Eddie Jones, the tenth overall pick in the first round of the 1994 draft. At 1.98 meters tall, he was a prototypical shooting guard, but could also slide up to small forward.
Michael Finley, the twenty-first overall pick in the first round of the 1995 draft. At 2.01 meters tall, he was likewise a promising wing who had started out at shooting guard and could switch seamlessly to small forward.
In 1995, when modern small-ball lineups had yet to catch on and teams insisted on keeping two traditional, muscular interior anchors on the floor, a team had just two measly starting spots for its wings, set in stone.
And on this strange young squad Lin Qi had cobbled together, far too many people wanted a slice of the pie.
Wesley Person needed minutes, Willie Anderson needed minutes, and Tracy Murray, the "Microwave" who had just toppled New Jersey on the road, was determined to swallow up a portion of the wing minutes as well. In this extreme situation, with too many mouths and too little to go around, Jones and Finley, two young wings equally brimming with talent and equally hungry to make their names, had to fight a bloody, bayonet-to-bayonet battle in that narrow corridor of privilege over who would step onto the floor as a starter and who would sit on the ice-cold bench.
Had they been two hotheaded bruisers, this irreconcilable struggle for touches would probably have had them beating each other's brains out in the locker room long ago.
This was not merely a question of touches, but a knife fight for room to survive.
There was no middle-ground compromise for this kind of conflict.
In the locker room, the two did not argue.
That deathly silence was more suffocating than overturned chairs and smashed lockers.
Jones said nothing, his head down as he untied his shoes. Finley sat at the other end of the locker room, his face livid. Barely three meters separated them, yet it felt like the entire Atlantic Ocean lay between them. Neither looked at the other.
Sam Cassell wiped the sweat from his head, then swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue. He was a proud troublemaker himself and knew all too well that outsiders had no way into this kind of open and covert struggle over "who was the boss."
Even Garnett, usually the biggest chatterbox, had the sense to shut his mouth. The nineteen-year-old high schooler huddled in a corner, his eyes darting between his two seniors, looking just like a downtrodden child afraid to make a sound while the adults gave each other the silent treatment.
The atmosphere had frozen solid.
Thibodeau gritted his teeth and rolled up his sleeves, ready to charge in and roar at them, but Adelman stopped him outside the door.
"Scolding won't help right now." Adelman sighed and shook his head. "They're both elite talents who are fiercely competitive to the bone. If you use your authority as coach to force them into line now, their relationship behind closed doors will only get more tangled."
That night, every last detail of the locker room's undercurrents reached the general manager's office.
Mike, the head scout, stood anxiously before the desk. "Lin, if those two kids keep digging their heels in like this, the perimeter defense we finally managed to put together is going to tear itself apart from the infighting. Should I talk to them, or... move one of them before the trade deadline?"
"Move one? Absolutely not."
Lin Qi leaned back against his leather chair, his expression utterly calm.
Looking at the new arena glowing faintly outside the window in the darkness, he spoke evenly. "Mike, do you know what I'm most afraid of happening to this young team?"
"What?"
"What scares me most is lifelessness. A bunch of jaded veterans collecting their salaries and going through the motions, not caring whether they win or lose." Lin Qi twirled his pen. "But look at Eddie and Finley... why are they butting heads? Because they both want to win so badly, because they both want to prove they're the ace who can lead the team out of the Eastern Conference. That fire burning in their bones is something you can only hope to find during a rebuild."
"Then... we just let them keep wearing each other down?"
"No." Lin Qi smiled, a glint of seasoned shrewdness flashing in his eyes. "Leave it alone, and that fire will burn straight through the whole locker-room pot. What I'm going to do is borrow an outside force and redirect that private fire they're burning each other with onto someone else."
Lin Qi handed Adelman and Thibodeau a report on the following week's schedule.
The opportunity came without warning, in a tough matchup a few days later.
The Orlando Magic Team arrived at FleetCenter.
They had been an NBA Finals team the previous year. On the perimeter, they boasted the once-in-a-century point guard talent "Penny" Anfernee Hardaway, who stood 2.01 meters tall and had unlimited license to isolate, along with the cold-blooded shooter Nick Anderson, who could erupt for twenty points every so often.
Against this elite perimeter unit that could drive and shoot and ran roughshod over the Eastern Conference, the current Boston Celtics could not find a single perimeter defender capable of containing them one-on-one.
Before the game, a stern-faced Thibodeau called Jones and Finley over to the tactical board alone.
"Those two perimeter players on the other side tonight," Thibodeau jabbed his finger hard at Penny Hardaway's name, his huge eyes full of murderous intent, "are the toughest meat grinder in the entire league. For this game, I don't trust anyone... except you two."
The two young wings, who had been giving each other the cold shoulder for days, both froze for a moment.
"Eddie, tonight you're switching over to guard Penny at the one. Use your wingspan to choke off his passing lanes. Finley, you're taking Anderson at the two. Use your physical advantage to shove him out of the paint!"
Thibodeau enunciated every word, his voice echoing through the empty room. "I don't care which of you looks down on the other off the court. Tonight, on that floor, you two had better lash yourselves together front to back! You have to switch everything like your lives depend on it for the whole game, cover for each other, and pin those two down right here in Boston!"
"If you can't," Thibodeau swept a cold gaze over them, "then get ready to be eaten alive by Orlando in our new home arena tonight. Penny will tear the Celtics to shreds right through the gap between your two egos."
It was the most overt of provocations.
Under the man-to-man rules of 1995, Thibodeau had placed the crushing weight of a defensive black-hole assignment that no one could complete alone onto their two shoulders.
Either they brought down last year's NBA Finals powerhouse together, or they utterly disgraced themselves together before twenty thousand home fans.
When the game began, there was still a visibly awkward edge to their teamwork.
But the Orlando Magic's offensive firepower was simply too ferocious. Four minutes into the first quarter, Penny Hardaway used a convincing crossover to slice straight into the heart of the Celtics' defense, on the verge of taking flight in the paint.
With nowhere left to retreat, Finley did not even have time to think. He instinctively abandoned his man, slid a step sideways, and met him chest-first, forcibly slowing Penny's drive in midair.
The ball came loose, and Jones, stationed on the wing, understood instantly. His long arms swept through the air like a ghostly spiderweb, intercepting the ball outright!
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
On the edge of the nineties' stringent illegal-defense rules, inside this new arena mocked for reeking of commercial greed, two proud men gradually fell into a peculiar chemistry through one all-out rescue of the other after another, through long sprints to help and cover.
They began using their eyes instead of set plays, began roaring each other's names through the deafening din to call out switches.
Penny Hardaway discovered to his surprise that these two young Boston players seemed glued to him. Whenever he tried to exploit his height advantage against Jones in isolation, Finley's muscle and physicality would arrive without warning from the weak side in a legal double-team. And when the Magic tried to move the ball around the perimeter, Jones and Finley's terrifying lateral speed instantly restored their defensive positions.
Those two perimeter guns who gave the entire Eastern Conference headaches were snuffed out little by little in the great switching net woven together by the Celtics' two young wings.
Relying on that suffocating, iron-blooded perimeter defense, the Celtics toppled the previous year's Eastern Conference champions at home.
The moment the final buzzer sounded, FleetCenter's twenty thousand fans went completely wild.
And at that very second, something happened that would have been utterly impossible in the locker room over the past few days.
Finley completed one final desperate contest in the frontcourt, landed, and turned. Jones happened to come sprinting back from the backcourt.
The two young wings, drenched in sweat and chests heaving, almost instinctively slapped hands hard amid the arena's thunderous cheers.
Smack.
That crisp sound shattered the pride and estrangement that had been bottled up between them for days.