Only later did Garnett understand why his street talk, steeped in Black slang, had failed against The Dream on the very first move.
Olajuwon was not American at all.
The man from Nigeria had not touched a basketball until his teens, and English was a second language he had learned even later.
Even in 1980, when he first left Nigeria for the University of Houston, he had not been admitted on a basketball scholarship.
In college, The Dream had majored in business, a perfectly legitimate academic discipline.
At an American university in the 1980s, an international student whose native language was not English needed exceptional intelligence and reading and writing skills to master difficult business courses while maintaining excellent grades.
The English in his head had never grown out of verbal sparring in Black neighborhoods or the law of the jungle on the streets.
He had learned it from thick textbooks, professors' lectures, and coaches' whiteboards.
So what came out of The Dream's mouth was never profanity venting his emotions or crude Black slang.
It was proper, formal vocabulary, even carrying a mild academic air.
Garnett's Chicago street slang, meanwhile... was rough and direct, aimed straight at whatever hurt you most.
When that untamed vulgarity collided with an academic operating on an entirely different wavelength, it was like driving a fist hard into cotton.
You hurled abuse with enough hostility to cut like knives, and the other man never even lifted his eyelids.
It felt as though you had clenched your fists, ready to fight someone to the death, only for him to brush the dust off himself without even looking you in the eye.
On the next possession, Olajuwon settled into the low post again.
Garnett pressed up against him, fire in his eyes. "Again. That last basket doesn't count. You fooled me once. There won't be a second time."
Olajuwon nodded. "Very good."
Then he held a hand out toward his teammates again. "Clear this side."
The Rockets spread out once more.
On the Boston Celtics' bench, Lin Qi let out a soft breath. "He's teaching a class."
Thibodeau watched Garnett's feet. "Hopefully the kid can understand it."
This time, Garnett had learned his lesson and did not rush to push into him.
He established his base first, arms raised high, leaving space between their chests so The Dream could not use his pressure to spin.
It was a good adjustment... so good that even Olajuwon seemed a little satisfied. "Much better."
Garnett gritted his teeth. "Cut the crap."
Olajuwon gave a slightly awkward smile.
Then he said something Garnett would still have no idea how to answer many years later. "I'm testing his lateral movement."
Garnett froze for a moment.
Not because he did not understand.
He had simply never encountered trash talk like this.
In Chicago, anyone talking trash would call you soft, call you a child, say your mother could defend better than you.
But nobody would hold the ball in the low post and announce to the entire arena, in an almost academic tone: I'm testing his lateral movement.
How were you supposed to answer that?
Say, "You aren't testing my lateral movement"?
This was not an exchange of insults at all.
An exchange of insults meant the two of you were equals.
This was toying with someone from above... Olajuwon did not regard him as an opponent at all.
He regarded Garnett as an experimental subject.
He took this nineteen-year-old kid apart and worked on him in the low post, calmly explaining every cut in front of his patient with a surgeon's composure.
The Dream seized every bit of Garnett's momentary hesitation.
He first pressed one step toward the middle, and Garnett slid sideways.
Then he gave a light fake toward the baseline. This time, Garnett did not jump... he remembered, "Don't jump first."
But The Dream's third step came.
An inward pivot so small it was almost invisible, his left foot planting, his right shoulder dipping, the ball sweeping across his chest to the other side.
Garnett's body was still angled toward the baseline, but his eyes had followed the ball back toward the middle.
He tried to wrench himself back, but it was too late.
Olajuwon spun past his side and lifted a left-handed layup off the glass and in.
This basket was quieter than the last, and crueler.
Because Garnett had made no major mistake.
He had not jumped wildly, swiped recklessly, or lost his position.
He had simply been half a beat late at every step... like a child who had just learned to spell being handed Shakespeare to read.
Someone on the Rockets' bench laughed.
The string in Garnett's head was already close to snapping. He whipped his head around and glared, about to fire back with the filthiest words he knew.
But Olajuwon reached out and patted his waist. "Hey."
Garnett turned back, thinking The Dream was about to mock him.
But The Dream only looked at him seriously, without a trace of ridicule in his eyes, only a weighty calm:
"I'm a man."
Garnett froze.
On the streets of Chicago, if someone said, "You're a rookie," he could curse back. If someone said, "You're too skinny," he could hit back.
But The Dream had said, "I'm a man."
At that moment, nineteen-year-old Garnett looked as though lightning had struck him. His lips moved, but not a single word came out.
Suddenly, he understood.
The Dream was not showing off. The Dream was telling him... all that self-important shouting in the low post, all those little moves he thought made him tough, were as childish before a real man as a kid standing there throwing a tantrum.
For the first time in his nineteen years, he felt his pride stripped bare.
The other man had never regarded him as an equal opponent. He was examining him through an adult's eyes, exposing his immaturity.
For the first time, Garnett clamped his mouth shut.
By the timeout, the gap had widened a little.
Garnett walked toward the bench, looking as miserable as if someone had just stripped off his jersey in public.
Sam Cassell passed him and could not hold back a laugh. "Welcome to the league, rookie."
Garnett glared at him.
Sam Cassell immediately raised his hands. "Don't come at me. I don't want to test your lateral whatever."
Laughter broke out on the bench.
The mood eased a little, but Garnett did not laugh.
He sat down, covered his head with a towel, and braced his hands on his knees, his fingers clenched white.
Lin Qi crouched in front of him and asked, "Did you see it?"
A muffled voice came from beneath the towel. "See what?"
"See the kind of person you need to become."
Garnett fell silent.
"Right now, you rely on your body, your passion, your refusal to lose," Lin Qi said. "Those are all good things."
"But being a true superstar isn't just about making people fear you."
He paused, then continued:
"A true superstar makes people unable to stop him even when they know exactly what he's going to do."
Garnett slowly pulled the towel off his head.
His eyes were still red, but the fire inside them was different now.
Before, it had been a fire ready to bite.
Now it was as though someone had forced that fire deep into a furnace, more stifled, and hotter.
When the timeout ended and Garnett stood up, he looked at Olajuwon again.
This time, he did not rush to talk trash. He only tugged his wristband higher.
He said quietly, "Next time, I'll jump a little later."
The Boston Celtics lost that game, and the Rockets won without much trouble.
Garnett scored eleven points, most of them accumulated on fast breaks in the first half.
He had gained no physical advantage, and verbally, he had suffered a total defeat.
But he did not hang his head in the locker room.
He sat there, sometimes mimicking The Dream's spin, sometimes repeating "lateral movement" to the empty air, over and over.
After the game, Olajuwon ran into Sam Cassell in the tunnel and exchanged a few words with him.
Garnett happened to walk past. The Dream's gaze followed him briefly, and he said something to Sam Cassell.
Later, Sam Cassell told him that The Dream had said, "That young brother of yours is tough to handle."
Garnett broke into a grin so wide his eyes nearly disappeared.
It was the only time all night that he smiled from the heart.
On the bus leaving Houston, Garnett gazed out the window, unusually quiet.
The Texas night rushed backward outside, and only the engine's dull rumble filled the bus.
"What are you thinking about?"
Lin Qi sat down beside him and offered him a sports drink.
Garnett did not take it. His hands were locked tightly together, his eyes fixed on the floor of the bus, his voice so low he seemed to be talking to himself:
"Mr. Lin Qi... I looked like an idiot today, didn't I?"
"Back in Chicago, as long as I yelled loud enough, as long as I cursed out their whole families, those guys would get scared. Their hands would shake."
Garnett clenched his fists, his knuckles giving faint cracks in the darkness.
"I used to think that if I was meaner and dirtier than the other guy, if I made him lose control first, I could fucking control the court and take everything."
He abruptly turned his head, and the frustration he had held in all night finally spilled out inside the empty bus.
"But The Dream? That old guy let his mouthguard hang out of his mouth, dribbling while turning toward their bench and saying, 'I'm gonna fucking test this kid's lateral movement.'"
Garnett gave a self-mocking grin, nothing but bitterness in his smile.
"Damn it, my brain started stuttering right then. I've lived nineteen years, seen countless guys challenge people to fights on the street, and I've never seen anyone humiliate me with words that advanced, that complicated."
He lowered his head and stared hard at his hands.
"He wouldn't even bother saying one dirty word to me. He didn't see me as an equal opponent at all. He just treated me like a lab rat, telling me in plain language, in front of the whole crowd, exactly what experiment he was going to do next."
"Then he put every step right where I couldn't react."
"That shit hurt worse than taking a punch or getting stabbed."
After he finished, Garnett lowered his head again and took great, ragged breaths.
Lin Qi listened quietly. In the darkness, he only gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Outside the window, the early-winter Texas wilderness merged into a boundless stretch of black beneath the night sky.
After that drilling from The Dream, the kid had begun dissecting himself, one cut at a time.
This was Kevin Garnett's most terrifying gift.
On the court, he pounded his chest, banged his head against the basket stanchion, and muttered to himself, all to use physical pain and self-stimulation to forcibly temper the shame and wavering in his heart into a madness that drove him to the brink.
Many players who had faced him later recalled that if you completely destroyed young Garnett in a game, he would never hide from you.
In the next game, he would cling to you with defense ten times more frenzied than before, until he tore a piece of flesh off you.
He possessed not only an enviable, terrifying physical gift that let him swat basketballs into the stands.
He also possessed a vigorous ambition that, after his dignity had been crushed, could swallow humiliation whole and grind it into sharp teeth.
Lin Qi did not pat his shoulder or offer any words of comfort.
For a beast like this, born on the streets and raised in the jungle, shame was the best nourishment.
The bus crushed the silence of the Texas night, driving tirelessly onward.
Next stop, San Antonio.