The Golden Age of Basketball

The Chinese giant wearing jersey number 11 carried many beautiful yet impractical fantasies. Before two-dimensional paper figures, Korean beauties, and numerous Japanese teachers captured the pituitary glands of young people, this 7-foot-5 man touched the heartstrings of most young people.

Dang Lei also felt thrilled by Yao Ming's achievements in America and at one point naively believed that the "Ming Dynasty" touted by Chinese media would one day come to pass.

The anticipation for Yao Ming and the Rockets accompanied Dang Lei through three years of high school, yet the Rockets and Yao Ming were consecutively eliminated in the first round by the Mavericks and Jazz. The championship was a distant dream, as unreachable as the dreams of students to attend Tsinghua or Peking University.

In 2008, the Rockets clinched a 22-game winning streak in the regular season, but Yao Ming was sidelined due to injury.

However, at the Olympic Games, Yao Ming led the Chinese Men's Basketball Team to their best performance in history on home soil.

That year, Dang Lei took his college entrance exam, performing exceptionally well, and got into a 985 university, leaving his small county for the provincial city.

In 2009, the Rockets finally broke through the first round and faced the Lakers in the semifinals. After winning the first game, Yao Ming was again sidelined with an injury.

An excellent situation was ruined, leaving Chinese fans with endless regret.

That year Dang Lei turned 20, and heart problems began to plague him frequently. He often felt weak, suffocated, short of breath, and his heartbeat accelerated.

In 2010, Yao Ming was out for the season due to injury.

Dang Lei overcame his health issues with strong willpower, earning high grades and all his credits, securing scholarships and grants. After covering his living expenses, he bought thirty cases of milk, two cases of books, and a large box of toys for the children at the welfare home.

Aunt Jiang called and told him to save some money for his future life. Dang Lei verbally agreed, but as soon as he hung up the phone, he ordered three basketballs and a simple hoop and sent them back home.

He hoped that children who loved basketball would have real basketballs to play with.

In 2011, Yao Ming played five games and never appeared again; his body could no longer support him in playing basketball.

In June, the Mavericks defeated the Heat to win the championship, but number 16, Wang Zhizhi, had already left Dallas.

On July 20, Yao Ming announced his retirement, leaving the basketball court forever.

When a pop-up window broke the news, Dang Lei just felt a heaviness in his chest; he sat in front of his laptop, staring blankly for a while.

At that moment, he was playing the basketball game NBA 2K11, released last October. Unable to play on the court, he could only vent his passion for basketball through the game.

In the MyPlayer mode, he created a player he admired, naming him after the protagonist Gump from the movie "Forrest Gump"—he envied how Gump could keep running.

Gump was 6 feet 10 inches tall (2.08 meters), a powerfully built and agile sports-type power forward/center.

He had a square and handsome face, a robust physique, long arms, and strong legs; he looked like prime material for basketball.

In setting his attributes, Dang Lei, with an initial 10,000 SP value, concentrated the limited points on shooting, strength, and shot-blocking.

Through training and playing games to earn more SP value, Gump's abilities soared under Dang Lei's management, smoothly growing into a star, a superstar, a megastar.

After meticulous development, Gump had become a perfect center, formidable on both offense and defense, with accurate shooting, incredible strength, and capable of powerful play inside and outside the paint, leading his team toward a dynasty.

The news of Yao Ming's retirement brought Dang Lei back from his virtual game; a dream about basketball had ended, completely ended.

The beautiful bubbles that once held up his spiritual world burst at that moment. Yao Ming, only 31, in the prime of a center's career, had left the basketball stage.

The Yao-Mai duo, the championship, the Ming Dynasty, were nothing but beautiful fantasies spun by fans with their passion, vanishing as completely as the brutal heat of summer after a heavy rain.

Dang Lei exited the game and closed his laptop, deciding to go outside for some fresh air; the tightness in his chest was too much to bear.

It was summer vacation, and Dang Lei hadn't returned to the orphanage. Instead, he stayed at school to tutor and earn some living expenses. The campus was deserted, with only the lush phoenix trees on both sides of the road rustling in the evening breeze.

Just a few steps out of the dorm, he arrived near the basketball courts. In the past, whether day or night, there would always be many students playing basketball, the bouncing sound was incessant and lively.

But tonight, it was eerily quiet. The five basketball courts with ten hoops were, to his surprise, completely empty.

Although students had gone home for the summer vacation, there were still quite a few who, like Dang Lei, stayed on campus, as well as people from outside the school who would come to play. The courts were always bustling until ten o'clock when the lights went out.

What happened today? It wasn't even eight o'clock yet, and there was not a single person to be seen.

Dang Lei looked at the empty courts and saw that under the basket on the south side of the second court, there was a brown basketball placed.

It was positioned right in the center of the semi-circular restricted area below the basket, just so, neither here nor there, as if someone had intentionally left it there.

Dang Lei glanced around, no one was nearby, and he suddenly felt an impulse inside. It was as if the basketball was calling to him, beckoning him to pick it up.

Because of his physical condition, Dang Lei couldn't play on the court. As a child, he would occasionally take a ball to an empty court by himself and play the game of shooting baskets under the hoop.

A unique aspect of basketball, that sets it apart from other sports, is that you don't have to be part of a team; you can enjoy it alone. You could spend hours dribbling, shooting, retrieving the ball, and shooting again beneath the hoop until it got too dark to see the basket properly.

However, the school's courts were always occupied, hardly ever empty, and Dang Lei didn't want others to know about his physical limitation. Hence, he kept a polite distance from sports activities.

Now with the rare opportunity of an empty court and a ball under the hoop, he clenched his fists, walked through the wire fence, and came to the second court. The court was brightly lit, and it was as if he had stepped from the dark stands onto a shining stage while the eyes of many fans hid in the pitch darkness around him.

Standing right below the hoop and looking up, Dang Lei felt the rim was low and large, as if he could reach it with an outstretched hand.

Picking up the ball, the brown basketball had the black letters "Wilson" imprinted on its surface, a relatively rare Wilson basketball.

The official NBA ball is Spalding, and most sports equipment stores sell Spalding or Spalding replicas. Wilson, the official NBA ball before 1984, was not well-known in China, and not many people used it.

Weighing the ball in his hand, it was a bit heavy. He took two steps back and threw the ball towards the hoop. Dang Lei's shooting posture was very standard, the result of countless practice sessions without a ball, and the ball swooshed through the net, making a crisp "swish" sound.

"Phew~"

Dang Lei took a breath and felt much better in his chest. The feeling of scoring was wonderful.

Picking up the ball, he dribbled a couple of times, then stepped back for a longer shot and scored again, the ball rebounding off the board into the hoop.

He felt good about his shooting tonight; he definitely had a talent for basketball, with a soft and perfect shooting form, and a coordinated body movement.

He slowly increased his pace and the distance from the hoop, making it all the way to beyond the three-point line where he could still score.

With his talent, while he couldn't play professionally, diligent practice could have made him a local legend on the neighborhood courts.

But life had played too many jokes on him, granting him life but stealing his health. He faced everything with an optimistic and open-minded attitude, fighting hard to overcome it all, yet he knew deep down that his body wouldn't give him much time; he could feel it.

Just as he launched a long three-pointer that clanked off the rim, intending to retrieve the ball, he suddenly found it hard to breathe.

Intense pain radiated from his chest, as if a hand was wringing his heart; the chest oppression grew stronger, and it felt as though no amount of breathing was enough.

His limbs began to numb, and everything in his sight started to blur, the bright lights abruptly went out.

The last thing he saw was the pitch-dark sky, with the moon hanging—a double image.

"If only... If only this were a dream... that would be... so wonderful..."