The film room lights hummed low, but Lin Mo barely noticed. His pen hovered over the tactical board, where Morant's name was circled in red—three times, like the boy used to circle the days on his calendar until his next prosthetic adjustment. He traced the arc of Morant's last step-back three, the ink bleeding slightly, and thought of the boy's video: "See how his shoulder dips before he jumps? Like my old joint, sticking before it fires."
A notification buzzed. The boy had sent a clip: himself in the hospital gym, prosthetic arm outstretched, swatting at a hanging towel. "Wind moves in patterns," he narrated, voice breathless. "You just gotta wait for the lull." The towel swayed, then stilled—exactly when the boy's prosthetic snapped forward. Lin Mo paused the video, screenshotting the angle of the arm; it matched the way he'd drawn Morant's jump shot on the board.
Booker slid into the seat beside him, tossing a water bottle. "Watched his last five games. Dude's left knee's got a tell—locks up half a second before he crosses over." He tapped the screen of his phone, showing a slow-mo of Morant's pivot. Lin Mo's thumb brushed the edge of his own phone, where the boy had texted: "17's my lucky number. Coincidence he wears it? Nah."
Later, in the locker room, he found a package: a gray wristband, Grizzlies blue stitched into the edges. Inside, in the boy's messy scrawl: "17 winds. 17 wins." He pulled it on, the fabric tight enough to feel like a reminder—of the boy's 17 tries to nail that lefty floater, of the work it took to turn struggle into rhythm. The anemometer in the corner clicked to 3.2 m/s, and Lin Mo smiled. Wind, he thought, was just another thing you could learn to outwait.