nba grind Chapter 158: Exhibition Week (Patreon)

The noise from draft night burned off fast.

Late in the first round the Lakers took Javaris Crittenton. The name meant nothing to Link. Fringe minutes, most likely. A body on the end of the bench.

After that the gym took the center of his map again. Offseason days ran in a straight line: facility, apartment, repeat.

[System]

Mission: Ball Handling (Advanced)

Content: 2,500 sets of basic dribbles. 2,500 sets of combo dribbles. 2,500 sets of off-hand dribbles. 2,500 sets of change-of-direction attacks.

Progress: 2786/10000

The load sat nowhere near the intermediate work. Link kept five hours of high-intensity work every day and parked everything off the floor. Sweat ran into his eyes more times than he counted. The ball still got quieter in his hands. Both sides of the dribble started answering when he asked.

The bar crawled.

July arrived inside that same loop.

The phone went after a session. The screen read Zhang Ping, national team.

“Link. Catch you in the middle of it?” Zhang’s voice had a smile in it.

“Just finished. Go ahead.” Link wiped off and walked to the sideline.

“I’ll keep it short. The China–U.S. exhibition we talked about is locked. Next Friday. Las Vegas. Two games against the American second team.”

Link listened. He had already said yes.

“Our side: Yao, Wang Zhizhi, Yi Jianlian, plus Sun Yue, Liu Wei, Zhu Fangyu, Wang Shipeng. The main frame is mostly there.” Zhang’s tone tightened a degree. “You come as we said—invited guest and team consultant. Pregame work. Tactical meetings. Talk to the young guys. Show up for the events and the cameras between games.”

He laid it out clean.

“That’s the federation and the bureau. They want you around the group. Learn the room.”

The last line stayed polite. The meaning did not. Beijing 2008 sat over the whole program like a ceiling. Link had already told Yao he wanted the national jersey. Showing up early was the next step.

“Send the times and the hotel. I’ll be there.”

A few days later the heat in Las Vegas hit him coming off the jetway. Third trip to the desert. Different job each time.

Zhang Ping was waiting at arrivals.

“You didn’t have to come out,” Link said.

“That’s not how this works. You’re a name now.” Zhang laughed it off in that northwest clip of his and waved him toward the team bus.

Talk filled the ride. Hotel and practice wing came up fast.

In a conference room off the lobby Link found Yao and Yi.

Yao stood, grinned, and pulled him into a hard hug. Neither of them mentioned Houston.

Yi came in right behind it. “Link.” Draft night had put another layer on that. A SuperSonics staffer stood at his shoulder. Seattle was not treating him like a flyer.

The rest of the faces were ones Link had watched on television in another life.

Wang Zhizhi smiled easy and patted his arm. “Link. Good to see you.”

“You too.”

Wang was still the most polished big in the group, the one who had carried the program before Yao took the middle of it. Quiet. Willing to do the unglamorous work. The respect around him was earned, and Link did not pretend otherwise.

He worked the room.

Liu Wei, the point guard—steady hands, the guy who kept possessions from getting ugly.

On the wing, Zhu Fangyu and Wang Shipeng, the two most reliable shooters the program had. Zhu played through contact. Wang disappeared into cuts and came out with the ball already up.

Sun Yue still had some of the kid in his face. Tall for a guard, real burst, talent you did not need a scout to see. He did not know yet that a Lakers jersey was waiting for him down the line. He watched Link the way younger players watch a -American who had already made it stick in the league.

The talk stayed easy. Yao had worried the room might close—same-position minutes, old hierarchies. The playoff tape had already bought Link the silence that mattered.

Later Zhang pulled him into the hotel café.

“How do they look?”

“Alive. And they all have a thing,” Link said. No polish on it. “Yao is the hub. Yi hits the floor like a problem. Wang’s skill is still the cleanest in there. The wings can shoot. Sun Yue—the body is ahead of the rest of him.”

He meant it. Put against the history of the program, this group was the high-water mark. In 2008 Yao would drag them to the quarterfinals on home floor and match the best finish the country had ever posted. After that the program never found that version of itself again. People called 2008 a beginning. Looking back, it was the peak they did not climb twice. No second Yao. No second Wang. No second Yi. Ten, twenty years on, the flag still did not have a new pair of hands.

“Sun Yue’s a real one,” Zhang said. “He still has to work, and that chip on his shoulder has to get filed down.” Then he turned it. “These two games are not soft. Garnett’s captaining the American side. Jason Terry, Shawn Marion, that kind of veteran weight. The nights will be heavy.”

He looked at Link.

“You’re here for the room, and you’re here for your eyes. Watch practice. Watch the games. Especially how they play against NBA bodies. Where we get hurt. What we can prepare for. Talk to me. Talk to Jonas. That angle is worth something to us.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

That was the start of it. The Olympic year had not opened yet. The first note was already in the air.