048: God

Stephon Marbury returned to the United States early.

He had no intention of revelling in Athens, nor was he interested in appearing at the closing ceremony.

And he certainly had no desire to watch the Olympic final.

He returned home, sweet home.

Yet it was not all that sweet.

For his home was right in New York, the very eye of the storm.

The New York Times featured a front-page column labeling his crucial airball as "The Century's Basketball Disgrace."

Abuse on the internet flooded in like a tidal wave, with the majority of New York fans believing that the Smiling Assassin should trade Stephon Marbury and acquire a capable helper for Lynch.

One comment was particularly vicious: "Well, I know Stephon's trade value isn't high right now, so let's just trade this piece of trash for a Doberman. At least that could guard Lynch's safety!"

Every word of the merciless mockery jumped from television screens and newspapers, piercing his retinas like countless sharp blades.

Looking at these, he broke down in silence.

He locked himself in his bedroom, where the sliver of light filtering through the gap in the curtains drew prison-like bars across the floor.

He stayed in his room all day, his mind chaotic, even suddenly wondering what petroleum jelly tasted like.

He listened to music alone, only to burst into tears at some sudden modulation, weeping bitterly.

He poured Sprite over his head, leaving the room in complete disarray.

His mother walked into his room, and he hugged her, crying just like he was four years old.

As the sole hope of his entire family, he had plummeted to the abyss.

"Hometown doesn't need me anymore," Stephon Marbury leaned against his mother's waist, which was thicker than the pier of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Mabel Marbury stroked her child's head: "God will guide you, Stephon. Go to sleep, get a good night's sleep, and you will see God reaching out to you in the holy light."

Marbury had a sound sleep. In his dream, he was curled up on the hardwood floor of Madison Square Garden, where the floodlights scorched the maple floor into a pale execution ground, surrounded by glaring New York fans, millions of bloodshot eyeballs pouring down from the stands.

A suited reporter pressed a microphone against his bleeding lips, the eyes behind his lenses flickering with hypocritical pity: "Stephon, as the most useless piece of trash in New York's history, how would you evaluate yourself?"

Before he could answer, a relentless torrent of abuse, boos, and ridicule descended.

"Go to hell, Stephon! You can only play high school basketball!"

"Get back to the Coney Island slums and gnaw on garbage!"

"Jason Kidd could crush this piece of dogshit with his pinky toe!"

"Cancer, get out of New York!"

"You are New York's shame!"

The jeering grew louder and louder as the fans closed in to surround him. The arena became jammed to the point of suffocation, as if all the air had been sucked out, making it hard for him to breathe.

He lay powerlessly on the ground, on the verge of suffocating under the weight of New York's public opinion.

At that moment, the dome suddenly burst open, and a beam of holy light pierced through the gloom.

Someone reached out a hand to him, hovering over his blood-stained forehead.

The light was so intense that Marbury's irises contracted to pinpricks in the glare. He could not make out the person's features, seeing only a dark silhouette.

He heard that person speaking to him: "Get up, Stephon. Get up."

"Gasp!"

Stephon Marbury bolted upright from the bed. There was no holy light around him, no terrifying fans or reporters, only a soaked pillow and his own heavily heaving chest.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead, knowing full well that he had just had a nightmare.

Yet it all felt too real; he could still remember every single detail.

Who had pulled him up? Who was that deeply shadowed figure? God? What the hell, God was a brother?!

The Son of New York had no answers. This summer still promised to be a long one for him.

While Marbury was mired in the bog of self-doubt, half a world away, Athens was witnessing a new legend. The eyes of New Yorkers remained fixed on Greece, witnessing Lynch's path of conquest.

-----------------

After eliminating the United States team, Lynch caught sight of that system whose appearance frequency was so low it was always forgotten.

[At 32 years old, you are about to create historical glory with your national team. Although your physical fitness has declined, your knees ache, and your movements are not as agile as when you were young, this may well be your final Olympics. Do not leave regrets in your professional career!]

[New Objective: Win the Olympic Championship.]

[Reward: The training speed of a designated acquired talent is increased by 50%. Only in this matter do you surely wish you could be a bit faster.]

Fair enough, this reward is very boomer-esque. For a 32-year-old player wanting to master something new, time is indeed running short.

Though an 18-year-old Lynch still had plenty of time, who could turn down the prospect of growing stronger even faster?

If he secured the reward, Lynch would undoubtedly pour it into Korver's shooting talent, accelerating his progress in spot-up jump shots.

Yet Lynch never liked borrowing against a championship in advance; everything had to wait until the Olympic gold medal was actually won.

Despite beating the US team, to put it bluntly, the garbage US team was merely the fourth seed in Group B.

The opponents ahead posed an even greater challenge.

Semifinal: China versus Argentina.

Luis Scola fingered the crucifix pendant on his chest. The power forward, later hailed as "The Diamond," wore a solemn expression.

He and Nocioni truly wanted to find a fortune-teller in the magical East to ask if there was something unclean about them that specifically attracted Lynch!

The two of them had practically become a regular recurring attraction that Lynch visited periodically!

Before the match, the headlines in the Greek media read: "Ladies and gentlemen, Lynch hasn't beaten Luis and Andres for a full week."

Of course, this match was far from simple.

Unlike the chaotic Team USA, the Generación Dorada had already had a chance to claim a world championship back in 2002, only for Manu Ginóbili's accidental injury to turn everything to dust.

Yet they were not discouraged; falling short at the final hurdle not only failed to crush them, but instead tempered Argentina's Golden Age into an even sharper eagle's beak.

From Spain to Italy, these warriors clad in blue and white battled across various regions, absorbing the essence of European basketball, awaiting their reunion two years later.

They possessed immense determination and unyielding willpower.

The Argentines quickly proved this on the court. With the frontcourt unable to make an impact, Carlos Delfino—the first Argentine player ever selected in the first round of the NBA draft—stepped up.

His decisive shots and precise three-pointers broke the Chinese fans out in a cold sweat, and commentary booths around the world repeatedly emphasized: this was the tactical thorn piercing straight through China's Achilles' heel!

Everyone knew that China's miserably weak backcourt struggled to contain firepower from beyond the arc.

Manu Ginóbili continued to create visual miracles with his razor-sharp drives and mind-boggling passes.

The basketball artistry of the Argentines was utterly flawless. When Delfino hit his fifth three-pointer of the game in the third quarter, the red numbers 66 to 54 on the scoreboard plunged the Athens Olympic Indoor Hall into two extremes of ice and fire—the Argentine bench waved their arms like a forest amid the boiling heat waves, while the stands of Chinese fans drifted with an anxious sense of suffocation.

Yet the script of competitive sports is forever tempering heroes.

As Ginóbili panted while clutching his knees, as the warmth in Delfino's palms dissipated with the Greek evening breeze, the halo of heroism fell upon Lynch and Yao Ming.

The defensive vortex catalyzed by the two of them ground Argentina's fluid offense into fragments. China gradually closed the gap, and with three minutes left in the fourth quarter, thanks to Yao Ming receiving a pass with just 3 seconds remaining on the shot clock and sinking a fadeaway jumper, China and Argentina were back on level terms!

"A 7-foot-6 center shooting a fadeaway? Huh? Poor Argentines, what are they going through!" The NBC commentator felt a trace of sympathy for Argentina. Whenever people talked about talent, they thought of the Dream Team, but truth be told, aside from the Dream Team, which other squad could assemble two NBA No. 1 overall draft picks like China did?

In the final three minutes, the desperate Manu squeezed out the very last ounce of his strength. He had missed out due to injury two years ago; two years later, he could not let victory slip through his fingers again.

With 38 seconds remaining in the game, Argentina still trailed by 3 points. Ginóbili called for a screen, and Lynch switched directly onto him.

Seeing an opportunity for a mismatch against a bigger player, Ginóbili chose to step back beyond the three-point line, clearing out for a one-on-one against Lynch.

Lynch's help defense was elite, but locking down guards in isolation was not his primary strength.

Ginóbili was full of confidence. He executed consecutive crossovers, drove left, then countered with a change of direction to the right, already getting half a step past Lynch.

Yet the Ginóbili did not use this to carve open the defense; instead, he abruptly executed a step-back, retreating beyond the arc, intending to tie the game with a direct three-pointer—just like Yao Ming had done moments before.

It was the most foolish decision he would make in his entire life.

Lynch had bet precisely on Ginóbili looking for the three-pointer, which was why his feet remained firmly planted in place. If Ginóbili had gone for a deuce, even if he scored, the Argentines would still have been forced to play the fouling game and gamble on China's free throws. Given Ginóbili's death-defying personality, he wouldn't do that; he would undoubtedly choose to tie the score outright.

As Ginóbili drove, Lynch had almost doubted his own read, but the Argentine maestro's step-back arrived right on cue.

Lynch wanted nothing more than to thank Sam Presti.

Thank him for showing him a massive volume of San Antonio Spurs game film, ensuring he was thoroughly familiar with the habits of the Spurs' players.

"Want to learn how to play winning basketball in the NBA? Just watch our Spurs," Sam Presti often said.

Thank you, Sam. Truly, that was spot on.

When Lynch's hand smothered Ginóbili's potential game-saving three, the Spanish-language commentator could no longer stay strapped to his seat: "My God, the Hand of God has blocked Manu!"

For the Argentines, the Hand of God was a special term, evoking memories of Diego Maradona at the quarterfinal of the Mexico World Cup on June 22, 1986.

Yet today, the Hand of God of the basketball world appeared.

The Hand of God crushed the final hopes of the Pampas army and permanently froze the South Americans' championship dream beneath the starry sky of Athens.

Lynch grabbed the basketball and sprinted all the way. Ginóbili aggressively grabbed Lynch's jersey, committing a tactical foul.

At the free-throw line, half the crowd jeered while the other half cheered, the two sounds merging into immense pressure landing on Lynch's shoulders.

He carried the expectations of hundreds of millions, bearing the gaze of countless eyes.

Yet back in Finland, Lynch, clad in the Real Madrid jersey, had long since grown accustomed to such pressure.

His European stint had done more than make him the No. 1 overall pick; it had endowed him with far more precious wealth.

One of those treasures now transformed into two crisp swishes through the net as Lynch calmly sank consecutive clutch free throws!

Yao Ming threw his head back and roared, sweat droplets sliding down his jaw, his knees trembling slightly.

He wasn't tired; he was exhilarated.

Not long ago they had been mired in a 12-point deficit; now the blood-red numbers on the scoreboard proclaimed the most magnificent comeback in Olympic history.

China was heading to the Olympic final. He couldn't believe it was real.

In the end, that margin held until the final whistle, sending China into the Olympic men's basketball final for the first time in history.

Facing Italy in the final, the plot lacked such dramatic twists, feeling more like Lynch's coronation ceremony.

The Italians had a historical habit of mysteriously going offline halfway through a campaign, and today was no exception.

Like Venetian warships shrouded in the mist of the Adriatic Sea, they managed to tangle with China through accurate three-pointers in the first half, only to suddenly lose their bearings after the intermission.

Italy ultimately lost by 14 points, leaving little suspense to the match.

When Yao Ming hurled the game ball, smeared with the prints of his palms, high up into the starlight, the moonlight of Athens cast a silver sheen over the coronation ceremony, and the golden age of Chinese basketball officially descended in the night breeze of the Aegean Sea.

For countless Chinese fans, this was the finest day of their lives.

Yet to New York fans, it felt merely like the hazy outline of future glory.

At eighteen, he swept Europe, became the number one draft pick, and won an Olympic gold.

In the vast river of stars that was the NBA, never before had such an unprecedented, brilliant star been on the verge of breaking the dawn.

Carrying the hurricane of Europa, the brilliance of the Olympic flame, and the yet-unawakened expectations of Madison Square Garden, he was about to pen an epic for a new era of basketball across the ocean.

Spike Lee wept. He hadn't cried when the Dream Team was eliminated, but he wept when China claimed the title.

CCTV's camera panned to him, and Coach Zhang made a rather whimsical remark: "Actually, Spike Lee has a dark skin tone but a Chinese heart!"

Naturally, this had nothing to do with racial identity or cultural conversion, but rather stemmed from the long-suppressed bitterness accumulated at Madison Garden.

As a guardian of New York basketball, he knew he would never again have to sit day after day in the exact same seat tasting the exact same flavor of shit.

The following day, The New York Times broke tradition, its front page emblazoned with a massive color photo of Chinese players embracing and weeping, making it look almost like a local daily.

The front-page headline questioned the city's entire anticipation: Could the Hand of God bring redemption to a sunken New York?

Crouched in his Brooklyn apartment, Stephon Marbury gripped the newspaper, the dark silhouette draped in holy light from his dream resurfacing once more. He stared at the title "Hand of God" in the report, his heart accelerating involuntarily.

Lynch... no, it couldn't be. There was no way it could be him.

Because God was clearly a brother!