Davis Jones's face was frozen in stunned disbelief.
He had heard of Russell Westbrook, but only the way Cole had back then — hearing that the kid had scored 50-plus in a single game. As for Westbrook's actual games, he had never watched one.
Information was plentiful in this era, but short videos and live streams had yet to take off. If you really wanted to check out a three-star high school recruit, you still had to go see him in person, the way Yang Shuai had.
But that play just now — Westbrook's explosive athleticism — and you're telling me this damn kid is a three-star high school recruit?!
Westbrook's dunk gave the team's morale a huge lift, and on the next possession they shut down the opponents' attack.
Westbrook leaped high to pull down the defensive rebound, then turned and accelerated up the floor.
He was blazingly fast and unusually ferocious. Wherever a defender stood in his path on the drive, he ran straight through him to win position, then shifted into another gear and pulled away.
In the blink of an eye he had carried the ball from his own backcourt to the frontcourt, finishing with a hop step that muscled Justin Gray aside as he slammed the ball hard through the hoop.
After landing, Westbrook stood perfectly still, staring straight at Gray.
Gray had given Westbrook his first lesson in college basketball; now Westbrook was showing Gray what real talent looked like.
The stare made Gray's skin crawl, and he turned his head away to break it.
The next moment, teammates like Michael Drum and Stephen Curry came charging over, shouting and yelling around Westbrook.
The look in Jones's eyes as he watched Westbrook now was pure disbelief.
It wasn't only because of Westbrook's outstanding physical gifts, but the mental fire he showed — like a blazing flame that could set a team's morale alight in an instant.
On the other end, Gray and Eric Williams ran a beautiful pick-and-roll, but Williams's seemingly sure-thing layup was smothered by Drum's desperate contest.
Drum secured the defensive rebound and fed it to Westbrook, who accelerated up the floor again.
Having lived through the last two possessions, Gray and the others didn't dare relax; they all swarmed toward him.
This time, when Westbrook reached the three-point line in the frontcourt, he was hounded and cut off from every direction, forced to slow down and protect the ball.
But at that very moment, he suddenly flung the ball to the far end of the floor — where Curry's figure, sprinting upcourt on the fast break, appeared exactly where the pass would land.
Westbrook's playmaking might not be top-tier, but his court vision — especially his vision on the move — was outstanding. That, too, was the foundation on which he would one day average a triple-double in the NBA.
Curry gathered the pass and finished a quick layup.
Though he had been tightly shadowed since the opening tip and hadn't had a single shot attempt, he had never stopped looking for chances to score.
Coming back the other way, Gray immediately ran a play to go at Curry, driving past him for another layup — six straight points to open the game.
"Chef, you doing the deliveries too?" Once the ball changed hands, Gray started in on Curry with the trash talk.
But Curry didn't take the bait. After pushing the ball into the frontcourt, he handed it off to Westbrook.
Westbrook took it, changed direction, accelerated past his defender, and charged straight at the rim.
The image of his poster dunk over Williams was still fresh in everyone's mind, so Gray and the others were forced to collapse into the paint.
After driving into the paint, Westbrook suddenly stopped short and spun, whipping the ball back out to the perimeter — Curry, coming off Drum's screen, had worked free for an open three!
Williams lunged out with everything he had to contest, a ferocious scowl on his face.
It did no good. Curry sighted the rim, bent his knees, pushed the ball — the three-pointer left his hand in one smooth motion.
"Swish!"
With that crisp sound, Curry's three went down, quick and clean as a knife stroke.
He was as calm as a block of ice.
"Beautiful!"
Yang Shuai couldn't help jumping up from his seat, shouting his approval.
But it wasn't because of Curry's three.
Curry or Westbrook — Yang Shuai had never doubted either man's ability for a second.
What he saw was the chemistry between the two.
After all, they had never practiced together, yet within just a few possessions they were already running plays this beautiful — proof of what he had thought from the very start: the two of them were perfect complements.
Jones's face was now full of despair.
His carefully designed setup was meant to embarrass Curry and Westbrook; instead, it had turned into a stage for them to show what they could do.
And the fact that two three-star high school recruits could trade punches with the team's two cornerstones meant Yang Shuai's eye for talent wasn't just sharp — it bordered on the unbelievable!
The score climbed back and forth, and when it hit 21-all, Gray called a stop to the game.
Curry and Westbrook couldn't hold back Gray's side's scripted offense; but the reverse was just as true — on defense, Gray and company had no real answer for the Curry–Westbrook duo either.
Playing on would only mean the baskets trading back and forth; better to stop it there.
When the game ended, Gray and Williams came over to the two of them on their own. Gray studied them, brimming with emotion. "If only you two had come a year earlier!"
He thought back to those years, when he and Chris Paul climbed to the top of the A League together and fought their way into the Sweet 16 of the tournament.
Then, in the very first season after Paul left, the team sank to the bottom of the league. A fall like that was hard to stomach.
Now the team had finally found the kind of talent it needed — but there was no next season left for him.
Beside them, Williams — standing there like a mountain — watched the two. He seemed about to say something, but in the end only rumbled out a single line: "That's what I wanted to say too!"
He and Gray had both joined the team in 2002 — he was ranked 36th among the high school class of 2002, Gray 61st — and now they were leaving together as well.
"But that's fate." Gray gave a bitter smile, then reached out and clapped both of them on the shoulder. "From here on, the team is counting on you!"
As he finished, Gray looked toward Williams, and Curry's and Westbrook's gazes landed on Williams as well.
Williams looked around at them, then nodded along. "That's what I wanted to say too!"
The game had produced no winner, but Curry and Westbrook had already won the two veterans' approval.
After lunch, Yang Shuai — on his own now — took Curry and Westbrook into the second phase of their official visit.
He showed the two around campus: the dormitories, the library, then the football stadium, the swimming complex, the bowling alley... giving them an early taste of college life at Wake Forest University.
For the last stop of the visit, he brought them back to Veterans Memorial Coliseum to watch the evening season finale, arranging second-row seats for them — VIP spots right behind the team's bench.
Sitting there was basically like being one of the players themselves, and it left the two of them especially excited.
The University of North Carolina was relatively ordinary this season — ordinary by its own standards, that is. They were currently second in the A League and tenth in the nation, still a good deal stronger than Wake Forest University.
But once the game began, Gray struck first, shaking free of Danny Green to score, and Williams followed by finishing an and-one right over Tyler Hansbrough.
Carried by the two of them, Wake Forest came out surging and raced to a dream 8–0 start.
Westbrook hollered himself hoarse with excitement, and Curry turned into an angry grade-schooler, pumping his fists again and again.
At the half, Wake Forest and North Carolina were tied at 31.
The result left the home crowd thrilled.
Their 3–12 record so far was rotten, but if they could knock off UNC in the season finale, it would still make for a decent ending.
But come the second half, they dropped from fantasy back to reality.
North Carolina came out of the break having clearly raised its defensive intensity, hammering Gray and Williams with hard double-teams.
Against that level of defense, the two veterans' scoring efficiency plummeted, Wake Forest's sets fell apart, and turnovers piled up.
In the end they scored only 15 points in the second half and took a crushing 46–64 loss to North Carolina.
The way this game unfolded was different from the Duke University game, but the result was no different at all.
After the final buzzer, Gray and Williams, eyes rimmed red, waved a last goodbye to the crowd, then disappeared forlornly into the tunnel.
After the game, Yang Shuai led the two out of the arena.
The official visit was now complete, but he didn't take them off campus right away. Instead, he walked with them slowly through the grounds.
The night wind blew past, cold enough to make a person shiver.
Yang Shuai stopped, turned, and looked at Curry and Westbrook.
Both faces were full of loss and stubborn refusal to accept it — they were clearly still deep inside the game that had just ended.
"Once Gray and Williams are gone, this team will be even worse than it was today." Yang Shuai's tone was calm, his gaze resting on their faces. "So — do you two still want to come?"
The crushing loss to UNC had been expected. Yang Shuai had set the visit day for today precisely so the two could see with their own eyes what this team really was.
He didn't want them arriving on a wave of blind enthusiasm only to sink, bit by bit, in the gap between dream and reality.
"Of course!" Westbrook didn't hesitate for an instant.
Curry looked at Yang Shuai and nodded hard too.
Seeing their reactions, Yang Shuai swallowed every word he had been marshaling, and simply reached out and clapped them both on the shoulder.
The two were worlds apart in temperament, but the competitive fire in their bones was exactly the same.
Chapter 9