Starters: Sam Cassell, Eddie Jones, Willie Anderson, Dino Radja, Ervin Johnson.
Second unit: David Wesley, Wesley Person, Michael Finley, Kevin Garnett, P.J. Brown.
32-14.
The glaring score hung on the scoreboard like a resounding slap in the face.
In the first intrasquad scrimmage, the second unit had been blown out by the starters.
Cassell wiped his sweat with a towel while laughing and talking loudly with Radja beside him, never even glancing at the reserves who had lost by nearly twenty.
Humiliation. The humiliation of being utterly powerless to fight back.
Just as the five starters draped towels over themselves and started toward the showers, a roar suddenly erupted from the locker room.
"Again!!"
Garnett's shout rekindled the fire that had been about to die out throughout the practice facility.
No one had expected the rookie who had just been manhandled to dare challenge them again. The veterans in the starting lineup stopped in their tracks, none willing to be the coward who walked away first. Cassell flung his towel to the floor, Radja loosened his wrists, and Jones gave a cold laugh and retied his shoes.
Lin Qi leaned against the courtside railing, watching with interest.
He had never been looking for Garnett to win.
He wanted the kid to see for himself, through one defeat after another, just how much the word "centerpiece" weighed.
The second scrimmage began.
As soon as he stepped onto the court, Garnett's head was still filled with the rule Lin Qi had set: whenever the second unit was on the floor, the ball had to go through his hands on every possession.
Fresh off a crushing defeat, he desperately needed to prove himself through that privilege: I'm the centerpiece. I have to decide everything!
On the first possession, Garnett received the ball at the high post. His eyes swept the floor, catching Finley cutting toward the weak side. Delighted, he fired what he thought was an exquisite pass through the defense.
But Jones had been watching that passing lane all along.
Eddie had not followed his man at all. He had deliberately given him half a step, waiting for this very pass. The instant the ball left Garnett's hands, Eddie slid across the floor, intercepted it in midair, then went coast to coast for a thunderous dunk!
"Your pass was too obvious." Eddie tossed out the cold remark without even turning his head as he got back on defense.
Garnett stood frozen.
On the second possession, he refused to pass. He would muscle his way in himself.
Garnett charged into the low post and called for the ball with his back to the basket, trying to overpower Radja. The European big man neither jumped nor fought force with force. He merely used little movements of his hips, waist, and knees to give Garnett a gentle bump just as he caught the ball and turned.
That tiny shift in his center of gravity was all it took.
As Garnett turned, the ball flew straight out of his hands and out of bounds.
Radja leisurely picked up the ball and tossed it to the referee, then crooked a finger at Garnett. "Again."
The pressure of the score as they faced a second straight loss, coupled with the frustration of being toyed with by seasoned veterans, became a heavy shackle... The more Garnett tried to do everything himself, the worse he got crushed.
The second unit was once again being manhandled by the veteran starters.
During the timeout, Garnett sat on the sideline, panting hard, his eyes bloodshot.
Losing. Always losing. He did not understand. The coach had clearly given him absolute control of the ball, so why did the team play worse the harder he tried to carry it?
Lin Qi watched coolly from the sideline without going over to spell it out.
Some things were merely knowledge when someone told you; only what you grasped after battering yourself bloody became true ability.
What opened Garnett's eyes was an accident.
After the timeout, the ball went to Garnett as usual. He was preparing to go one-on-one out of habit when Radja and Johnson suddenly converged, trapping him between them!
Garnett instinctively wanted to protect the ball and force his way through, but at that very instant, he caught sight of the deep corner out of the corner of his eye.
The quiet king of dirty work, P.J. Brown, had already slipped into position and set a solid screen for Person with his body. Person was breaking free, slipping toward the unguarded corner.
Almost instinctively, before the double-team could pin him down completely, Garnett flicked his wrist and whipped the ball through the gap between two long arms.
Swish!
Person rose and buried the wide-open three.
At that moment, something boomed inside Garnett's head, and the light came on.
He had been misunderstanding Lin Qi's rule all along.
Having the ball go through his hands on every possession did not mean he had to handle every play himself.
It meant becoming the commander who decided where the ball should go!
The ball came to him first because he stood at that highest point, where he could see who was open across the floor, who had better position, and who could put that damn basketball through the hoop!
The centerpiece did not have to be the player who took the most shots.
The centerpiece was the one who turned all four brothers beside him into lethal weapons!
From that point on, Garnett changed completely.
He cut out the unnecessary isolation plays and began reading the defense with his six-foot-eleven height and tremendous court vision.
He began setting second screens, tying up defenders so Finley could tear through the defense from the weak side for a dunk; he ran handoffs with Person at the high post, using his huge frame to give the shooter completely clean space to rise.
He stopped trying to steal the show. After doing all that, he quietly rolled to the basket, fought for offensive rebounds, and filled the gaps.
In this stretch of the scrimmage, the second unit suddenly came alive!
Wesley's steadiness, Person's three-point shooting, Finley's isolation scoring, Brown's selflessness-Garnett assembled those once-scattered parts into a real team!
The score began tightening at a furious pace.
Cassell's smile slowly faded, and Jones's gaze grew utterly grim.
The rookie who had blundered around in the first game, desperate to prove himself, was gone. In his place was an on-court hub beginning to understand how to play through an entire team.
In the decisive stretch, the veteran starters were finally forced to get serious. Letting a group of reserves close to within two points had cost them face.
It was a textbook possession from the starters. Cassell advanced slowly, Jones cut backdoor, Anderson faked a cut and set a screen, and Radja facilitated from the high post... Garnett read the first layer and decisively lunged out to cut off the pass.
But he had not read the second layer.
The instant he lunged out, Ervin, who had been doing the dirty work beneath the basket, suddenly took a drop step and sealed Brown firmly behind him. Radja flicked his wrist, delivering a beautiful bounce pass precisely into the unguarded space beneath the hoop.
An easy finish off the feed.
Garnett stared at the basket, unable to collect himself for a long while. He had read one point, but the starters' offense was a precision machine of five interlocking players.
The game came down to the final possession.
The starters led by two and had the ball. All they had to do was run out the clock to win. Garnett's eyes were already blazing. This was his last chance to erase the shadow of that first crushing defeat.
Cassell and Radja ran a pick-and-roll at the top of the arc. Everyone thought the clutch Cassell would deliver the dagger himself, but this time Garnett guessed right!
Anticipating the play, he appeared like a phantom in front of the rolling Radja, his enormous reach descending hard toward the ball in Radja's hands!
The defensive play was almost perfect.
But the old fox Radja, confronted in midair by those long arms sealing his path, gave his wrist a gentle flick at the last instant and lofted the ball over Garnett's fingertips toward the weak-side corner.
There, Jones was already waiting, wide open.
The catch, the jump, the three-point release.
Swish!
The final whistle sounded. In the second game, the second unit had still lost.
Garnett had gotten ninety percent right, but he had lost on that final ten percent of experience.
Garnett braced his hands on his knees and gulped for air. He had lost two games in a row, but the dejection and confusion from the end of the first game were no longer in his eyes.
Radja walked over. He did not mock him, merely reaching out to pat Garnett's chest.
"Kid," he said slowly in his heavily European-accented English, "that was a little more interesting."
Garnett raised his head.
"But you..." Radja tipped his chin toward the other four starters behind him. "You're still a long way from beating us."
With that, the five starters headed toward the locker room, talking and laughing.
Garnett stood rooted to the spot, staring fixedly at their five retreating backs.
At courtside, head coach Adelman's eyes were filled with shock. He turned to Lin Qi and said, "Even with two straight losses tonight, this kid has already gone from an unseasoned prodigy to a centerpiece who understands how to command an entire team. Lin, he's already transformed."
"It's not enough."
Leaning against the railing, Lin Qi watched the nineteen-year-old standing at center court, defeated yet with eyes frighteningly bright, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
Everyone who achieved greatness shared something in common.
A hunger that could never be sated.
Right now, it was only an intrasquad scrimmage. But once this kid tasted the sweetness of securing a starting spot, wielded the authority of the centerpiece, and even ascended the throne of an NBA championship...
For the rest of his life, he would chase that shiver at the summit again and again, like an addict driven mad.
Now, at the center of the brightly lit court, sweat streamed from the young man's jaw and struck the wooden floor in an unbroken line. He shed no tears, merely fixing his fierce eyes on the winners' retreating backs.
Lin Qi withdrew his gaze, turned, slipped his hands into his coat pockets, and walked toward the shadows of the exit tunnel.
He stopped at the dark end of the tunnel and turned his head slightly, taking one last sidelong look at the young wolf beginning to grow its fangs, then murmured softly.
"Go on. Feed that ambition a little more."
"When the day comes that your ability truly catches up with your ambition..."
"I'll take you to seize back the crown that should have been yours."
"For the Boston Celtics..."
"To build a dynasty."