Chapter Ninety-Five: Spurring the Horse to Greater Speed

Cai Zhuocheng sat a little uneasily in the seat closest to the court at Urumqi People's Gymnasium. It was not his first time watching a game in a proper arena, yet he still felt his heart stirring in his chest. After all, his son was about to take the floor, and Cai Zhuocheng suspected he had never been this nervous even when playing himself.

As an old literary soul, he had never cared much for competitive sport. Compared with hard-fought contests, he preferred the gentler pleasures of life: romance, poetry, essays, moonlit evenings, blossoms, and drifting snow. If he could, he would rather sit with a few close friends beside a winding stream, letting cups of wine float past while they talked of verse.

Perhaps it was precisely that air of refined aloofness, so fashionable in those years, that had led Cai Aihong's mother, an outstanding provincial athlete, to marry down and choose as her husband a man who had once been nothing to speak of.

When their son was small and often sickly, Cai Zhuocheng had no better answer than to follow his wife's advice and send the boy to train in long-distance running. He never imagined that the child would one day follow the road of athletics, even though he had clearly inherited his mother's excellent natural gifts.

Beside him, Pulat Hadir and the rest of the family were talking loudly, their voices rising and falling around him, which made the more reserved Cai Zhuocheng feel slightly ill at ease. Compared with Cai Zhuocheng's courteous, bookish manner, Hawule Pulat's family did indeed have something of the newly rich about them.

Yet Cai Zhuocheng bore them no ill will. After all, once the parents of these athletes from other provinces had arrived in Urumqi, they had been received with extraordinary warmth by Pulat Hadir's family. Cai Zhuocheng had even once made a fool of himself over a name.

Among Uyghurs, a child's family name is usually taken from the father's given name. That meant Hawule Pulat's father was named Pulat Hadir. Cai Zhuocheng, who had never before come to the frontier province, did not know this custom. The first time they met, he addressed Pulat Hadir as Mister Pulat, leaving the Uyghur families staring at him in stunned silence.

"Brother Cai, your son is very tall, taller even than Hawule, so he must be terrific. Don't worry. Their coach is excellent too. They've already won two games, and both were against strong teams from other provinces."

Seeing Cai Zhuocheng's embarrassment, Pulat Hadir, though carrying himself with that faintly overbearing air of a man who had done rather well for himself, was quick and tactful enough to smooth things over. As a businessman, he had proved himself quite successful indeed.

The game began under the roar of the crowd. As the home side, the Frontier Youth Team won plenty of support from the stands. After all, these were the local children out there on the court.

The Mongolia Youth Team's starting lineup was indeed imposing in stature. Even their point guard stood 1.96 meters tall, and their tallest center reached 2.14 meters. Relying on nothing more than their height and brute force, they had already defeated the strong North Hebei Province Youth Team.

From the opening tip, the Mongolia Youth Team seized possession. Once they crossed half court, their players immediately crashed toward the paint, while the men handling the ball on the perimeter did everything they could to force passes inside for hard attacks. It was a pure assault of physicality and contact.

Faced with such a style, the Frontier Youth Team had no intention of chasing defense to the point of exhaustion. Some help in the lane was necessary; they could not simply abandon defense altogether. But they also would never foul recklessly. Conserving energy and preserving offensive efficiency was what they needed to do well in this game.

Playing before parents, elders, and relatives, Wang Lei's young men did not lose their composure. They followed the prearranged tactics set before the game.

Mongolia scored first on its opening possession. Their center received the ball, turned at once, muscled his way under the basket, and banked in two points.

Just as the Mongolia players were still congratulating themselves on their team's first score, the Frontier Youth Team was already launching a rapid push in transition.

Hawule, inbounding from the baseline, released the ball almost the instant it dropped through the net. After receiving the pass, Turgun used a single feint and burst of speed to shake off the taller opposing point guard. By then, the Frontier Youth Team had a three-lane fast break in full flight, while Mongolia had not even finished retreating across half court.

Cai Aihong finished the break with a dunk, bringing two points right back for the Frontier Youth Team. The home crowd erupted at once. It was only the beginning of the game, yet that single exchange on both ends had already stirred the spectators into excitement. They had never seen a fast-break sequence with such speed before.

Seeing his son score so effortlessly with a dunk, Cai Zhuocheng felt a swell of pride. A man who had rarely watched basketball before was now growing excited in spite of himself, and before long he had begun to resemble Pulat Hadir beside him.

The Mongolia Youth Team stayed faithful to their own approach, continuing to pound the ball inside on offense. On defense, however, they found no real way to suppress the home side's scoring. The other team's speed was simply too much.

At first, Mongolia's coach had thought the game would merely become a back-and-forth shootout, with the winner decided by efficiency. But by the latter half of the first quarter, he suddenly realized that the Frontier Youth Team had already begun to open up a lead.

Mongolia's style looked steady enough, and by all appearances it was efficient as well, but they had failed to notice that the number of possessions in this game was far greater than in the contests they were used to. The Frontier Youth Team moved as though every one of them were riding a swift blood horse, racing the length of the court again and again, while Mongolia seemed to be doing no more than straining to keep up from behind.

In that rhythm, the pace of the game had already fallen completely into the Frontier Youth Team's hands.

By halftime, the Frontier Youth Team had stretched the margin to fifteen points.

The home fans were already in high spirits. In the first half alone, the Frontier Youth Team had put up an astonishing 62 points, a total far beyond what they were accustomed to seeing. If they could maintain that efficiency after the break, they might finish with as many as 120 points by the end of the night.

Wang Lei remained calm throughout. He had absolute confidence in his players. Few teams trained their athletes the way he did. Most coaches allowed the players to train, then sent them into games with whatever tactics had been drawn up, ignoring almost everything else that could be ignored. Wang Lei, by contrast, paid far more attention to mental toughness and tactical understanding, teaching his players not only how to play, but how to truly read the game. In truth, the difference in coaching methods determined the difference in the level of the team.

Cai Zhuocheng felt that he had fallen in love with basketball. He could feel ideas surging through his mind, an almost reckless urge to write. It was not only because his son was playing so well, but even more because he had been swept up by the spirit of that team, a spirit as swift as the wind and as bright as lightning.