Late Night, June 12th, Los Angeles, Four Seasons Hotel.
Four hours had passed since the end of Game 4. The floor where Boston was staying was so quiet it was as if no one was alive, except for the low hum of the central air conditioning.
Lin Qi did not return to his room; instead, he went straight to the conference room at the end of the corridor.
Pushing open the slightly ajar door, in the center of the conference room, head coach Rick Carlisle stood with his back to the door in front of the huge whiteboard. The whiteboard was densely covered with lines representing player movements, intersections of screens, and various double-teaming areas.
The black and red lines intertwined, like an extremely twisted spider web trying to trap some kind of monster.
"If... that's not right..."
Rick Carlisle gripped the eraser tightly, his eyes bloodshot, muttering nervously to himself. He abruptly erased a small section of lines, picked up a red pen, and redrawn a defensive line with such force that he almost broke the nib.
"It still doesn't work..."
Frustrated, Rick Carlisle grabbed a handful of his already thinning hair, picked up the eraser again, and forcefully wiped away the lines he had just drawn.
Rick.
Lin Qi's voice rang out in the empty conference room, breaking the almost mesmerizing atmosphere.
Rick Carlisle shuddered and turned around. This young marshal, who was always known for his elegance and composure, now looked like a scholar driven to a mental breakdown by an unsolvable mathematical formula.
" Lin Qi, you're still awake?" Rick Carlisle rubbed his face wearily. "I'm reviewing the last quarter. Grant ( Hill ) took a slightly larger step, which gave him room to jump..."
Lin Qi looked at the tactical board that had been scribbled beyond recognition, walked over, and picked up the eraser that Rick Carlisle had put down.
He pulled up a chair from the side and sat down, looking at Rick Carlisle with a deep gaze.
" Rick, stop drawing." Lin Qi's voice was soft, yet carried an undeniable force. "You're not wrong, and the players aren't wrong either. Tactically, we did everything we could."
"Why did we lose when we did everything right?!" Rick Carlisle suddenly lost control of his emotions. He pointed to the arc point marked with a red circle on the whiteboard, his voice hoarse, "We forced him into the position we expected! That long two-pointer, with two defenders on him and completely out of balance! He shouldn't have made it!"
"But that's Michael Jordan, Rick."
After saying this, Rick Carlisle didn't fall silent like a typical coach. Instead, a strong sense of resentment flashed in his eyes.
"I know who he is! Of course I know!" Rick Carlisle slammed his hands on the conference table, veins bulging on the back of his hands. " Lin Qi, I'm the guy who passed the ball to Larry Bird Larry Bird! I've seen monsters who can ignore all defenses and make the shot in dire situations! But I just couldn't accept it. I spent two whole years perfecting everything, doing everything I could!"
Rick Carlisle slumped into his chair, covering his face in anguish with his hands. What truly broke him was not losing a game, but the ruthless trampling of his basketball philosophy, the foundation of his life.
Lin Qi lit a cigarette, letting the smoke fill the conference room. His gaze pierced through the tactical board, as if he were back in the final five seconds at Staples Center.
Actually, before walking into this conference room, Lin Qi had been sitting alone in the room for a long time.
"I know what you're thinking, because I was also thinking about that round in my room just now." Lin Qi exhaled a smoke ring, his eyes revealing an unprecedented complexity. "From the moment I took over this team, I've firmly believed in the power of data."
"I believe three-pointers and shots at the rim are the most effective weapons. As for mid-range shots... especially those long-range, contested two-pointers, they are the least cost-effective scoring method on the basketball court and should be abandoned the most. I even told Chris Paul that unless it's close to a 24-second violation, never take those shots."
Lin Qi looked at Rick Carlisle, a bitter self-deprecating tinge in his voice. "But tonight..."
In Lin Qi's mind, Jordan's final mid-range shot, made in an extremely contorted physical state, replayed repeatedly like a slow-motion video.
The Lao Liumang's frozen posture in mid-air. The perfectly smooth spin of the basketball as it left his fingertips. And those cold, ruthless eyes that seemed capable of killing.
"When that old guy pulled up and took that mid-range jumper..." Lin Qi's voice deepened, "Although my rational mind told me that from that position, with that level of defense, the shooting percentage shouldn't exceed 20%, my intuition told me... that shot was going in, based on his posture in the air and the way he flicked the ball."
Lin Qi paused for a moment, seemingly processing that intuition that defied science.
"In that instant, all logic and data vanished. All that remained was that person's will to score."
Rick Carlisle looked up, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Lin Qi.
"In regular time, in 82 long, back-and-forth games, the data is right; making good use of space and probability will make you the winner. We can crush 99 percent of the teams in the league with our system." Lin Qi stood up and walked to the whiteboard.
"But on the brink of elimination in the NBA Finals, in the final five seconds when life or death hangs in the balance, all those complex tactical runs and meticulously designed screens are no match for that decisive mid-range jumper that cuts through the defense and hits right at your fingertips."
"Because that kind of shot is unreasonable. It's a weapon superstars use to break all conventional rules, a manifestation of their mental attributes." Lin Qi looked at Rick Carlisle, " Rick, we calculated everything, except for the heart of a champion."
Lin Qi picked up the eraser and, stroke by stroke, wiped away all the tactics Rick Carlisle had drawn all night, leaving them completely clean.
The whiteboard was empty again.
"We're trapped by our own rationality, Rick." Lin Qi slammed the blackboard eraser on the table with a sharp "thud."
Rick Carlisle stared at the empty whiteboard, his gaze gradually clearing from confusion. He understood what Lin Qi meant.
"This loss wasn't due to your tactical setup, nor was it because our defense wasn't strong enough. There's no need to blame ourselves, and certainly no need to get bogged down in this minor setback."
Lin Qi walked up to Rick Carlisle, reached out, and patted the young marshal heavily on the shoulder.