Lin Mo grumbled as Booker hauled him toward the beat-up warehouse, the hum of a rusted AC unit cutting through the summer heat. "Why'd we ditch the gym for this?" he asked, eyeing the chain-link fence wrapped around the lot, where a stray dog napped on a pile of old tires. Booker tossed him a jersey—faded blue, emblazoned with "Marty's Auto Repair" in peeling red letters—and grinned. "'Cause here, the playbook's written in dirt and spit. You'll see."
Inside, the court reeked of sweat and WD-40. The hoop sagged to the left, its net frayed into strings, and the floor creaked like it might give way under a hard pivot. A group of guys in mismatched gear lounged on folding chairs: a kid with braces eating a hot dog, a middle-aged man in khakis rolling up his sleeves to reveal a tattoo of a basketball, and an older man with silver hair and frayed knee pads, retying his laces so slowly it looked deliberate.
"Old Man Joe's been running this court since '98," Booker said, nodding at the silver-haired guy. "Watch his hands."
The game started rough. Lin Mo's reflexes kicked in—he tracked footwork, counted dribbles, noted when opponents held their breath before shooting—all the pro habits that'd made his detail-capture rate top the rookies. But Old Man Joe kept throwing him off: a lazy crossover that wasn't lazy at all, a pass that curved like a banana when Lin Mo swore it should've gone straight. On one play, Joe patted the ball three times, and Lin Mo tensed, ready for the drive—only to watch Joe lob it to the kid in braces, who drained a three.
"Three pats means 'up,'" Booker snickered, as Lin Mo stared, dumbfounded. "Two pats is 'in.' One pat? Run like hell. Ain't no app for that."
Lin Mo's phone buzzed: his team's analytics app, spitting red errors. [Unrecognized pattern: 3-pat sequence. Predictive accuracy: 0%.] He almost laughed. In the NBA, every signal was coded, logged, memorized—but here, the code changed with the wind.
At halftime, Old Man Joe ambled over, wiping his brow with a rag. "You play like you're reading a menu," he said, grinning. "This ain't a restaurant, kid. You don't wait for the order—you smell what's cooking." He nodded at the kid in braces, who was now picking at a loose thread on his shorts. "See that? He picks threads when he's cold. Feed him, and he'll burn hot."
Lin Mo glanced at his phone, where the boy had texted earlier: "Nurse Linda hums when she's in a good mood—ask for extra reps then." Suddenly, it clicked. The NBA taught him to catch details, but here? He needed to breathe them.
He pulled out his phone, snapped a photo of Joe's frayed knee pad—the left side was torn, a deliberate rip, he realized—and sent it to the team group. "Not all signals are in the playbook," he typed.
Booker, who'd been watching, held up his own phone: a reply from the backup center, with a photo of his own beat-up sneakers. "Left sole's thinner—slips on wet courts. Y'all never noticed."