That string finally snapped after a win.
The irony was that the Celtics won that day.
And they won comfortably.
With five minutes left, the game was effectively over. The youngsters on the bench were laughing and chatting, the away crowd had begun leaving in droves, and even the reporters were distractedly preparing their postgame stories.
But when the final buzzer sounded and the heavy locker room door slammed shut behind everyone, the air was even more oppressive than when they had lost by sixteen.
Everyone could feel something was wrong.
In the cramped locker room, it all came down to two names...
Eddie Jones.
Michael Finley.
That fire had actually been smoldering between them since the first day of training camp.
It had simply been kept firmly under wraps by one comeback and victory after another.
Now, amid the easy cheers, it could finally no longer be contained.
Jones was the most indispensable cornerstone in Lin Qi's entire plan to rebuild Boston.
He had played in real playoff battles and faced the godlike Michael Jordan head-on. Excellent on both ends, rational and mature, he was the core player on this young team most widely assumed to possess All-Star qualities.
Once Adelman's modern system, ahead of its time, got fully up and running, Eddie became its biggest beneficiary.
He finished their breaks and initiated their transition attacks.
Even the vital defensive task of shutting down the opposition's top weapon in crunch time invariably fell on his shoulders.
The Boston media began lavishing praise on his composure.
Fans at the FleetCenter began lining up to buy his green jersey.
As though they cost nothing, more and more spotlights shone on his cold face, one beam after another.
Meanwhile, on the other side, standing in the shadows beyond those spotlights, Finley was growing increasingly uncomfortable.
Because the real Finley of 1995 was nothing like the easygoing veteran Lin Qi knew from later years.
He was not the laid-back second option who willingly surrendered the top spot to Nowitzki and Nash in Dallas, much less the role player who later stayed planted in the corner in San Antonio, shooting open threes for the sake of a ring.
That was Finley after time had worn away his edges and harsh reality had battered him for more than a decade.
The Finley of today was only twenty-two.
Young, proud, rebellious to the bone, he was as sharp on the court as a freshly honed blade.
At the University of Wisconsin, he had been the unquestioned centerpiece, his word absolute.
For four full years, every play his college team ran revolved around him, every decisive possession had to go through his hands, and the entire campus's victories, defeats, glory, and disgrace had rested firmly in his grasp.
He was used to being the center of the court, used to being worshipped by everyone.
More fatally, every young wing of that era blessed with gravity-defying talent lived within the same enormous, almost suffocating illusion of the century.
The entire league was searching madly for the next Michael Jordan.
The media was searching for the next one.
The fans and sponsors were searching for the next one too.
And Finley happened to be named Michael as well.
He happened to possess the very best explosive athleticism in the entire 1995 rookie class.
He happened to be able to fly too.
In the course of history Lin Qi originally knew, the American media had practically plastered every extravagant label imaginable across his forehead after the draft.
"Heir to Air Jordan."
"The super scoring machine of a new era."
"The next generation's best perimeter player."
That overwhelming praise was like high-grade aviation fuel, feeding the fire of this twenty-two-year-old's ambition every single day.
In the original timeline, Finley debuted with the Suns and bulldozed his way to fifteen points a game in his rookie season. Even alongside an established superstar like Charles Barkley, whose temper was explosive enough to send someone flying out a window, the rookie still dared to spread his hands wildly on the court and demand the ball, still dared to take it and go one-on-one himself.
Because in his mind and in his bones, he was fucking born to be the only superstar under the spotlight.
But the cruel problem was...
This history-altering Boston Celtics team already had a Jones with every advantage on his side.
Adelman's fast-paced modern system needed the ball.
Their floor general, Sam Cassell, needed the ball.
Radja, operating as the hub at the high post, needed the ball.
Jones, their primary weapon, needed the ball too.
Even their two long-range guns on the perimeter, Murray and Person, needed enough shots to space the floor.
What remained for Finley, however, was nothing but scattered minutes and opportunities to serve as an off-ball screening tool in garbage time.
Whenever he sat alone on the bench, watching Jones tear through the defense again and again for thunderous dunks amid the crowd's deafening roars;
Watching Murray take cold-blooded shots from the corner again and again, favored by the pecking order of the offense;
Watching those Boston reporters take the title of "the Celtics' future perimeter cornerstone" and place it on someone else's head...
The fire pent up in his twenty-two-year-old chest burned ever more wildly, threatening to consume his reason completely.
The conflict erupted in that seemingly effortless victory.
In the third quarter, the Celtics unleashed their signature high-post-facilitated break.
In the backcourt, Finley used brute strength to force his way into position and haul down a defensive rebound. Rather than hand the ball to Sam Cassell, he dribbled it himself, charging toward the frontcourt like a raging bull.
On the right, Jones had cut into position and was completely open... it was as textbook a passing opportunity as there could be.
But Finley did not even glance that way out of the corner of his eye.
He forced himself into another burst of speed and, surrounded by two defenders, relied on his terrifying hang time to muscle in a difficult double-clutch layup.
The shot went in. But Jones, who had made his cut only to run to the corner for nothing, wore an utterly dark expression.
On the court, this subtle tug-of-war had already turned into something uglier... it no longer even looked like a five-man team, but four Celtics dragging along a detached mercenary in a bizarre game of four against five.
Cold-blooded and rational, Jones did not fear a teammate stealing the spotlight, but he could not tolerate someone using this kind of team-damaging play to wreck the system Lin Qi and Adelman had only just established. Whenever Finley got open on the weak side, Jones's normally excellent court vision seemed to go suddenly blind, and he coldly swung the ball to Sam Cassell on the other side or Radja at the high post.
With this utterly rational act of "ignoring" him, he isolated the rookie who had crossed the line.
On the next possession, offense and defense switched.
This time, Jones had the ball, while Finley fought furiously for position on the other side, holding out a hand to demand it. Their eyes briefly met, but Jones did not offer even the slightest passing fake, treating Finley as though he were invisible.
For once, even the usually unselfish Jones began acting out of spite.
In a rare move, he rejected Radja's offer of a high screen, completely disregarded the system's cuts and movement, and forced up a cold-blooded pull-up jumper from midrange over the defender's long arm, at the most ill-advised angle.
Swish.
That went in too.
Neither looked at the other. Neither passed to the other. Those two unreasonable isolation baskets had become silent slaps delivered squarely to each other's faces.
Back and forth, they were like two fighters locked in a battle of wills inside an octagon, using individual baskets devoid of any tactics to declare their rejection of each other without a word.
Adelman stood on the sideline, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.
This was precisely what his Princeton high-post system could least tolerate... he wanted the moving ball to tear open space, yet his two young wings were using the most primitive isolation plays to challenge each other.
They had won the game, but the division the players had deliberately created was more deadly than a loss.