Chapter 319: Before The Wings Degenerated
Swish.
Ignoring the wall of boos crashing down from the Staples Center crowd, Chen Yan knocked down the free throw as calmly as if he were back in an empty gym.
On the sideline, Mike D Antoni clenched his fists.
This was the start he had wanted.
In a series this big, grabbing the initiative early mattered. In Game 1, Phoenix had stumbled out of the gate and spent the rest of the night chasing the score.
Now the Lakers brought the ball up.
Derek Fisher crossed half court and swung it to Kobe.
In this version of the triangle, Fisher was strictly a delivery system. His job was to bring it up, put the ball into a star's hands, and then move to the right spacing.
Kobe caught at the high post, eyes scanning the floor.
James Posey came up from the baseline. Garnett slid to the high elbow.
Kobe fed Garnett.
Boris Diaw came with him, staying tight. That midrange was well within Garnett's comfort zone.
Away from the ball, Fisher screened for Kobe and then slipped toward the lane.
Kobe's cut drew Raja Bell and Nash toward him. The gravity worked exactly as designed.
Unmarked, Fisher cut straight down the middle.
Garnett saw it instantly and rifled a pass toward the rim. With his vision, that read was routine.
He never got the assist.
A dark blur flashed across the passing lane.
Chen Yan.
He jumped the route and picked the pass clean.
The gamble worked, but it was not luck. It was recognition.
Two days of nonstop film had paid off.
Chen had seen this action over and over. He knew the pattern: Kobe as a decoy, Garnett at the high post, weak side player screening, then cutting to the front of the rim for an easy layup. Stopping the triangle meant disrupting that flow at the source.
That awareness, the ability to feel a set coming before it developed, did not come from the system. It came from reps, from watching, from thinking about basketball when the cameras were off.
As soon as he secured the ball, Phoenix flipped from defense to offense.
"Run, run!" D Antoni yelled, yanking his jacket open as he barked toward the floor.
If the Suns were going to beat the Lakers, they had to do it with their sharpest weapon, pace.
Chen took one dribble and launched a long outlet up the sideline.
Nash, already leaking out, caught it in stride and turned on the jets.
It was a 1 on 0 in the open floor.
Nash rose gently at the rim, ready for an easy lay in.
Then the arena exploded.
From behind, Kobe came flying in and pinned the ball against the glass with both hands.
A full court chase down block.
The noise inside Staples Center went from loud to deafening.
The block was not just 2 points erased, it was an emotional punch.
Nash's body twisted midair. Under the impact, the veteran lost his balance and slid across the baseline, ending up seated in front of a camera, dazed.
He had no idea when Kobe had even arrived.
Kobe did not pause. The moment he landed, he ripped the ball down and fired it up the floor.
Now it was the Lakers' turn to run.
Fisher pushed the ball in the middle lane. Garnett sprinted hard on the left wing. Posey filled the right.
A 3 on 1 break.
Near the free throw line, Fisher lofted the ball high toward the rim.
Garnett took off, ready to hammer home the lob.
The crowd rose as one. Towels were already swirling on the Lakers' bench.
Showtime.
Then, out of nowhere, Chen rose again.
He went up late, and he went up high.
He arched his body backward, almost like a fadeaway jumper in reverse, and snatched the ball out of the air at the very top of its arc.
He did not just break up the lob. He caught it.
A steal at rim height.
If the first steal had been pure anticipation, this one was raw, violent talent.
For a second, the arena did not know how to react.
Was that a block? A steal? A glitch in reality?
Online, the chat windows flooded.
Too crazy.
Did he just jump higher than before.
What kind of vertical is that.
Three on 1 and they still lost the ball.
Human wings, live on camera.
Before the stunned building could fully process it, Phoenix was already running again.
Chen fired the ball ahead and then took off himself, long strides eating up the hardwood.
He was everywhere, both ends in back to back sequences, like a machine that did not understand the concept of fatigue.
Phoenix had numbers this time.
Nash probed into the lane, saw Kobe step toward him, and swung the ball back behind his body, hitting Chen in full stride.
Chen caught without even thinking about slowing down and launched himself toward the rim.
Kobe's peripheral vision picked him up.
He spun, slid across the lane, and met him at the cup.
Their first true collision of the night.
Both rose.
Neither even considered giving an inch.
Kobe trusted his timing and toughness.
Chen was running at full charge, SS level explosiveness surging through his legs. In that mode, there was no one he backed away from.
At the peak of their jump, Chen twisted in midair.
He slid past Kobe's chest, gliding across the lane.
For a heartbeat he seemed to hang there, body stretched out, arm reaching.
Then he extended fully and detonated a one handed dunk, hammering the ball through the net.
The sound that followed was not a cheer or a boo. It was an involuntary roar.
A gliding dunk that looked more like a layup and a poster at the same time.
"The last guy I saw make something that pretty in the air was Jordan," Barkley yelled on the TNT broadcast. "That is ridiculous."
"Look at the extension, the hang time, and then the power at the end," Kenny Smith added. "That is elite body control. That is special."
On message boards and in living rooms, fans spammed clips and screenshots.
Aerial art.
Wings, right before evolution ended.
On the floor, Chen's own adrenaline spiked.
This was what his body felt like after the evolution to SS level, speed, lift, coordination, all turned up another notch.
He yanked hard on the rim, dropped down, and let out a roar directly into the nearest camera, every muscle in his frame lit up.
Game 1 had been a grind, the kind of night where he never quite found space to show what he could do.
In one wild sequence of defense and offense, he had just announced, to everyone in the building and everyone watching, exactly how high his ceiling really was.
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