Chapter 63: Bill, Is Your Menstrual Irregularity Acting Up Again?

At 7:30, both teams announced their starting lineups.

Detroit Pistons: Bill Laimbeer, Olden Polynice, Orlando Woolridge, Gerald Glass, Isiah Thomas
Charlotte Hornets: Tang Bei, Larry Johnson, David Wingate, Kendall Gill, Muggsy Bogues

Tang Bei waited in the player tunnel for his turn to take the court, standing at the very end.

Footsteps echoed from behind. He looked back and saw the starting players of the home team arriving.

His gaze fell upon Bill Laimbeer. Although he did not know him personally, he could instantly recognize him from the sheer malice in Laimbeer's eyes.

"Hey, Chinese boy, what are you looking at?" Laimbeer asked, staring fiercely at Tang Bei.

John Liu had previously briefed Tang Bei on some background information regarding the Pistons. Tang Bei knew that this big man came from a wealthy family, held a notorious reputation in the NBA, acted with absolute impunity, ran rampant, and was widely feared. Very few players in the NBA were not afraid of this guy.

However, this could not scare him. He locked eyes with his opponent with an intensely oppressive gaze and replied nonchalantly, "I'm looking at you. So what?"

"Damn kid!"

Laimbeer cursed under his breath, but that was the extent of it.

Through media reports and deliberate sensationalism, Tang Bei’s public image had already begun to take on violent, impulsive, and fierce characteristics.

Crucially, he possessed martial arts and combat skills—meaning he could genuinely fight. Therefore, the nearly 36-year-old Laimbeer, whose bark was worse than his bite, did not dare to provoke Tang Bei face-to-face, fearing a severe beating.

At 8:00 sharp, the game began.

At the center circle, preparing for the tip-off, Bill Laimbeer issued a threatening warning:

"Kid, on my turf, you need to keep your head down, or you'll be leaving this place in tears."

"Leave in tears?"

Tang Bei widened his eyes.

"Turns out he's a softie!"

Believing he had intimidated Tang Bei, Laimbeer wore an immensely ferocious and cruel expression, continuing to apply psychological pressure.

At that moment, the head referee tossed the ball high into the air.

"Smack!"

Tang Bei tapped the ball away, and the Hornets initiated their offense.

He moved to the left low post. Bill Laimbeer planted himself right behind him, driving a hidden elbow straight into Tang Bei's lower back while spitting trash talk directly into his ear.

"Kid, the moment you dare to jump under the basket, I'll make you hit the floor bleeding, and your bones will be smashed into dust."

"Ball!"

Seeing Bogues preparing to penetrate from the top of the key with the dribble, Tang Bei shouted loudly for the ball.

"You two guys are seriously annoying!"

Bogues glanced at Larry Johnson, who was calling for the ball at the right low post, muttered a curse under his breath, and passed the ball to Tang Bei.

The Pistons' power forward guarding Larry Johnson, Olden Polynice, instantly pivoted and turned to double-team Tang Bei.

Tang Bei dropped into a low stance, sealed Laimbeer behind him with his left arm, caught the ball with his right hand, and then, right in the middle of a dribble, erupted with a fierce drop-step bump.

"Boom!"

Accompanied by a heavy collision sound, the 111-kilogram Bill Laimbeer let out a muffled groan and flipped backward, his body instantly lifted off the ground and sent flying half a meter through the air before crashing directly into the incoming Polynice.

The 250-pound Polynice could not withstand the impact; holding onto Laimbeer, he staggered back two steps and only came to a halt right under the basket.

"Ooh!"

Amidst this, a gasp of shock swept like a hurricane through the Palace of Auburn Hills, a venue capable of holding twenty-two thousand people.

Amidst the gasps, Tang Bei grabbed the basketball bouncing off the floor with both hands, turned, took a power step, and exploded upward, flying toward the rim a meter away.

"You want to posterize me? You damn bastard!"

Having just turned around under the basket, Laimbeer was nearly knocked senseless. Before he could catch his breath, seeing Tang Bei already flying through the air, his eyes split with rage. He leaped frantically while winding up his elbow and swung it with all his might.

Yet his timing was off; he was a fraction of a second too late. His elbow only grazed Tang Bei's chest, inflicting damage roughly equivalent to zero.

"Bang!"

The next instant, as Tang Bei threw down a ferocious two-handed slam, the violent shockwave of the shattering rim assaulted the eardrums of twenty thousand people, making everyone's heart skip a beat.

Under his tremendous horizontal momentum, the basket stanchion dipped and violently swayed to the right, swinging his body rapidly toward the right side.

He parted his legs and crashed directly into Laimbeer's neck.

"Boom!"

Bill Laimbeer had barely jumped a foot off the ground when he was blasted away by Tang Bei. He flipped backward and crashed into Polynice once again.

The impact this time was simply too massive. Polynice failed to hold his ground, and the two of them tumbled to the floor together.

"Ooh!"

The gasps in the Palace of Auburn Hills had just died down before erupting once again, only to plunge into dead silence. Everyone's terrified gazes converged upon the behemoth hanging from the rim.

"F*ck you!"
"Shit!"
"Damn it!"

Bill Laimbeer and Polynice cursed furiously, joined by another man shouting obscenities—the Smiling Assassin, Isiah Thomas.

Especially Laimbeer, who had been posterized; he had never suffered such humiliation in his life, and his weathered face flushed deep crimson with rage, his very eyeballs turning bloodshot.

However, having taken consecutive impacts, his body was giving out. He felt as though his chest had been run over by a truck and utterly crushed. Even taking a breath hurt, making his lungs feel as if they were about to explode.

"Good god, Laimbeer just got posterized."
"This is going to be bad."

There was no nationwide broadcast for this game, only a regional one. The two sideline commentators and the arena MC stared dumbfounded at the chaotic scene under the basket.

"Moving so slow, are you having irregular periods?"

Tang Bei released the rim, landed on his feet, looked down at Bill Laimbeer struggling to crawl up from the floor, and spat out some trash talk.

"Go to hell!"

Driven completely mad by humiliation, Bill Laimbeer ignored the flare-up of pain in his lower back and threw a weak, aged left hook.

Tang Bei stepped back unhurriedly to dodge it, too lazy to even counterattack.

He didn't want to get baited by an old guy like this; a violent image could harm his commercial value. From now on, he needed to cultivate a shining image as a moral role model.

"Hiss!"

He missed the punch and strained his lower back again. Laimbeer grimaced in agony, his body freezing in place, not daring to move another half-step.

"Bill, irregular periods acting up again?" Tang Bei asked with a face full of "concern."

"Get lost!"

Bill Laimbeer cursed through grates of clenched teeth.

"Hehe..."

Several people nearby, including Pistons small forward Orlando Woolridge and one of the referees, could not hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.

"Beep!"

The head referee blew his whistle, stepped between the two, and whistled Bill Laimbeer for a flagrant foul, awarding the Hornets one free throw and possession.

"Old man, behave yourself. If you want to fight, I'll beat you until your periods are irregular off the court." Leaving those words behind, Tang Bei walked toward the free-throw line.

"Grr..."

Bill Laimbeer's face turned pitch black with fury, his teeth clenched so tightly they nearly shattered.

At that moment, Pistons head coach Ron Rothstein substituted Bill Laimbeer out. Laimbeer was utterly frustrated; he still had plenty of tricks left that he hadn't used on that Chinaman yet.

"Kid, you just wait."

Spitting out a weak, face-saving remark, Bill Laimbeer, with the assistance of his teammates, hobbled off the court supporting his agonizing lower back.

His disciple, the Worm Dennis Rodman, substituted in for him, playing center in place of a power forward and matching up against Tang Bei.

Polynice was actually also a center with decent height at 211 centimeters, but his weight was the same as Rodman's at 100 kilograms, and his strength fell far short of Rodman's, which was why he wasn't assigned to the five-spot.

Rodman was the starting power forward, but due to some minor injuries lately, compounded by numerous off-court issues, he had been coming off the bench for the past few games.

"Dennis, teach that obnoxious kid a lesson," Bill Laimbeer said viciously to Rodman as the latter prepared to check in.

"Don't worry, Boss, I'll handle him," Rodman said with absolute confidence.