NBA: A Second-Round Pick Takes Down the Golden Generation of '96

After the Dragon Nation’s men’s basketball team lost at home to Japan’s depleted squad by 19 points, its 88-year unbeaten record was broken. Su Chen was so furious he smashed his keyboard. When he opened his eyes again, he was in Los Angeles in 1996.

The good news: He’d become a Chinese-American guard about to enter the NBA draft, and he was twenty years younger. The bad news: The scouting report was crystal clear: “Questionable physicality, limited ceiling.” Just as expected, he fell all the way to the 18th pick in the second round, where the Clippers snatched him up and stuck him at the very end of the bench.

Nobody gave him a second glance.

But Su Chen now had a System in his head. His attribute panel let him add points, his badges could rise from Bronze to Hall of Fame, and he could fuse Kobe’s fadeaway, Curry’s range, and Duncan’s defense. He trained until the early hours, then gave everything on the court. Coming off the bench, he scored 30 points in 29 minutes and hit a Kobe-style fadeaway buzzer-beater against the Lakers. Asked about it afterward, he scratched his head and played humble: “My teammates set me up well. Got lucky.”

He went all out on the court but stayed low-key and gracious off it. From a second-round pick to a name the whole league remembered, he began his comeback from the very last pick of the legendary 1996 draft class.