A week later, Lin Mo showed up at the rehab center, wearing the "Marty's Auto Repair" jersey. The boy's eyes lit up. "You look like you lost a bet," he joked, but his grin gave him away.
"Won, actually," Lin Mo said, sitting down. "Learned more than I did in a month of film sessions."
He told the boy about the 3-pat signals, the thread-picking, the bent rim. The boy listened, nodding, then wheeled over to a whiteboard covered in sticky notes—his own "rehab playbook."
"See this?" he said, pointing to a yellow note: Nurse Ravi taps his watch twice = 5 more minutes. "And this one: Mrs. Chen hums off-key = she's in pain." He laughed. "We got our own street codes here."
Lin Mo thought of the NBA locker room, where everything was spelled out: practice times in bold, playbooks in binders, stats printed on sheets. No room for hums or watch-taps.
"Y'all overcomplicate it," the boy said, like he'd read his mind. "Teamwork's just… paying attention. Not 'cause you have to, but 'cause you want to."
Later, as Lin Mo left, he passed Nurse Ravi—who was tapping his watch twice at a patient on a treadmill. The patient groaned, but kept going, smiling. Lin Mo paused, watching. No one had to explain. They just knew.
He texted Booker: "We need to stop talking. Start noticing."