February 16th, Monday morning.
In the management offices on the top floor of Boston's New Garden, the sounds of fax machines and internal telephones filled the air.
With only 96 hours left until the mid-season trade deadline of 3 p. m. on February 19th, and less than half a day after the NBA All-Star Game ended at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the phones on the desks of the general managers of all 29 teams in the United States were ringing off the hook.
Lin Qi took off his snow-drenched coat and draped it over the back of his chair. He picked up the hot coffee his assistant Margaret had just brought and walked behind his desk. The room was well-heated, and Sam Presti was standing in front of the desk, placing a stack of faxes and scouting reports neatly clipped together with paperclips on the table.
"Boss, since we landed in Boston last night, we've received over thirty faxes of inquiries from various teams."
Presti pointed to the top stack of papers. "As you instructed, I've returned to Boston and there are no trade plans for the time being. However, the entire league is in chaos these past few days; several teams that are usually very secretive are now leaking information."
"Leave the team briefings here, you can go do other things." Lin Qi pulled out a leather chair, sat down, and opened the first scouting report bearing the Chicago Bulls logo.
The pages detailed Shaquille O'Neal O'Neal's playing time over the past month, and were accompanied by several clippings from the sports section of the Chicago Tribune.
Lin Qi looked at the long stretches of rest records and reports of locker room altercations and shook his head slightly.
Last summer, Kobe got into legal trouble in Colorado and his reputation was ruined. To get rid of this hot potato, Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf sent Kobe back to Los Angeles and traded him to the Lakers for O'Neal. At the time, the Chicago media thought the team would rely on this center to rebuild its glory, but after more than half a season, the entire United Center was in a mess.
Outsiders are often fooled by O'Neal's masked and goofy antics at the All-Star Game, thinking he's a good-natured and easygoing guy, and they blame Kobe for all the previous locker Lakers conflicts in the Kobe.
But Lin Qi knew in his heart that a player with O'Neal's personality was destined to be the center of a storm in the locker room wherever he went. He was too flamboyant and extremely proud at heart. No matter which team he was on, all the spotlight, ball possession, and locker room discourse had to revolve around him. Once he felt that his position as the leader was threatened in the slightest, trouble would immediately come knocking.
Back in 1992, when O'Neal first entered the league and joined the Orlando Magic, this domineering attitude was already evident. He was used to wearing number 33 at Louisiana State University, and upon joining the Orlando Magic, he demanded the number 33 from veteran Terry Vince Carter. Vince Carter had played three years as the Magic's starting power forward, demanded $50,000 in compensation before giving up his number. O'Neal flatly refused, instead donning number 32 and constantly dominating his senior in practice and games. Within a year, the 29-year-old Vince Carter lost his place on the Orlando Magic and subsequently faded from the league.
Later, the Magic drafted Anfernee Hardaway.
To be fair, Penny Hardaway was known in the basketball circle for his good temper and gentle personality. He was also happy to feed the ball to O'Neal on the court, and the two didn't have any deep-seated hatred between them. What really broke up that young guard was the off-court business competition and the instigation from those around them.
At the time, Nike's Lee Penny Hardaway puppet ads featuring Hardaway were a huge hit across the US, while O'Neal was endorsing Reebok, and the two were fiercely competing in the sneaker market. In early 1996, during the filming of a Reebok ad, O'Neal deliberately knocked the Lee Penny Hardaway puppet off its chair in front of the camera. This incident infuriated Hardaway, and he didn't speak to O'Neal for two or three weeks.
Unfortunately, at that time, Hardaway's friends and entourage were constantly speaking to the local Orlando media, implying that the Orlando Magic were Hardaway's team. Adding to this, the Magic's management offered Hardaway a contract comparable to O'Neal's, and local newspapers held polls questioning whether O'Neal deserved a max contract. From O'Neal's perspective, there was no conflict between him and Hardaway; it was simply that the Magic's management didn't understand the rules and didn't treat him, their key inside player, as their only trump card.
Ultimately, O'Neal and Kobe were essentially the same type of person. One needed to be the undisputed patriarch in the locker room, while the other couldn't tolerate anyone stealing the spotlight on the court. When these two got together, they didn't need any outside interference; they were bound to create chaos on their own.
In this timeline, during the years O'Neal played alongside Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, they were completely dominated by Boston, failing to win a single championship ring during their partnership. It wasn't until Phil Jackson couldn't stand Kobe's Kobe playstyle and traded him for Jason Kidd and Sean Marion, coupled with Michael Jordan's comeback in Los Angeles, that O'Neal finally won his only championship trophy to date, alongside Jordan, Kidd, and Marion.
In O'Neal's mind, he was the number one contributor to the Lakers winning the championship. Moreover, he had long been accustomed to life in Los Angeles, living in a mansion in Beverly Hills, making cameo appearances in Hollywood movies during the offseason, and recording rap albums in the studio. He was the focus of attention both on and off the court.
As a result, when Jordan retired last summer, Phil Jackson also resigned and left. Lakers owner Jerry Buss looked at Shaquille O'Neal, who was 32 years old, weighed over 350 pounds, and was asking for a maximum contract extension. Without saying a word, he sent him to Chicago, while he took Kobe, who was involved in a lot of lawsuits, back to Los Angeles and treated him like his own son.
Just as his acting career was taking off, he was kicked out of Hollywood, and the spot that was given to a young upstart who had never won a championship was given to him. O'Neal had never swallowed this bitter pill since the first day he arrived in Chicago last October.
During his months with the Chicago Bulls, O'Neal vented all his resentment on his new team. At the end of November Chicago Bulls fired the easygoing head coach Beal Vince Carter and replaced him with the strict Scott Skiles. Skiles immediately demanded that the entire team focus on discipline in defending pick-and-rolls. O'Neal immediately threw a tantrum in the gym, saying that he had won a championship and didn't need a guard who had never played in the NBA Finals to teach him how to play.
What troubled the Chicago Bulls ' management even more was his behavior in front of the media.
Chicago Bulls guards Jamal Crawford and Jalen Rose are used to dribbling and going it alone on the perimeter, often being a beat too slow with their passes. O'Neal would complain in the locker room after a game if he took fewer than fifteen shots. To subtly criticize Jerry Buss and Kobe, and to give a warning to his young Chicago Bulls teammates, O'Neal made sure to wear his Lakers championship ring on the most prominent finger of his right hand during every post-game interview at the United Center Lakers past month.
Facing the local Chicago television cameras, O'Neal repeatedly patted the ring and boasted that when he and Michael Jordan played together in Los Angeles, Jordan knew how to comfortably put the ball inside every night, and that's what a real championship team and real team basketball are all about. He also subtly mocked someone who stayed in Los Angeles, saying that besides taking thirty wild shots every game and leading the team into the lottery, he had never tasted what a championship was like in his entire life.
He was paid over $20 million a year by the Chicago Bulls, and he would flaunt his ring with Jordan from his time with the Lakers in front of Chicago reporters every day. This behavior infuriated Chicago Bulls owner Reinsdorf and general manager John Paxson, but they couldn't do anything about it.
The Chicago Bulls' management has now completely abandoned the idea of building a team around O'Neal.
General Manager John Paxson knew very well that O'Neal's old problems—a calf strain, big toe arthritis, and knee effusion—were getting worse. If he really went head-to-head with Skiles, it would inevitably cause a major incident in the locker room sooner or later. To maintain O'Neal's trade value and prevent him from getting seriously injured on the court or having his stats drop too much, the Chicago Bulls had simply gone along with his wishes for the past month or so. Whenever they faced back-to-back games or tough away games, the team doctor would immediately give him sick leave to rest. Paxson had been asking around these past few days, simply trying to find out which teams eager to contend for a championship or hoping to sell tickets would be willing to take on this superstar this summer.
Lin Qi closed the Chicago Bulls ' file and picked up the fax copy of the Los Angeles Times next to him.