Xu Ling firmly believed there was a special bond of fate between him and Acie Law.
In their first meeting against Texas A&M, Xu Ling's stifling defense against Law had propelled Texas Tech to victory and catapulted him to national prominence. Not long ago, they had finished their rematch, with Texas Tech coming out on top once more.
Now, in the opening round of the Big 12 tournament—with March Madness bids hanging in the balance—they were matched up against Texas A&M yet again.
"Man, what can I even say?" Law looked at Xu Ling with an expression of sheer exhaustion. "Our luck this year is completely cursed. I swear, if I fell face-first into Pamela Anderson’s chest, I’d manage to squeeze her implants right out!"
Xu Ling’s initial reaction was: *Who the hell is Pamela Anderson?*
Why not Ava Addams? Why not Lisa Ann? Of course, Xu Ling was never one for "augmented engineering"; his tastes ran strictly toward all-natural, freakishly gifted wonders like Sara Arabic.
"Don't take it to heart, Acie," Xu Ling said flatly as they shook hands. "Look at the bright side: at least you get a head start on preparing for the 2007 draft lottery."
Law gave a cold smirk. "I'll take that as you wishing me luck!"
Texas A&M certainly had every right to curse their misfortune. Although the Big 12 was exceptionally cutthroat this season, the Aggies were still a top-four program in the conference, well within reach of an NCAA tournament berth. With Acie Law running the show, they could go toe-to-toe with almost anyone.
Unfortunately, in the first round of the conference tournament, they had run straight into the one team in the Big 12 built to completely neutralize them.
From the start, the outcome was never in doubt.
Xu Ling loomed like an impenetrable wall in front of Law. While this wall seemed like nothing more than an NCAA roadblock right now, it offered an ominous preview of the struggles waiting for Law in the NBA.
Once he reached the pros and every team had one or two defensive stoppers like Xu Ling, would he still be able to adapt?
That would be the defining question of his career.
And tonight, he had no answers.
The more games Xu Ling played against Law, the more comfortable and suffocating his defense became.
Law managed to hit a few perimeter shots early, but that merely injected a flicker of suspense into the opening minutes, as a hot shooting touch rarely holds up over forty minutes.
Under Xu Ling’s relentless pressure, Law completely lost his rhythm in the second half, and Texas A&M unraveled along with him.
At the same time, Xu Ling’s recent crash course in low-post play was already bearing fruit.
He still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the tempo and cadence of back-to-the-basket isolations, but he was steadily figuring out how to punish mismatches against opponents who lacked his size, strength, and explosive burst.
It was only a small step forward, but a monumental leap toward mastering the nuances of the post.
For a perimeter player, the essence of posting up was dead simple: punish every single mismatch the defense dared to put in front of you.
If you lacked a post game, you’d end up like the owner of "the longest river in NBA history," getting clamped by J.J. Barea on the NBA Finals stage and becoming the laughingstock of the basketball world.
Tonight, Xu Ling’s low-post offense proved remarkably effective. Paired with the heavy responsibility of neutralizing the opposing centerpiece, he thoroughly dominated both ends of the floor. He stuffed the stat sheet with 23 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 blocks, steering the Red Raiders past their rivals, marching into the next round of the tournament, and formally punching their ticket to the 2007 NCAA March Madness tournament.
***
"Are you kidding me?! Eli is basketball's James Dean!"
After watching the game, Bill Simmons was as giddy as a schoolboy in his latest column. He wrote:
*A year ago today? Who the hell knew who Eli was? To all of us, he was just another of the countless 'what-ifs' pumping iron in some random gym over the summer, shooting with passable form, but destined never to sniff the NBA. You know the type—like your cousin who never shuts up about how he 'used to play varsity.' But now? In just twelve short months, this kid has gone from an obscure speck on the international stage to a bona fide superstar captivating the entire world!*
*That logo-range buzzer-beater he drilled right in Kevin Durant’s face? Good lord, that was the spitting image of James Dean’s cold stare in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause! You know that movie didn't just immortalize JD—it turned him into the banner of youth culture, an eternal rebel. And Eli’s shot was his Rebel Without a Cause moment. It didn’t just ice the game; it forged the lawless, adrenaline-pumping Eli we know and revere today!*
*And that’s not even the craziest part—the craziest part is that he’s still getting better! Can you even wrap your head around that?! At this rate, we can’t even begin to project what kind of monster he’ll evolve into by the time March Madness wraps up! Is he about to pull a 2001: A Space Odyssey on the basketball world? Skipping all the middle evolution and tossing a bone straight into outer space? You tell me!*
As Texas Tech charged toward the twelfth conference tournament title in program history, Xu Ling’s stock continued to soar.
His name had officially landed on the desks of front offices across the NBA.
When Isiah Thomas heard his team’s scouts place Xu Ling alongside Greg Oden and Kevin Durant as "one of the can’t-miss prospects of the 2007 draft class," a ghastly grin crept across the face New Yorkers loved to loathe. Pointing out the window, he said, "Phil, if I walked outside right now and told the city we were throwing the rest of the season to tank for a lottery pick, I guarantee you they’d hang me from a streetlight in Times Square. Why? Because we don't have a single damn draft pick left!"
Phil Ford, the Knicks' director of scouting, twitched slightly. He opened his mouth to speak, but reason kicked in. There was no point in arguing with Isiah. The man was thoroughly deaf to outside input; the only way to survive was to nod and feed into his delusions.
"Isiah, you’re the best dealmaker in the world. If Eli is truly can't-miss, I’m confident you'll find a way to land him."
"Right..." Thomas said. "But at what cost?"
Well, truth be told, whatever the cost was, it couldn't possibly be worse than handing Jerome James a five-year, thirty-million-dollar contract, shipping away multiple future first-round picks to Chicago to "steal" Eddy Curry, assembling a roster of loud, flashy, insubordinate veterans, and then writing a blank check to bring in a raging control freak like Larry Brown expecting him to fix it all. It was the epitome of trying to make two negatives equal a positive. Thomas refused to listen to anyone, and Brown refused to accept anyone else’s authority. Did anyone actually believe two personalities like that could co-exist?
Hardly. *The New York Times* had famously dubbed the Thomas-Brown union the NBA’s version of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Two volatile junkies wrapped in insurmountable friction. The man possessed a spark of talent, but ultimately realized he was good for nothing beyond providing cheap entertainment for the masses, choosing to end it all. That put an end to the worst romance in Hollywood history, cementing a legacy far grander in death than in life—a familiar script—while casting the widow forever into the purgatory of "you killed him." There was no cleaner ending than that.
The same played out with Thomas and Brown. Their partnership imploded almost immediately. In less than a year, Brown’s tenure with the Knicks was over. Walking away with a massive buyout, he brushed off critics who blamed him for sinking the franchise: "What were you expecting? I didn't pick these guys."
Left with no alternative, James Dolan had no choice but to throw Thomas himself onto the sidelines. After all, Brown was the fourth head coach he had canned in three years. If whoever took the job was going to end up fired anyway, Thomas might as well take the wheel. And so, Thomas became both the general manager and head coach of the Knicks. As his way of repaying the owner's boundless faith, Thomas promptly got slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit by a female employee.
Yet the Knicks were suddenly enjoying their best season in five years, hovering right at a 50% winning percentage. A thrilled Dolan rewarded Thomas with a three-year contract extension.
Rumor had it that Diddy had once locked down a superstar’s post-ups, but frankly, given the astonishing degree of tolerance Dolan showed Thomas, even twenty years of favors wouldn't account for it.
"Wait, isn't that Eli kid playing for Coach Knight?" Thomas suddenly asked.
"That’s him," Ford answered instantly. "The kid who claims he’s going to be the college Jordan."
"He’s a good kid, just a bit short-sighted," Thomas scoffed lightly. "'College Jordan' doesn't mean a thing. Hell, even after Jordan got to the league, throughout the eighties he was nothing more than a conference finals exit!"
Considering the long-standing blood feud between them, nobody was surprised to hear Thomas spew hot takes regarding Jordan.
"He just capitalized on the window where me, Larry, and Magic were getting old to grab a little glory in the nineties. What’s so special about that...?!"
With that, Thomas glanced at Ford. "Am I right, Phil?"
Phil Ford—the number two overall pick in 1978 and the greatest guard in North Carolina history before Jordan came along—felt like he was being stared down by a venomous snake.
"Uh-huh... Sure..."
Whenever Thomas tore into Jordan, what he craved most was validation from others, particularly from Tar Heels.
Ford was no Jordan; he wasn't going to wear Carolina blue training shorts as his underwear at fifty years old. For him, the only thing that mattered was keeping his paycheck.
So even if Thomas insisted that Jordan was just an average dog who stepped in lucky crap every day during the nineties, Ford would nod right along.
"How are things looking for Texas Tech right now?" Thomas pivoted, changing the subject. "I heard they’ve been on a tear lately?"
"Incredible," Ford said, seizing on Thomas’s interest. "They’ve already punched their ticket to March Madness. They blew out their opponent yesterday and are just one win away from lifting the Big 12 tournament trophy."
Thomas felt an urge to go see for himself. Not necessarily to scout Xu Ling—after all, the Knicks didn’t possess a 2007 draft pick, so what good was an elite prospect to them anyway?
Besides, he was essentially a pariah right now. If he abandoned his team to fly out to Texas and watch a college game, the press would eat him alive.
Then again, his reputation had already hit rock bottom. There was nowhere left to fall, so why should he care?
Thomas decided to dial his old mentor.
"Coach, how've you been?"
"Not bad," Knight answered, sounding in unusually high spirits. "We made the Big 12 finals."
Thomas had no interest in dragging out small talk; he knew Coach Knight was never one for pleasantries. He cut straight to the chase: "I hear TTU has a pretty special kid over there. What do you think of him?"
"He's not a bit worse than you were."
Knight paused, then added, "If you want to know how good he really is, come see for yourself."
Thomas chatted with his former coach for a few more minutes before hanging up. Turning to his assistant, he barked, "Book me a flight to Dallas."
"Uh... Isiah, we play Dallas tomorrow night."
"So what?" Thomas snapped loudly. "You honestly think we have a chance in hell against Dallas? Listen to me: I’m sick! I’m on a business trip! I’ve got a lawsuit to handle, a pile of trade proposals to review, an owner who believes in me to answer to, and a damn 'college Jordan' to scout! I'm not free tomorrow night!"
That, in a nutshell, was the team culture of the New York Knicks during the Isiah Thomas era.
Everyone knew Thomas was a buffoon, but nobody dared say it out loud, because the owner considered him a once-in-a-generation front-office visionary. If something went wrong with the team, it was invariably someone else’s fault; Thomas was never to blame. Calling him a clown was tantamount to calling the owner a clown—and did you want to keep your job or not? If you did, you shut your trap and said whatever he wanted to hear.
"Right away, Boss!"
Chapter 24