When a team is playing well, even the corners that no one usually notices start to gleam.
At the end of March, the Boston Celtics faced a back-to-back away game.
The Celtics' starters had just finished a brutal battle with their arch-rivals in the previous game and flew to Motor City overnight, their legs feeling like lead. Meanwhile, their opponents, the Detroit Pistons, were clamoring for the last playoff spot and were poised to take advantage of the Celtics' fatigue and devour them whole.
Before the match, head coach Adelman, seeing the fatigue on his key players' faces in the locker room, decisively folded up his tactical board.
"Tonight," the old man adjusted his glasses, "The starters will only play the routine first quarter. For the rest of the time, let the players who don't usually get much playing time go and play against Detroit."
At the far back of the locker room, Tracy Murray, Wesley Person, Eric Snow, and Bo Outlaw's eyes lit up instantly.
Within the management team, Lin Qi referred to these role players, who were severely unbalanced in their skills, as the "Atmosphere Group and Musketeers." Snow and Outlaw were the "Hardcore Atmosphere Group," responsible for pushing the atmosphere of the game to a frenzy with the roughest defense; while Murray and Person were the "Cold-Blooded Musketeers," only responsible for standing outside the three-point line and shooting cold-blooded shots.
After the starters finished the first quarter, Adelman immediately substituted five players into five in the second quarter, dumping all the reserves onto the court. The Pistons' coach originally thought Boston was about to surrender, but this ragtag team came out and used an almost schizophrenic and bizarre method to completely overwhelm the Detroit team.
The starting lineup relied on Sam Cassell's micro-management, Garnett's switching defense, and Jones ' all-around offensive and defensive skills—an elegant and sophisticated modern basketball system.
These guys play purely on two primal impulses: deadly defense and reckless three-point shooting.
Snow, an unassuming point guard with no offensive ambition, displayed the tenacity of an old-school defender the moment he stepped onto the court. He didn't want the ball, didn't pad his stats, and would pass it out once he crossed half-court, then turn around and press his chest against the Pistons ' star guard. He was like an unshakeable leech, relentlessly forcing his opponent to struggle even to cross half-court.
The inside game, on the other hand, became a stage for Outlaw's "performance art" all by himself.
Outlaw is an extremely eccentric guy. He's 2.03 meters tall, skinny as a stick, and worst of all, he can't shoot a basketball at all.
No, saying he can't shoot is an understatement. His shooting form at the free-throw line is like a bricklayer struggling to throw a 20-pound brick at an illegal building. His free-throw percentage has hovered around 30% for years.
This eccentric player, who inspires despair on offense, is the core of the "atmosphere team" but is a complete madman on defense.
Pistons center Otis Thorpe, seeing a skinny guy guarding him, positioned himself in the low post, ready to overpower him. But just as the ball was passed in and Thorpe was about to take a step and power up for a post-up, Outlaw's unusually long arms, longer than his body, slashed in like a ghost.
His large hands moved with lightning speed, like a black lightning bolt. Before Thorpe could even protect the ball to his chest, his fingertips struck the basketball with pinpoint accuracy.
Thorpe felt his hand go empty, and his body almost lost its balance due to inertia. When he turned around, Outlaw was already holding the ball in his arms, flashing him a big white smile.
The referee, without even whistling, made a clean tackle signal with both hands cutting down.
In the next possession, the Pistons drove and dished from the outside. A determined Thorpe cut inside, receiving the ball and poised for an open dunk, ready to get his revenge with a brutal dunk. But just as he jumped, Outlaw appeared from the side, his leap defying the laws of physics, his entire body taut in mid-air...
"Bang!!"
A solid block!
Outlaw's football-sized black hand slammed the ball down at its highest point, sending it crashing onto Thorpe's forehead and bouncing into the third row of the stands.
With a steal and a block, Outlaw displayed terrifying defensive prowess, leaving the Pistons ' interior defense questioning their very existence.
Before the Detroit players could even recover from that stunning block, the Musketeers had already set up their offense. Snow dribbled past half-court, didn't even look inside, and simply tossed the ball out to the perimeter.
Murray used Outlaw's screen to slip into an open space, received the ball, and released it at a point so high that it was difficult to contest.
"Whoosh!"
Turning back, just as the Pistons the springy player in the paint, Outlaw used the back of his head to see who was there, and through the crowd, he passed the ball to the corner. Person caught the ball and made a swift, decisive shot.
"Whoosh!"
Three points, three points, and more three points.
The Boston Celtics ' bench rained down three-pointers, and Outlaw's relentless, zombie-like dominance in the paint completely thwarted the Pistons ' desperate desire to win.
Towards the end of the third quarter, the Pistons' head coach finally lost his temper and yelled at the players on the court, "Send him to the free-throw line! Hack him! Make him shoot free throws!"
The Pistons resorted to the underhanded "Hack-a-Otero" tactic, roughly shoving Outlaw down as he attempted to drive to the basket on the defensive end.
The Detroit fans started booing wildly at the end of the game, because everyone knew what kind of free throws Outlaw had.
Otero got up from the floor, rubbed his butt, showed his big white teeth, smiled innocently, and stood on the free throw line swinging his long arms.
He took a deep breath, dribbled the ball twice, raised it above his head with both hands, his elbows pointing outwards in an extremely strange V-shape, his whole body stiff as dried bacon, and then, gritting his teeth, "pushed" the ball out.
First penalty.
"Bang!!"
The ball slammed against the front of the rim and bounced all the way to the center circle. The Pistons commentator in the arena laughed heartily into the microphone without any restraint.
Lin Qi covered his face in anguish in the private box on the second floor... Every time he watched this kid shoot free throws, it was like watching a public execution.
However, in the second penalty, Outlaw resorted to the same old trick, still using that ugly brick-throwing motion that could scare a child to tears.
But the moment that ball was released, everyone in the stadium who knew anything about basketball felt their eyelids twitch...
He threw the ball too fast and too hard, the trajectory was so low and flat it looked like a pass that was about to hit the basket.
The Pistons ' interior players had already positioned themselves, smirking as they prepared to secure the defensive rebound, a sure thing.
But no one expected that the basketball would hit the front of the rim squarely!
Instead of bouncing to the sides, it bounced back straight towards the free-throw line like a ball that had hit a wall.
"Damn it! Rebound!!" Thorpe's face changed drastically; it was too late.
Standing outside the free-throw line, Outlaw's springy legs seemed to shatter the floor the instant the ball hit the rim. He didn't need to box out; his 2.033-meter frame lifted him off the ground above everyone's heads, his deformed arms outstretched in the air, and with one hand, he caught the basketball, then, riding the momentum of his descent, delivered a devastating putback dunk over the basket!
"Bang--!!"
The immense impact caused the entire basketball hoop to shift forward by half an inch.
Outlaw hung from the Hoop, shaking his body wildly like a gorilla, flashing a big white tooth at the dumbfounded Thorpe below, and making strange "ooh ooh ooh ooh" noises.
After landing, he excitedly pounded his chest with his big fist, stuck out his tongue and shook his head wildly at the Detroit bench, his whole body excited like a madman who had just escaped from a mental hospital.
The Pistons commentator didn't even notice his pen had fallen to the ground; he collapsed in the broadcast booth. A free throw, a rebound, and a dunk—in the 90s, a time of physical battles and positioning in the paint, this was tantamount to spitting in the face of Detroit fans in public.
The referee's finger trembled slightly as he pointed to the scoreboard—two points were valid.
This scene shattered the Pistons players' morale on the spot. They just couldn't understand it. They sent this kid to the free-throw line, hoping to see him make a fool of himself, but instead he used a fake free throw that looked like he was throwing a brick to complete the most brutal putback dunk of the night over everyone's heads.
Lin Qi sat in the private box, watching the oddball hanging from the basketball hoop on the court, and burst out laughing so hard he collapsed onto the sofa.
With five minutes left in the final quarter, the game was no longer in doubt. The starters made a move to take off their jackets and go up to warm up, but Adelman pushed them back onto the bench.
"We don't need you tonight. Let them finish." Adelman looked at the sweaty, increasingly excited substitutes on the court. "Tonight is their stage."
Garnett sat on the very edge of the bench, waving a large towel above his head like a helicopter propeller, yelling and shouting at the crowd on the court.
" Tracy! It's hot! It's fucking hot!! Keep throwing them until they're dead!!"
"Bo!! That's it! Treat that old guy to hot pot!! Smash his ball all the way to the Atlantic Ocean!!"
The kid was yelling and stomping his feet on the floor, making the plastic benches on the Boston Celtics' bench rattle loudly.
As the final buzzer sounded, the Boston Celtics, relying on their unconventional lineup's incredible run, easily defeated the Pistons on the road.
The post-game stats showed that Murray and Person combined for 15 three-pointers, scoring the most points on the team. Meanwhile, Snow and Outlaw's stats were so meager that it looked like they'd thrown the game.
However, if you simply drag the table to the right, the contents of the data column will surprise everyone.
Snow didn't score a single point tonight, but in his twenty minutes of playing time, he managed to steal four steals from the Pistons ' guards and dish out six assists without a turnover. Outlaw was even more outrageous, with a big "2" in the scoring column... that was from his own putback dunk after grabbing his own free throw, but in the rebounds and blocks column, it was an absurd "14 rebounds, 5 blocks, 4 steals".
Lin Qi picked up his coat and headed towards the elevator.
The back-to-back games are over.
On his way to the locker room, Lin Qi dialed the team's logistics director's number.
"Reroute the team bus. Tonight, Detroit that top-notch steakhouse in Detroit and tell the players that all the tomahawk steaks and craft beers are on my personal tab. Let them eat their fill."