Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Chapter 494: Chapter 341 Chicago Ghosts

If Yu Fei had to choose between the Golden State Warriors and the Dallas Mavericks to advance, he would definitely choose the Warriors on an emotional level. This isn’t because the Dallas People have repeatedly declared over the past half year, “Our championship was stolen by Milwaukee. If the officiating had been consistent, the Mavericks would have won last season’s championship.”

It’s because the Warriors team includes Vince Carter. Aside from this factor, there’s also the Warriors’ head coach Don Nelson, who has publicly stated on numerous occasions that Yu Fei is his “ultimate player” in his mind.

Yu Fei and this renowned coach have never crossed paths, and considering his reputation over the past few years, lavishing such praise on him wouldn’t bring any tangible benefits.

Thus, Nelson’s admiration is likely genuine.

The reason why Yu Fei has earned Nelson’s recognition is that he seems to be the complete embodiment of Nelson’s basketball experiments that have spanned over thirty years.

In recent years, Yu Fei’s Milwaukee Bucks have sparked an NBA position revolution, with one prominent feature being the use of a versatile player like Yu Fei as the primary ball handler, allowing sharpshooting small forwards like Granger to play the power forward position.

Many teams have begun to mimic the Bucks’ approach, and Yu Fei’s explosive performances have even influenced the 2007 NBA Draft—in which Greg Oden, who had dominated the draft boards since the start of his career, suddenly faced a threat from Kevin Durant after starting college.

It was not only because Durant had the strongest freshman performance since Carmelo Anthony, but also because his build, agility, ball-handling skills, and silky shooting reminded people of Yu Fei.

When Durant began to be touted by scouts as following Yu Fei’s template, things started to change.

Now let’s return to Nelson himself. Speaking of the position revolution, he’s the pioneer of this movement in the NBA.

In 1984, Nelson’s Milwaukee Bucks were an Eastern Conference powerhouse overshadowed by Larry Bird’s Celtics and Dr. J’s 76ers. It was in that year’s Eastern Conference Finals that the Bucks lost to the Celtics. Nelson hit the reset button on his team, trading the star forward Marques Johnson to the Clippers in exchange for the undersized shooting guard Craig Hodges, who was only good at scoring, the scorer Ricky Pierce who was not good at anything but offense, and the athletic power forward Terry Cummings.

This trade was criticized at the time, as Nelson weakened their strongest small forward position and did not reinforce their weakest point guard spot. But miraculously, Nelson solved both problems by cleverly using Paul Pressey as a point forward. Pressey’s presence made it feasible for the short shooting guard Hodges to start, Pierce moved to the sixth man as his favorite scorer, and Cummings filled in Pressey’s lack of offensive capabilities though he could play the point.

It could be said this was the earliest version of positionless basketball.

Following this, Nelson kept on experimenting as if possessed but never found the ultimate player who could perfectly adapt to his style. Until the emergence and success of Yu Fei and the Bucks, Nelson saw hope.

When he returned to Golden State, he decided to continue his experiment there.

Fate would have it that in the first round of the playoffs, he was faced with his previous failed experiment. Now, the Mavericks had largely abandoned Nelson’s philosophy from his tenure; Avery Johnson, who came from the Spurs heritage, turned them into an aggressive team advocating defense, emphasizing half-court offense. In other words, they were very traditional.

Unfortunately, the Warriors were a team that was anything but traditional.

Their eight-man rotation included an oversized point guard (Baron Davis), a scoring guard the size of a point guard (Monta Ellis), a classic 6-foot-6 shooting guard from the post-Jordan era (Vince Carter), three small forwards with different skills (Stephen Jackson, Matt Barnes, and Mickaël Piétrus), a stretch power forward (Harrington), and an undersized center (Andris Biedriņš).

They burst onto the scene at just the right time, perfectly executing a dimension-shifting playstyle that drove small ball over traditional big ball, much like the Warriors’ dominance over teams in the 2015-16 regular season.

Only, this Warriors team, although from the same lineage, had a different roster composition from the one ten years later. If Dirk Nowitzki had been able to exert MVP-like influence, maybe the outcome of the series would have been different.

This is something Yu Fei couldn’t quite grasp.

In his past life, Yu Fei’s understanding of Nowitzki was limited to the deification of 2011, that championship which seemed to grant Nowitzki an eternal immunity from criticism—no matter how soft he had been before, after he proudly defeated the arrogant Miami Big Three representing the old-school basketball, the basketball world reconciled with him.

So when the Nowitzki who had earned the moniker “soft” for his poor performances appeared in Yu Fei’s world, he found it utterly incomprehensible.

Speaking of this series, Nowitzki completely fell apart, which was evident from his expression. In every critical moment of Game 1, Game 3, and Game 4, when the team needed him to step up, he was nowhere to be found. This led to the disastrous Game 6.

In this “win or go home” game, Nowitzki developed a phobia of the paint, refusing to attack inside, and was posterized by Matt Barnes. He had more turnovers than field goals (2 made shots, 3 turnovers), and as the newly crowned MVP, leading the team to 65 wins as the league’s best player, he was crushed by 25 points by the eighth seed in a do-or-die game.

Now you know the initial thought behind Nowitzki fans affectionately calling Dirk “Me Soft,” right?

To explain: “If I’m already calling him soft, saying it more just loses the fun.”

After watching Game 6 between the Mavericks and the Warriors, Yu Fei said in disbelief, “That man actually received more MVP votes than me?”

Hearing this, Lawson and Lin Kaiwen and other trusted associates, although indignant for Yu Fei, had no major objections to this year’s MVP selection.@@novelbin@@

Over the past two years, Yu Fei completed back-to-back MVP conquests with terrifying stats, greatly raising people’s expectations of him. Even though he finished this season with averages of 27+8+9, even though his team achieved the second-best record in history, for the voters, it still wasn’t good enough to grant him a third consecutive MVP.

In fact, within Yu Fei’s camp, there was even a sense of “a pity but not necessarily a bad thing,” because after winning MVP three times in a row, the media’s expectations and the mentality of “giving others a chance” would be maximized, making it harder to win awards in the future.

But what was unexpected was that Nowitzki had just been named the regular season MVP, and then, in the playoffs, displayed a ruthlessly skillful performance.

Never before had Yu Fei wanted more to watch the MVP acceptance speech.

It could be anticipated that this would be the most embarrassing moment in the NBA since the merger era.

Afterward, another team from last season that almost topped the Eastern Conference sank in the first round.

The rising Chicago Bulls, with the power of their youth, extinguished Miami’s fire and successfully advanced to the semifinals to challenge the Bucks.

The failure of the Heat essentially declared that their 2004 trade for Shaquille O’Neal had been a complete flop.

Against the Bulls, O’Neal averaged only 18 points, looking more like a regular star center, unworthy of the title of the top center in the East.

Perhaps Wade had a soul in one of his accessories that absorbed Whistle Power, for his average free throw attempts in the first round were only eight, far below the average, and his astonishing three-point accuracy from last year’s playoffs completely vanished. In the series against the Bulls, he didn’t make a single three-pointer.

The Heat were a team built to win in the present, and their “present” referred to last season; now, their window had already closed, and all they could do was tear everything down and start over.

The Bulls, filled with passion, could not beat the Bucks merely with youthful vigor as they had with Miami.

When it came to youth, the Bucks were in no way inferior to the Bulls.

After entering the playoffs, their starting lineup had become: Yu Fei, Martin, Granger, Aldridge, and Kwame Brown.

In this lineup, the oldest players, Yu Fei and Brown, were not yet 25 years old, and the youngest, Aldridge, had just turned 21. In contrast, the Bulls’ starting center was the old veteran Ben Wallace, abandoned by his former team.

By signing Big Ben, the Bulls had let go of the younger Tyson Chandler.

It wouldn’t take long to prove this decision a mistake, as Big Ben’s decline became increasingly evident, and soon his contract would be overpriced and then turn into a burden, forcing the Bulls to reflect on whether their team-building strategy was correct.

Yu Fei didn’t care about the future of the Bulls; he just wanted to quickly dispose of his opponent.

Every time he played at the United Center, Yu Fei felt depressed.

Because this was where number 23 had battled, and the air was filled with the jerseys of number 23 and the championship banners he had won.

Even today, number 23 haunted him like a ghost, occasionally affecting his life.

Although he had already taken his revenge on number 23, the world had now given him a mission more important than revenge against number 23—surpassing him.

Yu Fei didn’t like this arrangement.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to surpass Jordan.

In fact, all players who reached his level faced this dilemma: on the surface, they wanted to be themselves, but deep down, the desire to surpass number 23 was extremely strong.

However, unlike others troubled by the Chicago Ghost, Yu Fei had direct conflicts and grievances with the ghost himself, which reinforced his resolve.

This strange sentiment caused Yu Fei, who had been stable in the playoffs so far, to show frightening fluctuations on the offensive end.

To the horror of Chicago fans, Yu Fei’s performance fluctuation was upward—having averaged 28 points per game in the previous playoffs, he scored 46 points tonight before garbage time even began.

Yu Fei’s targeting made the newly crowned DPOY Big Ben look like a hole on the court, the talented Ben Gordon was completely blown out, and Kirk Hinrich, known as a defensive guard, fouled out, leaving the boos in the United Center growing fainter until the moment Yu Fei left the floor, not a single fan dared to hurl trash talk at him.

“It looks like there’s only one mystery left in the Eastern Conference,” said Charles Barkley on TNT as the game concluded. “Can LeBron bring the Knight to the Eastern Conference Finals to prove to Frye that he and his team are better than last year?”

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