Bang.
Artest kicked the metal door of the bus's luggage compartment shut, picked up the heavy canvas bag with one hand, and pushed open the side door of the training hall to go inside.
The sports science laboratory on the first floor was well-heated.
Head strength and conditioning coach Mike Boyle, with a metal stopwatch around his neck and his hands in the pockets of his gray athletic pants, stood next to a silver-gray eight-electrode body composition analyzer.
Players are most likely to overeat when they are on vacation or away from the team. Many veterans go out for ten days or half a month and come back with a roll of fat around their waist.
As agreed before Artest took leave, if his body fat percentage increased by even half a percentage point during these fourteen days, he would not only be severely punished, but would also have to sit on the bench for the rest of the season.
"Take off your coat and shoes and socks." Boyle's voice was devoid of any emotion. "First, check your body fat and joints. Once you pass that, you can do the shuttle run in Hall One."
Artest put his canvas bag on the plastic chair in the corner, ripped off his fleece shirt, stripped down to just a pair of tight-fitting boxer shorts, stepped barefoot onto the metal pedals, and gripped the sensor handles on both sides.
The numbers on the machine screen flickered for a few seconds, and then the printer ejected a thermal paper strip.
Boyle tore off the note, glanced at it, and drew a checkmark on the whiteboard with a pencil. "246 pounds, 4 pounds lighter than before. Body fat percentage decreased by 0.3%, muscle mass unchanged."
Next, Boyle had Artest sit on the edge of the physiotherapy bed next to him, and then pressed his rough thumb into Artest's knee joint, forcefully stroking down along the patellar ligament and Achilles tendon bursa. Artest gritted his teeth and didn't make a sound; his leg muscles were tense, and the bursa was smooth, without any signs of fluid accumulation or redness.
The assistant, Sean, handed over the plastic bag full of film and the blue attendance book. " Mike, for fourteen days straight, five hundred three-pointers, two sets of weighted squats, and seventeen shuttle runs every day, without missing a single day, and he ate exactly what you prescribed."
Boyle flipped through the attendance book, nodded to Sean, then patted the whiteboard. "Wear your sneakers to Hall One, for the last test, the shuttle run."
Five minutes later, the sharp screeching sound of basketball shoes screeching to a halt echoed through the empty main training field.
Artest tightened his shoelaces and bent down behind the baseline. As Boyle blew his whistle, he suddenly pushed off the ground and darted forward.
He ran to the opposite baseline, slapped his right hand on the white paint line, pushed off with his heel, twisted his body, and sprinted back. The rubber soles of his shoes scraped two faint gray marks on the hardwood floor. Ten laps, twelve laps, fifteen laps, Artest's thigh muscles began to ache and heat up, his throat was parched, and his heavy breathing echoed back and forth in the empty arena.
On his seventeenth attempt, Boyle crossed the finish line and pressed the stopwatch.
One minute and two seconds. Two seconds faster than the passing mark.
Artest braced his hands on his kneecaps, his chest heaving, saliva dripping down his chin, and large beads of sweat splattering onto the floor.
"Passed." Boyle signed his name at the bottom of the physical test form, casually grabbed a dry towel from the shelf and tossed it over Artest's head. "Lin is waiting for you in his office on the third floor. Go shower, change your clothes, and don't drip sweat on the carpet on the stairs."
Artest grabbed the towel from his head and vigorously wiped the sweat from his face.
In the CEO's office on the third floor, a humidifier was releasing a light mist of water vapor.
Lin Qi sat behind his desk, flipping through the All-Star Weekend schedule that Sam Presti had just sent him. After tonight's team practice, the entire team would take a chartered plane directly to Los Angeles.
There was a light knock on the office door twice, Artest pushed it open and walked in.
He changed into a clean, dark green team hoodie, his freshly washed stubble still smelling of lemon shower gel, and his face flushed from the hot water. He carried the stuffed black canvas bag in his left hand and casually placed it at his feet after entering the room.
"Sit down." Lin Qi put down the itinerary in his hand and pointed to the leather chair opposite him.
Artest pulled out a chair, sat down, reached into his hoodie pocket, rummaged around for a bit, pulled out a demo cassette tape in a clear plastic case, placed it on the table, and pushed it over.
A white paper strip was pasted on the front of the plastic shell, on which the English word "Champions" was written crookedly in black Mark.
Lin Qi glanced at the cassette tape on the table, then looked down at the bulging canvas bag at Artest's feet. "The bag was stuffed with so many printed CDs, why did you bring up just one cassette tape without a cover?"
"That bag is full of junk." Artest rubbed his nose, his voice a little hoarse. "Lin, all those musicians out there are a bunch of money-grubbing swindlers. Radio DJs ask me for thousands of dollars in bribes, nightclub owners use my name to sell tickets and then make me pay for drinks. I saw it all in Detroit and Indiana; they don't respect me at all, they don't think I'm a musician, they just think I'm stupid and easy to fool."
Lin Qi listened and nodded calmly. "Good that you understand. Every year, a dozen or so NBA players pay to release records, but only a few are actually listenable, which supports a large number of studio laborers... So what's the deal with this box?"
Artest placed his large hands on his knees and leaned forward slightly. "I grew up listening to Nash and Mobb Deep in Queensbridge, and with 50 Cent's nationwide popularity last year, I always felt that rap had to follow that formula. Recording in the studio, it was all about street fights, bulletproof vests, sirens, and a deafening synthesizer track from a nightclub. Those producers in New York were just using these ready-made formulas to fool me, charging me eight thousand dollars a song."
Artest paused for a moment. "When I got to Cleveland and Indiana, even the thugs who worked at nightclubs laughed at me, saying that a professional player earning millions of dollars a year, pretending to be a drug dealer on the street in his songs, sounded fake. That night, I retrieved a CD from a trash can in an alley, and the next morning at seven o'clock, I went to the high school gym in Indiana to run laps. It was snowing heavily outside, and the shabby gym didn't even have heating; it was just me and Beal."
"I was running on the court until my lungs felt like they were going to explode. All I could hear was the squeaking of my sneakers on the floor and the dull thud of the basketball hitting the wooden planks. As I was running, it suddenly dawned on me: I'm not hanging around Queensbridge anymore. I'm someone who made it to the NBA NBA Finals, someone who won an NBA championship. Why should I act like those street thugs, whining about nothing? If I'm going to write, I'll write about my real experiences."