Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Chapter 488: Chapter 337: The Stairs of the Gods_2

These recent years have not been easy for Lakers fans, although Kobe brought an astonishing scoring performance last season, the proud Purple and Gold fans had to admit one thing: This was an era where the Clippers were better than the Lakers.

The Clippers didn’t have Kobe or any glorious history, yet they had a better season record than the Lakers last season and even advanced to the semifinals.

Even more, the Clippers soon unlocked another achievement: defeating the Bucks Team.

The Bucks came to Los Angeles all happy, but then Elton Brand descended like a god, furiously scoring 44 points with 21 rebounds, successfully having the Clippers fans chanting MVP at Staples.

“We can do some things the Lakers can’t do.”

That’s what Elton Brand said on the night they beat the Bucks.

After resting for a day in Los Angeles, the Bucks didn’t have to go anywhere, coming back to the Staples Center once again, this time facing the Lakers.

From the perspective of the Lakers’ management, they were getting better.

Kobe’s playing time was reduced, and his relationship with Phil Jackson evolved from being like fire and water to close friends.

But does a good relationship between the core player and the coach change anything?

Actually, it changes nothing.

This past summer, the Lakers gained very little.

Kobe wanted Ben Wallace, but the management told him that the deal wasn’t worth it because Big Ben was already on the decline.

Then, they lost out in the bidding war for Al Harrington to the Golden State Warriors, of all teams.

Kobe was furious.

The Warriors Team? You’ve got to be kidding, right?

Suddenly, the big market allure of the Lakers for impact players plummeted, and so they could only buy the likes of Vladimir Radmanović, who liked skiing, the mediocre guard Maurice Evans, and Aaron McGee, who nearly made Kobe the “Philadelphia Person of the Year” for all the wrong reasons during the Finals five years ago.

Aside from Radmanović who could somewhat alleviate the lax defense in the paint, the acquisition of the other two guards was nonsensical.

Evans was just a bit player and couldn’t turn the tide, while McGee, although a veteran, was a washed-up veteran who still wanted to hang around and leech – McGee belonged to the latter.

With Yu Fei obtaining his third championship in his career last season, he officially stepped into the realm of legends.

Among active players, only Shaquille O’Neal was in that realm.

Next, with two championships, Tim Duncan was barely touching the threshold, the rest weren’t qualified.

Kobe might also have three championships, but sorry, Kobe himself was the pioneer of the modern professional basketball narrative’s “first option and second option champion” argument because the most important point of proving Kobe’s historical status was those three championships, and Kobe’s role in those three titles determined his current historical standing.

The reason why the old Kobe fans, including Yu Fei, lived every day discontentedly was that there were too many contemporary Kobe haters.

Quite a few of the Kobe fans were arguing about why Kobe was not the second-in-command of the OK Dynasty, but the Kobe haters directly defined who the number one was— the FMVP was the top dog.

This left people speechless because no situation like Andre Iguodala’s in 2015 had yet occurred in the NBA, and the FMVP still had the sacred status of “the best player on the championship team.”

By designating Kobe as the dynasty’s number two through the fact that he had zero FMVPs during the three championship journeys, they successfully stripped his qualification of setting foot on the pantheon with those three championships.

Whether Kobe was willing to care or not, the external commentary always affected players.

That evening, Kobe shot wildly, harboring the desire to silence the fans.

However, his terrible shooting became the key reason for the Lakers’ collapse.

The Bucks launched numerous defensive counterattacks and locked the victory before the third quarter ended.

ESPN’s Bill Walton couldn’t help but say, “Kobe needs to understand that no matter how powerful one person is, it can’t overcome five opponents. I admit he can take on five on some nights, but that approach won’t work against the defending champions.”

There was only one person who spoke highly of Kobe’s 40-for-17 shooting performance.

That was Big Fei, the old Kobe fan.

“Kobe’s performance tonight was thrilling, you could see his will to win burning like a flame; seeing him attack the basket with such thirst was truly exciting!” Yu Fei said to reporters, “I learned a lot from playing against him.”

Learned a lot? Specifically what?

“Even if we shot 40 times on a night with bad touches, we shouldn’t care about secular views and bravely take the 41st shot,” said Yu Fei. “It’s not important whether it goes in or not. What’s important is the bravery to shoot. This is not selfishness—those who think this behavior is selfish are the real selfish ones. You won’t see a second player like Kobe in the next hundred years, and even Kobe would find it hard to display such a raw version of himself like tonight. So why not let him be himself? Just to cater to a few people’s game aesthetics, should Kobe not be allowed to be himself? That’s the real selfishness; as a Kobe fan, I fully support him being himself. That’s the Mamba spirit!”

Yu Fei’s support for Kobe was interpreted in various ways by different people.@@novelbin@@

Most people thought he was being sarcastically critical.

Only a small group of Kobe fans believed that Yu Fei was the only person in the NBA who understood Kobe.

That was the value of an NBA star who dared to publicly acknowledge his identity as a Kobe fan.

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