buy the naming rights outright, forcing this brand-new building to bear a purely commercial sign.
To Boston fans at the time, this was nothing short of an open trampling of the Celtics' traditions, backbone, and honor.
Local radio, and even the sports columns of major media outlets, were filled with furious complaints. They despised the name as "reeking of money, utterly soulless," believing it gave off a nauseating whiff of arrogance belonging to "Wall Street and the banks."
As the financial markets rose and fell, the history of this arena's name changes became a miniature history of Wall Street bank mergers.
In 2005, Fleet Bank was forcibly acquired by its chief rival, Banknorth, and the arena was renamed TD Banknorth Garden. "North Shore Garden," the name Chinese fans knew best, was translated from this.
Later, when the parent company completed its name change to TD Bank, the arena's name was finally shortened to its current form, TD Garden.
The name changed with the mergers and acquisitions of its sponsoring banks, changing twice in all.
But no matter how the name changed, the sixteen championship banners hanging beneath the new arena's roof remained untouched.
Lin Qi stood at the entrance to the players' tunnel, looking at those championship banners, and felt that this was a metaphor tailor-made for his team.
Old glory, a new beginning.
All summer, Boston's diehards, still clinging to the past, had torn this team to shreds.
They had sent away all the familiar faces the fans loved and brought in a bunch of young players nobody knew and one wet-behind-the-ears high school kid.
Tonight, everyone was waiting to see how this "bargain bin 2.0" would embarrass itself in the opening game at this heavily commercialized new arena.
Meanwhile, the high school kid in the locker room who should have been the most nervous was making a racket.
"Hey, hey, hey, guys!" Kevin Garnett, wearing a brand-new green jersey, wandered around the locker room, bumping fists with everyone.
His mouth never stopped. "Can you feel it? This is my first NBA game! My God, I was so excited last night I couldn't sleep. I was still dribbling on the balcony at three in the morning. My neighbor almost called the cops..."
"Then you should've been arrested," Sam Cassell said without looking up. "Give your neighbor some peace and quiet."
"Hey, Sam, you don't get it!" Garnett leaned over. "This is a historic night! When I'm old, I'm gonna brag to my grandson that Grandpa played his very first game in this new arena..."
"You're only nineteen. You're decades away from having a grandson." Sam Cassell finally looked up, his face full of disdain. "Garnett, I'm begging you. Save that mouth of yours for the Bucks on the court."
Garnett chuckled, not the least bit offended. The kid had a thick hide. He could get roasted eight hundred times and still have another line ready.
Sitting in the corner, Sam Mitchell-the team's thirty-two-year-old tough veteran, whom Lin Qi had specifically kept to serve as the locker room's steadying anchor-watched the older and younger men bicker and shook his head with a laugh.
"All right, all right, you two chatterboxes. Cassell, he's nineteen and you're twenty-five. You two have the biggest mouths in this locker room. A perfect match."
The room burst into laughter. Their joking around eased much of the tension.
Lin Qi stood in the doorway, watching without a word.
He knew Garnett's loud, carefree behavior did not mean he really lacked sense.
The kid was using his own way to counteract the entire locker room's nervousness about the unknown.
A rookie who could make his teammates laugh with his mouth and a rookie who could only sit in silence, stewing in nerves, were two completely different species.
Adelman walked in without wasting words and simply tapped the tactics board.
"Tonight, play the way we practiced. It's okay if things are a little messy at first. What I want to see is whether you remember where you're supposed to stand on offense."
"And," Thibodeau added from beside him, his eyes wide as brass bells, "defense! Whoever loses his man tonight gets a hundred punishment shuttle runs tomorrow."
Garnett thumped his chest. "Coach, don't worry! Those Bucks aren't getting a single point off me tonight..."
"Just try not to let somebody break your bones first," Sam Cassell cut in again.
Amid another burst of laughter, the Celtics walked into their brand-new home court.
As the game began, the Celtics were not only unfamiliar with their system but immediately ran into the Bucks' terrifying scoring machine.
Glenn Robinson, the first overall pick in the 1994 draft, nicknamed "Big Dog," taught these youngsters a lesson right out of the gate.
The 2.01-meter small forward was built like an ox, yet in the nineties he possessed a pull-up midrange jumper that was almost impossible to stop.
The entire Bucks team fed him the ball, and he monopolized possession with absolute authority. Twice in a row, he posted up on the low block, used his terrifying bulk to bulldoze into the paint, and forced the defense aside to sink turnaround jumpers.
Swish, swish.
Relying on Big Dog's overpowering bully ball, the Bucks opened with a 7-0 run.
A few malicious chuckles rose from the press section. Those veteran reporters raised their eyebrows, as though saying, See? That's the talent of a first overall pick. How is your bargain-bin bunch supposed to stop him?
The Celtics were a little disorganized, and Garnett, who had just taken the floor, promptly received a harsh lesson in the brutal physical combat of nineties basketball.
The Bucks' frontcourt had no shortage of broad-shouldered, thick-waisted veteran bruisers.
The first time Garnett called for the ball in the low post, he had barely caught it before the opposing star forward, Vin Baker, expertly established position and drove his hip and elbow hard into Garnett's body.
The blow sent the rail-thin Garnett stumbling, nearly making him lose his grip on the ball.
On the next possession, he tried to crash the offensive glass, only for another opposing veteran to give him a seemingly casual shoulder bump that knocked him clean out of bounds beyond the baseline.
This was the paint in the nineties: a jungle of flying flesh and blood, designed to teach raw youngsters a lesson.
Another high school kid might have lost his nerve after being welcomed like that twice.
But not Garnett. He grimaced from the collision, yet after getting up, he did not back away. Instead, he leaned toward Vin Baker's ear and bared a mouthful of white teeth.
"That's it? Man, that elbow's soft. My grandma hits harder than you. Come on, give me another one. I haven't even warmed up yet!"
Vin Baker froze for a moment, probably encountering for the first time in his life a chatterbox who got this excited after taking a beating.
Garnett's mouth kept running from the first quarter to the fourth.
He chattered on defense, chattered on offense, chattered while fighting for rebounds, and even pulled faces at his opponents during free throws.
He was like a windup toy that never stopped, bouncing, jumping, and making noise on the court.
This left several Bucks veterans, accustomed to intimidating youngsters with silence and muscle, seething with anger yet helpless against this thick-skinned lunatic of a kid.
Thibodeau kept pressing a hand to his forehead as he watched from the sideline, but excitement sparkled in his eyes.
What truly sent the fans into a frenzy was Adelman's novel style of play, something the entire league had never seen before.
After weathering the opening blows, that modern system ahead of its time began turning like precision gears.
Radja no longer foolishly hammered away with his back to the basket in the low post. Instead, Adelman positioned him in the high post.
Catch, facilitate, then suddenly slip in a disguised bounce pass... he became the hub of the offense.
What left the Bucks most desperate, though, were the Celtics' two perimeter cannons.
Wesley Person and Tracy Murray took turns setting up beyond the three-point line Stern had shortened.
Whenever the Bucks' defense instinctively collapsed inward, those two cannons opened fire without hesitation or mercy.
Swish. Swish. Swish.
The Bucks' head coach even forgot to call a timeout, watching dumbfounded as his defense was riddled with holes by this modern Ferrari style of "drive inside, shoot outside, maximize spacing."
By halftime, the Celtics had pulled ahead 54-46, and the twenty thousand fans in the new arena had become a roaring sea.