September, the first week of training camp.
Head coach Chris Ford stared at the finalized 15-man roster in his hands, his brow knotted. Lin Qi knew exactly what troubled him... three point guards who needed the ball to be effective, a 41-year-old starting center, and, on the wings, a veteran who had suffered a serious Achilles injury and Sean Elliott, who was plagued by kidney disease.
But Ford had not expected that this roster's first real problem would emerge not on the tactical level, but directly in the first intrasquad scrimmage.
The players were divided into green and white teams.
In the second quarter of the scrimmage, the green team's Sam Cassell stole the ball in the backcourt and immediately dribbled up the floor himself on a fast break. Winning a championship with the Rockets in Houston had taught him one thing: in transition, the ball should go to the player in the best position, with the best chance of scoring.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cassell spotted Dominique Wilkins trailing on the wing. But after rupturing his Achilles, the 34-year-old "The Human Highlight Film" was, after all, half a step slower at full speed on the break than he had been in his prime. In a fraction of a second, Cassell made his judgment: by the time the pass reached him, the opportunity would be gone. He chose to stop inside the three-point line and rise straight up for a midrange jumper.
Swish. The ball dropped cleanly through the net.
The green team's youngsters clapped and cheered, and Cassell relaxed as he turned to jog back. But Wilkins, standing on the right wing after spacing the floor without receiving the pass, instantly darkened.
A few possessions later, the green team was on offense again. Wilkins established position on the left low block and held out his hand for the ball. That was the tactical status a veteran superstar took for granted.
The ball reached Cassell, who was running the green team's offense. Rather than immediately feed the low post, Cassell waved Dino Radja up to set a high screen. Dribbling the ball, he leisurely organized the half-court offense from out front, as though the nine-time All-Star in the post did not exist.
Wilkins stood there for two seconds, then slowly spread his hands in front of the entire team.
For that instant, the air throughout the gym seemed to freeze. This was no longer an ordinary question of distributing possessions, but an open test of each other's limits. Two players were clashing in the most professional and direct way: on this new team, who called the shots on the court?
Lin Qi stood on the sideline, unruffled. He could understand both men's mindsets. Cassell was probably thinking: I'm a point guard who just won a championship. I know how to win. You need to listen to me. Wilkins, meanwhile, was likely thinking: When I was making All-Star teams and winning the scoring title, you hadn't even started high school.
Neither man spoke over the next few possessions, but the tension rapidly escalated.
Cassell loudly called out plays on the floor, asserting his authority to run the offense again and again. Wilkins said nothing, but on the next possession, after receiving a teammate's pass, he faced Eddie Jones closing out on him, leaned his weight into his defender, then followed a jab step with a turnaround jumper, forcing the shot home.
After scoring, Wilkins did not look at Cassell. He turned and went straight back on defense. With those two points, he showed everyone that even after a serious injury, his isolation scoring remained a finishing option the team could rely on.
On the sideline, head coach Ford anxiously reached for his whistle to stop play, but Lin Qi held out a hand to stop him.
"Let them keep playing," Lin Qi said.
"Lin, if this turns into a confrontation..."
"It won't." Lin Qi never took his eyes off the court. "Those two know where the line is. Bottling up this kind of fire during training camp is the real danger. Letting it out isn't a bad thing."
The one who actually stepped forward to ease the tension was Sean Elliott. The former All-Star forward, traded from Detroit that summer, possessed not only an extremely high basketball IQ but also a seasoned touch with people.
He strolled over to Cassell, put an arm around his shoulders, and said in a teasing tone loud enough for the whole team to hear, "Sam, if you'd passed that one to Dominique, we might have had to listen to a little less nagging from him after practice today."
Laughter immediately broke out throughout the gym.
It was a deftly handled remark that allowed both men to save face. It subtly reminded Cassell that Dominique really had been in a better position on that play, while indirectly reinforcing Wilkins's locker-room authority as the elder statesman.
Cassell smiled and replied, "All right, I'll keep it in mind next possession." The tension on Wilkins's face finally eased a little as well.
Throughout the entire exchange, Robert Parish, the team's true senior veteran, stood to one side with his arms folded, watching everything without expression. Lin Qi knew perfectly well that "The Chief" had never been a fiery, outspoken team leader. He was this young team's ballast. For now, the veteran was coolly observing from the sidelines, weighing whether the core of this new squad could withstand pressure.
Once he had seen enough, when order truly needed to be maintained, he would naturally use his seniority to steady the locker room. But that time had not yet come.
In the second half of the scrimmage, the tension on the court shifted to the clash between the old guard and the new. On offense, Wilkins began going straight at ninth overall pick Eddie Jones.
Established superstars never readily acknowledged a newcomer to the league. By their logic, youngsters had to pay their dues on the court before earning respect. On the next three consecutive possessions, Wilkins called for the ball in the low post to isolate against the rookie.
On the first possession, he backed down, used his bulk to force his way in, then turned for a fadeaway. Jones was knocked half a step back and could only watch the ball arc into the basket.
On the second possession, a series of jab steps led into a fake. Jones leaned slightly forward to contest the shot, and Wilkins immediately drove past him, pulling up from midrange to score again.
Wilkins looked composed as he retreated on defense, but his eyes held the appraising look peculiar to players of the older generation.
Lin Qi watched every detail from the sideline. At that moment, he did not care who won the scrimmage. He only wanted to see whether this guard he had snatched from Jerry West was tough enough when facing a Hall of Fame-caliber isolation scorer.
On the third possession, Wilkins once again posted up for the ball in his familiar spot on the left side at midrange.
This time, as Wilkins jabbed, Jones did not anticipate his move. He lowered his center of gravity and used his wingspan and lateral footwork to cut off Wilkins's room to turn, sealing every shooting angle like a vast net.
Wilkins forced his way into a turnaround jump shot. But the diminished explosiveness of his Achilles, combined with the unavoidable interference of the long arms in front of him, left his fadeaway noticeably short upon release.
The ball struck the front rim and bounced high. A few quiet gasps rose from around the gym.
After landing, Wilkins glanced at the basket, said nothing more, and turned to play defense.
After practice that day, in the passage leading to the locker room, Wilkins stopped an assistant coach who was putting away a tactics board and left him with a quiet remark: "That rookie... keep an eye on him. Don't let him slack off in practice."
With that, he strode into the locker room.
The assistant coach did not immediately grasp the veteran's intention, but Lin Qi, standing nearby, smiled. In the vocabulary of a long-established scorer like Dominique Wilkins, verbal praise was almost impossible. That simple "don't let him slack off" was the older generation's highest acknowledgment of a youngster's ability and defensive attitude.
That evening, head coach Ford reviewed the day's practice with Lin Qi in his office. At the end, he still sounded concerned. "Cassell and Dominique both have their own ideas about touches and status. If we don't handle the locker room properly, the new season will be difficult."
Lin Qi pushed over two freshly brewed cups of coffee and shook his head.
"Chris, you see them as troublemakers fighting over status, but I see two professionals who are desperate to win," Lin Qi said calmly. "Cassell won in Houston. He knows what it takes to win a championship, and he can't stop. Dominique came close to reaching the NBA Finals with the Hawks. He's been holding that in, wanting to prove himself one more time at the end of his career."
He took a sip of coffee and continued, "For a rebuilding team, the greatest danger isn't friction on the court. It's lifelessness, everyone being indifferent to winning or losing. But you saw it today. Cassell fought over a possession, Wilkins took offense and defense seriously, and even Eddie Jones defended like his life depended on it. Not one person in that room wanted to concede."
Lin Qi looked at Ford. "That competitive fire is a rare asset. A head coach's job isn't to put it out. It's to forge this group of tough guys who won't yield to one another into a unit where nobody wants to lose."
Ford sat thinking for a long time, then slowly nodded. "So how do we forge them?"
"Leave it to the schedule. Leave it to winning," Lin Qi said, looking out the window toward Old Boston Garden. "And leave it to Robert Parish, sitting on the sidelines watching the show. When the moment comes for him to step forward, he'll naturally speak for us with the weight of a championship center."
Lin Qi said no more. He knew perfectly well that the opportunity to fully fuse these difficult characters with winning qualities would not come in a quiet practice facility, nor during uneventful daily training.
The real test would come six weeks later, in the season opener.
Under the lights of Old Boston Garden, when Pat Riley arrived with his New York Knicks, their defense airtight and their presence bristling with hard-nosed menace, the entire league would see whether this new Celtics squad, pieced together from veterans, rookies, shooters, and undrafted players, was a heap of loose sand or a blade drawn from its sheath.