Chapter 119: The Giant’s Wound
Hearing that Yao Ming called, Xu Ling immediately took the mobile phone.
Even before the game, Xu Ling had heard that Yao Ming suffered a stress fracture and planned to call after the game to offer condolences, but unexpectedly the other party called first.
Xu Ling then called back.
Seeing this, Iavaroni didn’t pry and walked into the locker room alone.
Craig also tactfully walked away, leaving Xu Ling ample private space.
Soon, Yao Ming picked up on the other end.
“Brother Yao, how’s the situation?”
Yao Ming’s mild voice came from the other end: “It’s just like that, a stress fracture, this one’s quite troublesome.”
Xu Ling was silent for a moment; he had heard that after Yao Ming got injured, the first thing he said to the doctor was “preserve the Olympic Games no matter what.”
This statement might have been a bit vague, but Yao Ming clearly stated at the subsequent press conference that missing the Capital Olympic Games due to injury would be the greatest loss of his career.
A domestic Olympic Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for any ambitious athlete.
“How long is the recovery period?” Xu Ling asked again.
“The doctor says at least four to six months, and,” Yao Ming paused, “even if I recover, what level of form I can return to and whether I can make the Olympic Games are unknowns.”
The words were calm, but Xu Ling could hear the weight in them.
“What you need to do now is rest and recover properly,” Xu Ling said. “Don’t overthink it.”
“How can I not think about it?” Yao Ming gave a wry laugh. “A domestic Olympic Games is such a rare opportunity. I have to make it no matter what.”
Xu Ling actually wasn’t too worried about whether Yao Ming could make it.
Because he knew Yao Ming did make it.
Although he didn’t know what impact this timeline-transcending comeback journey had on the other’s prematurely ended career, he did make it.
“I just don’t know,” Xu Ling said, “if I can make it?”
The words sank like a stone into the sea.
Yao Ming was silent for a long while on the other end.
As far as Yao Ming was concerned, he definitely hoped extremely that Xu Ling could join the national team—a guard-forward who averaged 25 points per game in the NBA, so young, fully capable of taking his banner and becoming the leading figure for the Chinese Men’s National Basketball Team for the next decade. Missing the home Olympic Games due to so-called “association recognition” issues would be such a regret.
However, this matter clearly exceeded Yao Ming’s authority.
He was just a player.
Moreover, he knew why Xu Ling brought it up.
That was that Xu Ling also wanted to know if he could really play in the Capital Olympic Games.
“Funny thing is,” Yao Ming finally spoke, “if I hadn’t gotten injured, the people upstairs might have weighed the political implications, but if even I can’t guarantee playing status, then you’re their last lifeline to ensure results.”
“So…?”
“I think there’s a good chance,” Yao Ming said. “I’ll help you ask around.”
Afterward, they chatted a bit about family matters, then hung up.
Back in the locker room, Xu Ling specifically asked team doctor Frederick Azar Doctor about the stress fracture.
Doctor Azar believed that for a player with Yao Ming’s height and physique, injuries were almost inevitable.
Looking throughout history, generations have all come through this way.
Moreover, Yao Ming’s height needed special classification, tentatively called the 220CM club.
Although basketball is a giant’s game, taller isn’t always better.
The taller you are, the greater the pressure on the body; before Yao Ming, among all NBA players who reached 220 cm, only one had ever averaged 20+10 in a single season—that was Yao Ming’s predecessor on the Rockets, Ralph Sampson, but after Sampson got injured, he quickly fell off.
The others, such as Sabonis, Mourning, and Schmitz, in terms of attendance, Yao Ming was an iron man compared to them.
“So, no hope?” Xu Ling posed a question after hearing this that made Doctor Azar struggle to keep a straight face.
Doctor Azar gave a meaningful smile: “Nothing is absolute in this world; I think there must be a way to avoid the same fate repeating on Yao.”
But the problem was, Doctor Azar didn’t know; he just optimistically believed, or rather he just wanted Xu Ling to be optimistic, because he was just a doctor, so he didn’t know any way to help Yao Ming; the only suggestion he could give was to lose weight and reduce playing time.
Rockets: Sorry, can’t do it.
The Rockets naturally knew Yao Ming’s value and how fragile his body was now, but no matter the value, it had to be realized through playing; like Minnesota’s Tai Kong Yi, who ended up all thunder and no rain, not even close in attention from the outside world.
So, this was almost an unsolvable situation.
Yao Ming shouldered the expectations of the entire nation as the banner figure of Chinese sports; the most important mission of his career was to lead the national team to a breakthrough. This meant that as long as his body could hold up, he couldn’t miss national team training camps. And the NBA’s long season already tested every player’s limits.
No rest all year, plus excessive weight, under this double consumption, Yao Ming’s destiny seemed already sealed.
Xu Ling was powerless about this. The only thing he could do now was focus on the regular season ahead—the Grizzlies were just one step from Western Conference Eighth, fully capable of surging later.
A few days later, the Grizzlies faced the Rockets at home.
The Rockets were also major playoff contenders, especially after Yao Ming’s season-ending injury; the outside world generally thought they’d drop out of the brutal Western Conference playoff race.
How could you perform better without your inside core?
But the Rockets always had cockroach-like tenacious blood in their veins.
From the Moses Malone era miraculously upsetting the “Showtime” Lakers to the 1995 team hailed as the “toughest championship” ever, this team always erupted with unbelievable vitality in seemingly hopeless situations to reverse the tide.
Moreover, the Rockets were on a winning streak.
When Yao Ming went down, they had a twelve-game win streak.
Just when everyone thought the streak ended there, they used that incomprehensible team basketball to push the Grizzlies to the final second.
Xu Ling knew about the Rockets’ streak because they later made a short documentary about it, but he had no interest in becoming one of the corpses.
Sometimes, luck is just on the opponent’s side.
When the Rockets double-teamed Xu Ling in the clutch, Xu Ling passed to Josh Howard. Howard’s jump shot missed, but Milicic grabbed the offensive rebound, giving the Grizzlies a chance at a game-winning shot.
But Milicic was still intimidated by Mutombo’s defensive reputation, even if the latter was possibly a hundred years old.
A hook shot off the iron after a post up, and the Rockets fast broke, extending the lead to 3 points with little time left; the Grizzlies called timeout but couldn’t even get Xu Ling the ball for a three to tie.
Because the sideline out-of-bounds play conundrum wasn’t invented by Mr. Zhou in 2019; it was only at the end of the 2010s when Mr. Zhou delivered the fatal blow to the men’s basketball team with a sideline out-of-bounds that we realized, oh, this is a big problem.
The Grizzlies’ sideline out-of-bounds mistake cost them the win.
“We know how to handle these moments,” McGrady said after the game. “We just know, so we won.”
Sometimes constant winning is a form of self-hypnosis, even inertia.
They just subconsciously made the right choices from their victory experience and followed the correct process when scores were tight, then magically solved the problem.
Xu Ling was speechless; they had to become the Rockets’ fourteenth corpse.
This put the Rockets ahead of the Warriors, Nuggets, and Grizzlies(1); now they were Western Conference Sixth, temporarily safe from falling out of the Western Conference top eight.
(1) There was an earlier slip mentioning the Warriors as Western Conference Ninth because subconsciously I thought the Lakers were still top eight, but actually the Lakers had been pushed out, so ninth at the time was the Trail Blazers; now seventh is the Warriors, eighth the Nuggets.
And the Nuggets didn’t seize the chance to widen the games-back gap, losing at home to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
LeBron James dropped a triple-double at the Ball Arena, greatly helping the Grizzlies.
Of course, whether this was the Kings’ intention is another story.
After losing to the Rockets, the Grizzlies got a rare few days of rest. The whole team returned to Memphis and could finally catch a breath.
This was perhaps the toughest stretch of the entire season—nearing the end, management had no room to maneuver, the team’s destiny hung entirely on the players and coaching staff. The league-shaking four-team trade’s true effectiveness would face its real test in these final moments.
Jerry West had been increasingly reclusive lately; the players barely felt the basketball affairs president’s presence.
But on nights the team lost, this legend had raged uncontrollably in his office.
Just last night, when Kidd’s sideline out-of-bounds mistake directly led to lost points, West smashed the vase on his desk and roared through the floor: “A great point guard would never pass that ball!!!”
Anyone could sense from his agitated emotions a fury wishing to trade Kidd immediately.
Yet after the outburst, West always quickly regained calm. Because he knew better than anyone that even the basketball god himself couldn’t avoid mistakes on the court.
But these brief emotional explosions always left traces in the air. The players’ informants would relay the news to the locker room—this was subtly and profoundly affecting West’s image in the team.
In Grizzlies vice president Dick Versace’s view, West’s occasional emotional fluctuations would ultimately become a potential liability for this president.
Players don’t like being criticized or threatened with trades; if they hear such rumors internally, they’ll hate that person.
Such emotions might not matter day-to-day, but when intense turmoil hits the team internally, the accumulated dissatisfaction can form tsunami-like pressure.
Versace knew well that to gain the upper hand when that day came, the top priority was building a solid relationship with the team’s new cornerstone—Xu Ling.
Yet days passed, and the right opportunity never appeared.
But today, his chance had come.
