Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Chapter 493: Chapter 340: Mavericks’ Doom

Since March, every Bucks loss had become a significant event in the NBA.

Because they seemed unstoppable.

By mid-April, when the Bucks demolished the Knight by 41 points on the road, LeBron James declared, “This is an unacceptable game!”

That victory brought the Bucks to 69 wins.

They thus equaled the second-best win record in NBA history.

With only one game left in the regular season, they faced the Phoenix Suns, who had defeated them a few months earlier.

If the Suns, at full strength, won tonight, they would secure the Western Conference’s second seed.

They were confident about it.

After all, they had done it once before, without the psychological burden that other teams faced against the Bucks.

But tonight’s Bucks looked completely different from the team the Suns had encountered before.

Danny Granger replaced Bell in the starting lineup, and he was the first to make a move.

After Yu Fei ceded control, the biggest beneficiaries were Martin and Granger. One began to learn how to control the ball within the Bucks’ system, while the other developed towards a traditional, ace small forward.

Yu Fei didn’t go all out, just shot some threes, played the low post, ran the break, passed the ball, and easily racked up 28 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists, while the Bucks shot down the Suns with a massive 30-point advantage.

This was their last regular-season game.

Facing the Western Conference’s second-seeded Suns, the Bucks demonstrated terrifying dominance, advancing to the playoffs with a historic record of 70 wins and 12 losses.

For Fei, it continued to be a great season, playing in every game, averaging 27 points, 8 rebounds, and 9 assists. Compared to the mythical figures of the previous two seasons, Fei might have come back to earth in terms of stats, but he led his team to the best personal record of his career.

This allowed his story to shine together with the legendary tale of Chamberlain, who also found success after giving up the pursuit of the scoring title.

Meanwhile, the shadow of the Bucks’ main rivals, the Western Conference’s top team, the Dallas Mavericks, was growing larger.

They currently had 65 wins, four games ahead of the second-placed Suns, and had locked in the Western Conference’s first seed in advance.

Therefore, in their last regular season game against the Warriors, they adopted a passive approach.

They didn’t play with intensity or physicality but simply traded offense with the Warriors, and even then they couldn’t outscore them.

The usually reserved Carter turned into a scoring machine, dropping 40 points and leading the Warriors to a 122-89 rout of the Mavericks, winning by 33 points.

The Dallas People might not take this game seriously.

Because the outcome was irrelevant to the standings; victory or defeat didn’t affect the overall situation.

Besides, the Warriors’ head coach was Nelson. The Warriors were uncertain about advancing to the playoffs before defeating the Mavericks as they were competing with the Clippers for another spot. With only a one-game difference in wins, if the Warriors lost, the Clippers would advance due to the head-to-head record.

Yet, the Mavericks directly showed indifference, proving that professional basketball can indeed involve personal relationships.

That night, both the Dallas People and the Golden State People were very happy.

However, what the Dallas People never expected was that despite being the first in the West to prepare for the playoffs, they would become the first team to start preparing for the 2007-08 NBA season.

The Bucks’ first-round opponent was the Indiana Pacers.

This was a team that shouldn’t have made the playoffs.

The only reason the Pacers made the playoffs was that the Eastern Conference was too weak.

They had only 37 wins, which would have placed them eleventh in the Western Conference and wouldn’t even qualify them for a play-in spot years later.

But there was no way around it; over the years, the Eastern Conference’s talents had mostly flowed to the West.

Players like McGrady and Ray Allen got traded to the West by coincidence, while Shaquille O’Neal, who moved from the West to the East, was past his prime.

However, with Yu Fei, a top-level star in the East, the West had to take the Eastern Conference seriously.

But compared to the West, the Pacers’ first-round challenge to the Bucks was essentially like a practice game.

George Karl, who never liked to pop champagne bottles prematurely, confided to friends, “If we lose even one game in the first round, it means we have a big problem.”

For Karl, a sweep was expected.

Yu Fei liked playing against the Pacers because his good friend Jermaine O’Neal was there.

“We meet again.”

Before Game 1, Yu Fei greeted Little O in a friendly manner.

Little O’s response made Fei chuckle, “This is the time of the year I least want to see you!”

“Don’t be sad, you still have a chance to win a game,” Fei said, “Good luck.”

But what good is winning one game?

That night, Little O gave it his all, scoring 38 points with 14 rebounds and 4 blocks on the Bucks’ interior line. As a post player, his performance was dominant, but the Bucks’ perimeter defense was leaky all over.

The hard-earned points in the paint were submerged by the Bucks’ 28 three-pointers, making 17 of them throughout the game.

At the final buzzer, it was 118 to 97, the Bucks with a significant victory.

After the game, Little O’s interview exploded all over the headlines the next day.

A reporter asked, “What did you learn from this game?”

“You know, Big Fei is my good brother, but I have to pay the price for ending his three-peat, that’s my karma,” he said.

Another reporter asked, “Do you think you can win at least one game in the playoffs?”

“Big Fei didn’t even break a sweat tonight, and we were laid out flat, and you still think we can win? Bro, you look more like a Pacers player than I do. By the way, do you like corn?”

Finally, a reporter from Milwaukee asked, “If you’re knocked out by the Bucks two years in a row, will your relationship with Big Fei be challenged?”

“SHIT~~!!” Little O exclaimed, “The game is the game, how could our relationship be affected? Can a relationship that’s affected by such things be reliable? Besides, I don’t find it embarrassing. Why? Because there’s a good chance I’ll be the only person who’s beaten Big Fei in the playoffs over the past five years.”

At that, the negative vibes from losing the game seemed to vanish from Little O’s face, as he spoke like he was the ultimate winner: “You know, people won’t remember those who Big Fei defeats in the finals, but they will definitely remember who stopped his five-peat. Yes, it was me, it was me, it was motherfucking me!”

Little O’s sense of humor is the reason he gets along well with Fei.

With such a person, you just can’t hate him.

The next day, Fei simply responded to the buzz created by Little O: “Hmm, I think Jermaine is right.”

He then let the public opinion ferment, leaving all the traffic to Little O, who was about to be sent back to shuck corn.

At the start of Game 2, Fei brought Kwame Brown to say hello to Little O.@@novelbin@@

His intention was to ease the tension between the two, but Brown began to criticize Little O for talking too much off the court: “Jermaine, you clearly lost completely, why do you act like you are the winner? And it wasn’t just you who beat the Bucks back then, why are you so disrespectful to your teammates?”

Little O shot back: “You have no place to speak here, getting 30 points over you is as easy as drinking water, you better go back and work on your defense.”

Fei could feel Wade’s helplessness.

This was yet another argument between the self-proclaimed second-best center in the Eastern Conference and the universally acknowledged second-best center.

From then on, Fei hardly tried to mediate the relationship between the two anymore.

That evening, the showdown between Little O and Brown took fans back to the ’90s—a golden age of legendary giants in the center position. They are gradually fading away, but today, Little O still put up 30 points and 11 rebounds, while Brown, relying solely on easy baskets, scored 22 points with 10 rebounds.

Statistically, Little O had a slight edge, but on the court, he won decisively, managing to get Brown fouled out and there was a noticeable difference in the difficulty of their scoring.

Little O relied mostly on isolation plays, and right now, he was the Pacers’ only reliable option in that department, whereas Brown’s scoring was far too easy. The Bucks’ shooters just needed to spread out to create plenty of space, plus with Fei, a grandmaster of feeding the post, and Martin who was also learning how to feed Brown, Brown’s baskets came as naturally as opening his mouth.

As the game progressed, Little O was on the verge of defensive collapse.

Why could he work so hard and still have no hope of winning the game, while that draft bust, who had little skill beyond decent defense and rebounding, could match him in stats just by getting fed by others?

Why didn’t he have such teammates around him even though he was also an interior player?

The game’s excitement couldn’t turn the tide for the Pacers.

The Bucks once again beat their opponents by 20 points.

“Tell that bitch!” Little O tasked Fei with a message, “If he refuses to shut up, I’ll keep scoring 30 points on his head!”

Of course, Fei didn’t relay the message.

In the following two games, Little O’s performance was the epitome of ‘exhausting one’s strength and then declining.’ Back on home court, he lost his touch on offense, and in the crucial third game, he scored only 20 points as the Bucks easily secured the match point.

Then in the fourth game, Fei went full force on offense, dropping 45 points with an unstoppable display to sweep the Pacers 4-0 in the series.

“Win another championship, Big Fei,” Little O joked. “It really means a lot to me.”

Fei responded with advice, “Indiana doesn’t look like they’ll rise in the short term, you should consider starting over somewhere else.”

“Oh?” Little O’s eyes roamed, “What do you think of Seattle?”

“Hehe.”

Fei didn’t respond, just patted his shoulder and walked away.

The Bucks’ sweep of the Pacers fully met external expectations.

But the Mavericks struggling against the Golden State Warriors in the first round was truly surprising.

Especially the next day, when the Warriors held on to beat the Mavericks on their home court and took a 3-1 lead in the series, basketball fans generally had one thought.

The Mavericks are in trouble.

PS: There are three updates today, making up for the chapter that was missed on New Year’s Eve.

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