The sun dipped low, painting the warehouse walls orange, when Old Man Joe called a timeout. "New rule," he said, wiping sweat off his forehead. "Whoever bricks the game-winner buys everyone a soda."
Lin Mo's stomach tightened. In the NBA, a missed clutch shot haunted your stats, your highlights, your legacy. Here, it just meant a trip to the vending machine.
Sure enough, with the score tied, Lin Mo got the ball. He squared up, took his shot—and watched it clank off the rim. The court erupted in laughter. "Soda run!" someone yelled, as Lin Mo hung his head, half-embarrassed, half-relieved.
On his way back with a armful of Cokes, he paused by the hoop. The rim was bent, off-center—no wonder his shot missed. He ran a finger over the metal, where years of use had left grooves, dents, scars. In the NBA, rims were perfect, calibrated, flawless—but here, the flaws were part of the game. You learned them, adapted, worked around them.
Old Man Joe appeared beside him, taking a Coke. "That rim's been bent since '03," he said. "First time I played here, I missed 12 shots. Then I learned: aim an inch left." He clinked his bottle against Lin Mo's. "Mistakes teach you more than perfect shots, kid."
Lin Mo thought of the playoff loss—the way he'd replayed that turnover in his head, over and over, like a broken record. What if he'd treated it like a bent rim? A flaw to learn from, not a failure to fixate on?
He pulled out his phone, snapped a photo of the bent rim, and sent it to the team group. "Flaws aren't bugs," he wrote. "They're features."
Booker replied with a photo of their practice court's scuffed free-throw line—a spot where the paint had chipped, making it uneven. "We all step on this," he wrote. "Never talked about it."
By the time they left, the warehouse lights were flickering, and Lin Mo's jersey was soaked, his legs sore, his phone full of photos: a cracked floorboard, a frayed net, a kid's sneaker with a hole in the toe.
"Feels different, huh?" Booker said, as they walked to the car.
Lin Mo nodded. "Like… basketball without the weight."