With the season underway for half a month, the Celtics ' defense has become the talk of the entire league.
Every team that comes to FleetCenter Arena Boston is like walking into a tightly woven trap. The Boston Celtics ' wins steadily accumulate in a series of low-scoring, suffocating half-court games, but there are always those who refuse to believe in fate.
The Philadelphia 76ers are visiting Boston tonight.
In the very center of the visiting team's locker room sat Allen Iverson, the number one draft pick in 1996. This young man, just over 1.83 meters tall, was wreaking havoc on the defenses of various teams with a kind of almost inhuman speed and change of direction that no one in the entire league had ever seen.
The Boston media was already excited before the game. Everyone in the country knew that Allen Iverson and Dikembe Mutombo were both graduates of Georgetown University, and both were students of the tough, veteran coach John Klay Thompson. At Georgetown, Coach Klay Thompson had an ironclad rule that had lasted for more than a decade: once you leave school, no matter how many tens of millions of dollars you earn, the younger generation must keep their mouths clean when they meet their elders.
At the pre-game press conference, a veteran Boston reporter deliberately stirred up trouble by highlighting this ironclad rule, reminding the newly crowned number one draft pick of it.
Iverson tilted his head, wearing his baseball cap backwards, and gave a disdainful smirk. "I know. Back in Georgetown, Coach John was always nagging me about how many blocks Dikembe had made in the NBA. But I'm not here to be a good student. Tonight, I'll show you how to put the ball in the basket over your seniors' heads."
Half an hour later, the interview was delivered verbatim to Mutombo, who was in the locker room wrapping his ankle.
The African Mountain didn't even look up after hearing this, but simply replied in his deep, rough voice, as if polished by sandpaper, "Young people always think their ankles are made of iron. If Coach John saw him talking to his senior like that, he would definitely make him run shuttle runs all night. Tell Allen, the area under the basket is my territory, and no one can do whatever they want in my territory."
The match began, and the wooden floorboards in the FleetCenter creaked underfoot.
Just two minutes into the first quarter, Iverson couldn't wait to deliver on his promise before the nationally televised broadcast.
In a half-court set play for the Philadelphia 76ers, Iverson received the ball at the top of the key, guarding Sam Cassell. He rejected his teammate's screen and kept probing the three-point line with both feet.
Sam Cassell spread his arms, lowered his backside, and pressed his hard forearms against Iverson's lower back, muttering rudely, "Listen, Georgetown kid, you're not getting over this tonight."
Just as the defense was fully engaged, Iverson moved. His center of gravity shifted to the left at an almost reverse joint angle, a crossover move ahead of its time. In the 1990s, when referees rarely called wrist-twisting, this move was devastating to the defender's knees.
Sam Cassell's center of gravity was instantly shifted by half a body position. Iverson's long-axis foot gripped the ground fiercely, like a white lightning bolt, grazing Sam Cassell's ribs and plunging straight into Boston's paint area.
"Cover! Cover!" Sam Cassell shouted as he chased after him.
Garnett, playing at power forward, displayed terrifying dynamic talent. His long, black arms instantly spread out in the air, attempting to use lateral movement to cut off Iverson's path at the free-throw line. However, Iverson, moving at high speed, made a near-stomp stop and start, forcefully squeezing a path through Garnett's encirclement.
The basket was right in front of him. Iverson leaped into the air, stepping on the edge of the paint. Instead of blindly forcing his way in, he used his momentum to stay airborne, holding the basketball in front of his chest with both hands. Using his incredible core strength, he glided through the air, trying to dodge the block and then flick the ball in with a powerful reverse layup.
But just as he was about to make his move, a black mountain of flesh suddenly moved from the side without warning.
With a height of 2.18 meters and an astonishing wingspan of 2.31 meters, Mutombo didn't even need a running start. He simply relied on his defensive instincts honed over a decade of experience in the paint to leap vertically and completely shut down the space above the basket.
Iverson's pupils contracted in mid-air. Before losing sight of the ball, he tried to use exaggerated hang time to find space to shoot, sliding to the other side of the basket, attempting to use the screen from the Nets and rim to flick the ball backboard with a reverse hand.
"Smack!!"
With a dull, crisp sound, Mutombo simply stretched out his long arm, scooping down with one hand in mid-air, sending the attempted layup and ball flying solidly out of bounds. The basketball slammed against the advertising boards on the sidelines, creating a tremendous vibration.
Due to the immense inertia, Iverson landed and stumbled back a few steps on the wooden floor, landing hard on the back of a photographer at the baseline, the floor beneath him icy cold with sweat.
Mutombo slowly turned around and walked heavily to his fearless junior teammate. He slowly raised his thick right index finger and began to wiggle it from side to side right under Iverson's nose.
" Allen, Coach John never taught you to rampage through the mid lane like this back in school," Mutombo grumbled.
The entire Boston Garden erupted in a tsunami of cheers.
But rookie Iverson possessed an ingrained pride and obsession. In the next two quarters, he relentlessly challenged Boston's paint. Time and again, he lowered his center of gravity and accelerated at the top of the key, using a near-reckless frequency of changing direction to stubbornly attack the Boston Celtics ' interior.
But the results were more and more disastrous each time.
He used his speed to get past Jones on the perimeter, where Mutombo's towering figure was waiting in the three-second zone; Iverson could only resort to a high-arc pull-up floater, but Mutombo always managed to anticipate the shot and launch himself into the air, slapping the ball towards the stands just before it reached its highest point.
This pre-game boastful genius was so thoroughly blocked in the Boston Celtics ' home arena that he began to question his existence. After being blocked for the fifth time in a single game, he had to face Mutombo's slowly waving finger once again.
Midway through the fourth quarter, Iverson paused instinctively when he had the ball beyond the three-point line. He dared not drive any further and could only manage to take long-range shots from the strong side, shots that were not his forte at the moment.
Turning a top-tier penetrator averaging over 20 points per game into an inefficient outside shooter... that's the most ruthless aspect of Lin Qi's defensive system. It doesn't simply pursue blocks on the stat sheet, but rather uses absolute dominance in the paint to alter the opponent's offensive logic, forcing their star player into the most uncomfortable corner.
On the sidelines, Lin Qi leaned back in his chair, watching the Philadelphia 76ers' shooting percentage steadily decline on the big screen, his fingertips lightly tapping his thigh.
He recalled the contract he negotiated with Mutombo in Denver that summer. Lin Qi had added a special incentive clause... it didn't consider an individual's total blocks, but only how many percentage points the opposing team's field goal percentage dropped in the paint when Mutombo was on the court.
Tonight's game is the best testament to this high-level data contract.
"See that, Tom?" Lin Qi turned to Thibodeau beside him and said, "The whole league thinks Dikembe's value lies in those few blocks. But his most terrifying quality is that he makes opponents give up on driving to the basket just by seeing him standing there."
What reassured Lin Qi even more was that the chemistry between Mutombo and Garnett was developing at a visible pace.
That night, Boston's interior double-team defense began to take shape. Garnett used guard-like lateral movement at the free-throw line and three-point line to help defend and double-team, forcing ball handlers to slow down like a large net and driving them inside; while Mutombo was an iron gate, guarding the bottom of the pocket, delivering the fatal blow to those prey whose energy had been exhausted by Garnett.