The dead silence in the Orlando Arena lasted only a second.
The next second, twenty thousand people gasped at once.
Everyone witnessed it firsthand.
On the court, before the basketball could reach its apex, a long, dark arm intercepted it in midair. Five fingers closed, forcibly snatching the ball out of the air.
It was Kevin Garnett's signature one-handed snatch block.
Horace Grant landed and froze in place. For the first time, the dark face of a man who had battled Jordan and Pippen countless times in the playoffs was utterly blank. It wasn't that he had never been blocked, but he had never seen anyone pluck away his shot like an apple using nothing but reach and explosive leaping ability, without even needing contact in the air.
Worse still, the person who had done it was a nineteen-year-old high schooler, a high schooler who had just entered the league.
Garnett didn't even glance at Grant as he landed. The moment he raised his head, his eyes locked onto the frontcourt. Eddie Jones had already taken off. Garnett flicked his long arm, and the basketball skimmed the right sideline, slicing through the Magic's still-unformed transition defense with surgical precision.
Jones caught the ball, took a stride, and rose.
Boom!
The tomahawk dunk slammed home, making the basket support shake wildly.
8-2.
Clang!
On the Magic bench, the folding metal chairs beneath three Black players sprang up at once and crashed hard onto the floor.
"Timeout! Call timeout!!"
Coach Brian Hill practically roared, waving his arms frantically at the referee.
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The piercing whistle tore through the arena.
Garnett, who had been about to run back on defense, stopped. Instead of heading toward the Celtics bench, he tilted his head and slowly closed in on Grant.
The instant Grant looked up, Garnett blew a hard breath onto the lenses of his trademark white goggles.
Whoosh-
White mist instantly spread across them, completely obscuring Grant's vision.
Grant's dark face immediately fell, and he clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.
The mist cleared in a flash, revealing Garnett's sinister, white-toothed grin as he bit down on his mouthguard.
"Old man, I studied your tapes for three days." Garnett lowered his voice, sounding as though he were sharing a secret only the two of them knew.
"But where's that power forward from the tapes who made the All-Star team and won a championship?"
Grant's jaw instantly tightened like a steel wire about to snap.
Garnett leaned another half inch closer, his hot sweat almost dripping onto the tip of Grant's nose. His words were as cold as a knife to the heart. "How come you can't guard me today, and you can't score on me either?"
At that, he paused, and an utterly innocent, almost unhinged look of confusion suddenly appeared on his face.
"Back when Michael (Jordan) carried you to those championships... did you sleepwalk through games like this too?"
Boom!
The reason in Grant's head exploded completely.
"Say that one more fucking time?!"
The 265-pound monster in the paint suddenly surged a step forward, slamming his chest into Garnett. His broad palm even shoved aside the referee trying to intervene.
That enormous mass knocked Garnett back two steps, making him stumble hard.
The Celtics bench erupted into shrill whistles and wild cries like a pack of beasts that had scented blood. Bo Outlaw was the first to jump up, standing on a folding chair and frantically waving a towel toward the court.
On the floor, Jones had already raced across half court. He grabbed the off-balance Garnett firmly, desperately pulling him backward.
Meanwhile, thirty-two-year-old veteran Sam Mitchell had sprinted onto the court from the bench. Rather than tending to his own rookie, he charged straight up to Grant and planted both large hands firmly against his chest.
"Calm down! Horace! This is on national television! Are you fucking crazy, taking a flagrant foul over a nineteen-year-old rookie?!"
Mitchell shielded Garnett behind his broad back, shouting as he braced hard against Grant and pushed him forward. Leaning close to Grant's ear, he quickly added something in a rough voice only the two of them could hear.
"But if you really want blood in Orlando, I can go a few rounds with you tonight. I'll be waiting in the players' tunnel when we get off the court."
Grant's blazing eyes suddenly narrowed.
He panted heavily, staring over Mitchell's shoulder at the big rookie being dragged away by his teammate. Though he clenched his knuckles almost to the breaking point, his 265-pound body ultimately took no further step forward.
Jones dragged and tugged Garnett back, shielding him as they walked. Garnett wiped the sweat off his chin, his bloodshot eyes relentlessly meeting Grant's gaze as his lips moved soundlessly.
Come on. What are you waiting for?
Even after being hauled back to the bench, Garnett's chest was still heaving, and he kept cursing around his mouthguard.
In the front row of VIP seats directly behind the bench, Lin Qi sat quietly in a leather chair.
"Kevin." Lin Qi's voice wasn't loud.
But at the sound of it, Garnett's expression tightened. He immediately shut his mouth and turned around, even bending slightly at the waist. The noisy young players around him instinctively lowered their voices too.
Lin Qi looked at him, his tone so calm that no emotion could be discerned.
"Don't take it too far. Tonight's game is nationally televised. Actually coming to blows on the court wouldn't look good."
Under Lin Qi's gaze, the madness in Garnett's eyes vanished instantly.
He pulled out his mouthguard and grabbed a towel, draping it around his neck. There was no trace of savagery left in his eyes. Instead, they were frighteningly lucid.
"Don't worry. I know where the line is, Lin."
He lowered his voice as far as it would go and answered one word at a time.
"All that old man can think about right now is how badly he wants to strangle me. He's definitely going to come flying out at me on defense."
At that, Garnett bowed his head slightly toward Lin Qi, unmistakable ambition dancing in his eyes.
"I'm not trying to get suspended. I want to tear the Magic's defense to pieces."
Lin Qi watched the now-calm Garnett and said nothing more.
On the other side, Magic head coach Hill's face was livid. He yanked the tie off his chest and hurled his tactics board hard onto the floor.
He had originally called this timeout to break the Celtics' momentum.
But now he realized that the timeout he himself had called had instead become a stage for Garnett to humiliate Grant until he lost his mind.
After the timeout, the Magic's defense completely panicked.
"Get out there! Horace! Stay on him!!" Magic head coach Hill yanked open his suit buttons and roared toward the court.
On the floor, Sam Cassell signaled for another pick-and-roll at the top of the arc. Garnett strode up beyond the three-point line, and the ball arrived just as he did.
The same stance with the ball.
With O'Neal's furious shouts filling his ears from behind, Grant could no longer worry about anything else. He lunged awkwardly out toward Garnett beyond the three-point line.
Garnett didn't shoot. He gripped the ball in both hands, protecting it against his chest, his cold, fierce eyes fixed on Grant's off-balance face. This suicidal closeout was exactly what he had been waiting for.
Garnett dipped his shoulder, his right foot darting out like lightning.
Grant's two-hundred-plus-pound body couldn't stop its momentum. He desperately shifted his weight to try to cut him off, his sneakers scraping fiercely against the hardwood with a piercing squeal. His ankle twisted at a dangerous angle inside his shoe, and his defensive balance shifted.
Garnett pushed hard off the outside edge of his right foot and, with the mobility of a guard, slipped past Grant's completely exposed left side in a single step.
As cleanly as a red-hot knife slicing through cold butter.
Thud, thud, thud...
The enormous mountain of flesh that was Shaquille O'Neal slid over from beneath the basket. His arm, as thick as a pillar holding up the sky, rose high, casting a suffocating shadow. Like a black iron city gate suddenly slamming shut, it sealed off the entire sky.
It was devastating defense, enough to send anyone flying, ball and all.
Facing that sky-blotting palm, Garnett didn't force it. At the last instant, he gave his wrist a gentle flick, softly lifting the ball upward with his fingertips.
Whoosh.
The basketball left his hand.
It was an extraordinarily high floater, its arc almost defying convention.
Before the eyes of the twenty thousand people in attendance, the basketball didn't fly forward. Instead, it rose vertically, stubbornly, toward the ceiling.
In slow motion, O'Neal's sky-blotting hand had reached its absolute limit, yet the basketball floated lightly above his fingertips at an almost absurd height.
O'Neal's enormous body began to descend while the basketball was still rising.
It flew so high that even the nationally televised broadcast's camera had to tilt sharply upward. It traced a perfect, enormous parabola high above O'Neal's head, then precisely grazed the little square at the highest point of the backboard.
It slipped smoothly through the net.
Swish.
The shot went in.