When pride still matters

Chapter 467 The person who never showed up
From mid-July to mid-August, Yu Fei has been participating in the filming of "Iron Man 2". However, before filming, he asked Marvel to prepare a stadium for him. It was impossible for him not to play for a month.

For Marvel, that's not a problem.

Yu Fei even held a small training camp while filming.

Kwame Brown, Jermaine O'Neal and Alonzo Key, the Sonics' second-round pick this year, are all in the mix.

Brown also took advantage of Yu Fei's spotlight and played a passerby with one or two lines in "Iron Man 2".

If the theme of July in the sports world is James' "decision" and the subsequent impact of the "decision", then in August, the basketball world returned to the "main line."

In the past year, the theme of the basketball world was "44 VS 23". Now, Yu Fei has won his sixth championship in seven years. With the blessing of two consecutive championships and four consecutive championships, his top honors have equaled Jordan's.

When Yu Fei's mouthpiece Mark Stein talked about the GOAT debate, he said bluntly: "Everyone has their own GOAT in their hearts, but for those fans who regard No. 23 as the unshakable number one, As a basketball player, Frye is already as good as No. 23 in terms of honors.”

As a member of the traditional forces, Chicago reporter Sam Smith, who wrote "The Jordan Rules" to allow Jordan himself to break through the defense, took the initiative to stand up against Stein.

"Are they really even, Mark? Yes, Frye and Michael both won six championships in the same decade, but as a player, Michael won more scoring titles and was selected to more The All-Defensive Team is evenly matched, but as a player, Michael is better on both ends.”

Smith looked fair.

He called Yu Fei "Fry" instead of calling him "No. 44" hostilely as a member of the Jordan camp.

However, the way he defended Jordan exposed the fact that conservative forces relatively prefer Jordan.

As a media figure in his heyday, Stein wouldn't back down: "Sam, you're playing a game of 'big vs. little.' The scoring title is just a statistic, and even if Frye doesn't win that many scoring titles, it doesn't matter." Some people will question his scoring ability. In the playoffs, which symbolizes the highest stage, Frye once scored 23 points in a single game that No. 71 had never achieved. I want to remind you, this broke the "God wears No. 23". record of that game, but no one has ever said, 'God wore No. 44.' You said that No. 23 was selected to more All-Defensive teams, which is true, but you said that No. 23 was better on both offense and defense. ? We will never know the answer, but I can say without any worries that Frye is a more complete player than No. 23. His triple-doubles in a single game, his rebounds per game and assists per game are overwhelming. The advantage of sex is ahead of number 23.”

When a topic cannot be drawn to a definite conclusion, it is necessary to find another way of expressing it.

"If the scoring champion is just a statistic, then a triple-double in a single game is just a statistic." Smith responded, "This is not a great statistic. Michael once had 11 triple-doubles in 10 games. As long as he is willing, He could get hundreds of triple-doubles. That's why Michael was able to beat Frye in the current narrative. He left so many 'possibilities' that he had two consecutive triple-doubles in the 90s. But he chose to retire at the expense of his competitiveness. If he had not retired, maybe we would have seen the Bulls win eight consecutive championships.”

Smith turns the controversy to story and legend.

Jordan's famous three-peat victory after retirement is also a much-talked-about legend.

I have to say that this is indeed a powerful argument.

The 1994 Bulls led the team to the semifinals with Pippen as the core, and many people regarded Jordan as a black spot. But if you think about it differently, if Jordan is still on the team, what are the chances of them achieving four consecutive championships?

"'Possibility'? Is this what No. 23's supporters rely on?" Stein retorted ruthlessly, "You know, there are too many possibilities for No. 23 to stay. If he does not come back in DC, Frye His career may be completely different if he doesn't trade Frye, he may retire with seven rings. Frye doesn't need 'ifs', but Frye is very good at making others 'what ifs', and this is a reality. What a real winner should look like. By the way, the 2000s are not over yet. Six championships in ten years is the limit for No. 23, but it is not Frye’s limit.”

The debate between Mark Stein and Sam Smith can be said to be the beginning of the second season of "44 VS 23".

Only this time, Yu Fei changed from a shaker to a real GOAT candidate.

More than 60% of the younger generation think Yu Fei is the GOAT.

If you look at all age groups, this debate is infinitely close to a 50-50 split.

Reebok was keenly aware of the signs of Yu Fei's ascension to the throne, and named the upcoming ninth generation "GOAT".

At the same time, a "SoleImperium" series of sports equipment closely related to Yu Fei was derived from the Chosen brand, which was also very popular.

At this time, Reebok has the mentality of Nike in the 90s.

They knew that Yu Fei was changing the status quo, but before Yu Fei took that step, they had to go further.

Last season, Mark Stein proposed the concept of "Empire".

This is mainly to compete for the right to define the flying team's consecutive championships.

The same team winning consecutive championships is called a dynasty. What if someone still wins consecutive championships after changing teams?
That's the empire.

Stein used "SoleImperium" to emphasize Yu Fei's personal authority, aiming to emphasize that the Bucks and SuperSonics won the championship because of Yu Fei's existence.

This significantly weakens the traditional dynastic narrative.

However, this is inconsistent with the publicity surrounding Jordan that year, that is, No. 23’s so-called lofty will to win is like the incarnation of the American military myth. Nike desperately promoted Jordan’s legend and beautified No. 23’s violence into a winner. The encouragement of teammates defines the domineering and arrogance of the superiors as necessary actions in pursuit of victory.

For more than a decade, Nike has become dependent on this path.

They cast their stars as winners in pursuit of victory, but elevated their individual status as the team triumphed.

However, Reebok goes one step further in this regard.

The concept of "SoleImperium" was born to emphasize Yu Fei's individuality, while weakening or even ignoring the contributions of other supersonic people.

This kind of marketing and publicity is indeed more compelling and inflammatory than Nike, but in turn, for some Sonics players, their contribution as a member of the team has been erased.

Men like Kwame Brown were happy to be servants of the Empire.

But for 21-year-old Kevin Durant, the situation is much more complicated.

Nike regards James as a useless number, so they are willing to let Zenko join forces to compete with No. 1 through a 1+44 method.

But for Durant, Nike has deeper expectations.

Durant debuted as Yu Fei II, and Nike gave him an endorsement contract second only to James before he entered the NBA. Afterwards, Yu Fei returned to Seattle, which greatly exceeded Nike's expectations.

Then, Nike used a trick to let Durant learn from Yu Fei, and quietly eroded part of Reebok's popularity. Moreover, they specially designed an ingenious persona for Durant: the boy next door.

Different from Jordan's tyrant, Yu Fei's dominance, James' king and Kobe's black mamba image, these characters all have a power that excludes others.

But Durant is different.

He has no tattoos on his body, is friendly to everyone, carries a school bag and speaks pleasant words.

But recently, Nike discovered that instead of cannibalizing Reebok's market, Durant has become a foil to Yu Fei.

Seattleites will buy Durant's jersey, but if they are asked to choose between Yu Fei and Durant, the answer is quite realistic.

Because Durant is still the Sonics' third player.

He is not Yu Fei's deputy, he is the person after Yu Fei and Roy.

As Yu Fei's camp began to emphasize the concept of "SoleImperium", the most intolerable thing for Nike happened.

No matter how many championships the Sonics win, no matter how outstanding the teammates around Yu Fei are, this empire will always belong to Yu Fei alone.

The sentiment on Nike's part naturally affects Durant.

So in July, when Bosh waggled his tail and reached a verbal agreement with the Sonics without contacting other teams, followed by James' "decision", Durant tweeted An innocent comment: "Why does everyone want to come to Seattle and Los Angeles to play basketball now? Let's get back competitive and fight like a true competitor!"

Kwame Brown, who seemed to live on Twitter, was quick to reply: "Don't let Chris see this."

Then, Yu Fei's Poison Weis seemed to have their tails stepped on.

In their view, Durant equated Bosh's move to join the Sonics with James' decision to defect to Los Angeles in a live broadcast.

"KD, what crazy talk are you talking about? This is not the same thing at all!"

"Chris is Frye's brother and they just want to play brother basketball. Why would you use a tweet like this to create internal conflict?"

"Delete this, boy, you are nothing without the 'SoleImperium'!"

Durant wanted to respond to Brown, but then he saw Yu Fei's poisonous heroes educating him with the "SoleImperium" theory.

In his heart, a rebellious fire was ignited.

He responded to the fan: "What is 'SoleImperium'?"

"You are also part of the 'SoleImperium'. You don't know what this means? Let me make it clear. Without Frye, you are nothing. Chris just wants to be a part of the 'SoleImperium' like you!"

calm
KD, stay calm.

Durant said this to himself.

He decided not to respond.

However, for the next ten minutes, those words kept echoing in his mind.

Without Fry you are nothing.

This is a huge humiliation.

Frye is certainly the most important player in Seattle, but is he nothing? Frye himself wouldn’t even say that!

Why would these fans create a so-called "SoleImperium" concept to erase their contributions?
In the end, Durant couldn't hold back and responded to the poisonous Wei again: "You like Frye, I don't ask you to like other people on our team, but you must at least respect us. We are also NBA players, do you have Frye?" We are both NBA players. What this means is that I can average 20 points in the NBA with or without Frye!”

Although everything Durant said was reasonable, he had already lost the moment he decided to reason with a poisonous Weiwei.

One Du Wei was responded to, and hundreds or even thousands of Du Wei stood up. "Do you think you're better than LeBron?"

"If you hadn't become Frye's teammate, you wouldn't be as good as LeBron!"

"When you have the privilege of following such a great person early in your career, you should feel honored, but unfortunately, I don't see the slightest gratitude in you."

Durant was almost fired up.

Just when his Dark Souls was about to explode and he was about to start a verbal battle with the crowd on Twitter, Sam Presti called.

Presti briefly expressed condolences to Durant and then asked about Twitter.

"It's nothing, I just met a group of irrational fans."

This is Durant now. He has completely entered the role. Even when he was angered, he just called Du Wei an "irrational fan."

Although Durant's quality occupies the high ground, the advice he received was even more unacceptable than when he was disgusted by Du Wei.

"KD, I know you don't mean any harm. You are a competitor. Everyone on our team knows that. However, if this tweet is interpreted maliciously by someone with malicious intentions, it may have a bad impact on you. You'd better delete it. it."

What if someone maliciously interprets it?

Durant was so angry that his head was almost smoking.

Thousands of people made malicious interpretations of his tweet.

He just lamented that the NBA was in decline. Even the top stars like James and Bosh were too shameless to take the express train to compete for the championship. As a result, the fan No. 44 was so stimulated that he insisted on barking in his tweets. .

"I can handle it."

Durant is not Yu Fei, and his status on the court is not as good as Roy.

But he knows his true position within the team.

At least in the eyes of the management, he is second only to Yu Fei.

It made him feel like he didn't have to accept every suggestion.

This is his Twitter, his tweets, his casual exclamations, why should he care what some people think?

Shortly after Presti's call, Durant's agent, Rob Pelinka, called.

"KD, you just tweeted?"

"Yeah." Durant replied, "I feel sorry for some phenomena in the league."

“Dude, you gotta delete that tweet.”

For some unobservable reason, Presti and Pelinka's suggestion that he delete Twitter made Durant even more angry than No. 44's Wei Wei.

"Why are you making such a fuss?"

Durant couldn't understand that he just sent a tweet, without naming anyone, and simply wanted to awaken people to the competitive nature of the sports world, but he was misinterpreted by a group of people and opposed by those around him.

"KD, this is not a big fuss, you have to delete this tweet before Frye sees it," Pelinka said. "Considering where you are, you can't have any conflict with Frye right now."

Durant found it hard to breathe.

He now knew why he was so upset.

He actually knew it all along, but Presti didn't say it explicitly, and he couldn't verify the conjecture, but Pelinka's words made the situation clear.

The drug addicts besieged him because this tweet might have a negative impact on No. 44.

Presti suggested he delete his tweets because he foresees something happening.

Pelinka's direct suggestion shows that that situation will really happen.

"What does this have to do with Frye?" Durant said dissatisfied, "I didn't mention anyone's name!"

Pelinka said rationally: "You may not realize that you slightly satirized LeBron and Chris. You have to know that LeBron is still Nike's main star, and you are colleagues. You should not add insult to injury at this time. And Chris Will be your teammate in the new season. IMHO he is much closer to Frye than you are, they were inseparable during the Olympics and it was a semi-public fact in the industry that Chris would join Seattle. It would embarrass Chris, but that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is that Fry might be unhappy with you."

“What if I don’t delete this tweet?”

In recent years, Nike has stepped up its marketing of Durant.

After winning two consecutive championships with the team, Durant is already a hot new star.

Although he may not be able to take away Reebok's SuperSonics market as Nike thought, he is definitely the most popular NBA rookie at the moment.

Last season, Durant was the Sonics' second-leading scorer.

He duels with Yu Fei every day. Although the other party is very harsh on him, this kind of differential treatment just proves that he is special.

Durant never thought that he would anger Yu Fei with a random tweet.

"I don't know, KD, maybe nothing will happen, maybe anything will happen." Pelinka advised, "You can't bet on someone like Frye being lenient. You have to know, Shaquille O'Neal, Ken Jan Martin and Richard Hamilton are still paying for the mistakes they made seven or eight years ago.”

"I'm not going to delete that tweet, Rob." Durant finally said, "I didn't do anything wrong."

Durant looked at the computer. The number of likes, retweets, and replies to that tweet were increasing every second.

Usually, one of his tweets only gets three digits of likes at most, but now the number of likes has reached four digits.

When a person decides to rebel, he is not fearless. In fact, he will also be afraid, but he will hold on with the mentality of "I am not wrong."

However, a call from Nike's public relations department broke through Durant's defense.

"KD, you spent two years proving to the world what kind of person you are, but your efforts are likely to be destroyed by a short tweet. Bad people can do a hundred evil things, but good people can do a hundred evil things if If you do a bad thing, you will be regarded as a bad person,” Nike’s publicist said on the phone, “It’s not worth it.”

Is Durant a good guy?
He no longer knows.

When Nike asked him to act like a good guy from now on when he signed the contract, he asked: "Don't you think I'm a good guy?"

The people at Nike said, "You're good, but we need you to take 'good' to a whole new level."

Durant clearly remembers that Nike wanted him to "act."

This shows that Nike does not think he is as friendly as he seems on the surface.

This tweet is proof of that.

But Nike knew about it but didn't want the outside world to know.

Today, NBA stars are already commodities, and they must be one and the same. What they show to the outside world must be a good side, so that they can bring goods and parents and fans can let their children follow the example of these bad basketball players.

What could be more attractive to parent fans than the image of a good guy who is all about kindness?

This is Nike's foresight, and they made a good move on Durant.

Therefore, they cannot watch this chess piece self-destruct willfully.

Moreover, Nike seems to know where Durant's sensitive points are. The reason they asked him to delete the tweet was not out of fear of angering Yu Fei, but out of consideration for his public image.

This was a reason Durant couldn't refuse.

After the call ended, Durant silently deleted the tweet.

He then fired off a new tweet: "I apologize to anyone who was offended by my unintentional remarks."

What happened today gave Durant a new understanding of the world.

That person who never showed up from beginning to end, with his influence alone, launched an offensive against him from four directions: fans, management, agents and endorsement companies.

Durant was defeated without even meeting him.

In mid-August, Yu Fei finished filming and started a trip to Asia with Reebok's newly signed Stephen Curry and Kwame Brown.

When they arrived in Japan, Yu Fei received an extraordinary reception.

A Japanese reporter asked Yu Fei for his views on Durant’s Twitter incident.

"I don't have any opinion." Yu Fei said condescendingly, "Every family has a naughty child, and our child is even better. He has cleaned up the trouble."

⑴I feel that there are more straight men watching football. I don’t know what Du Wei means. Let me briefly explain: I only like one person in the team, that is, the "only" one, and on top of Wei, there is also "du".

PS: Today is also about unity. The main reason is that I recently started writing them together, but I had trouble choosing when dividing them into chapters. I didn’t know how to divide them, so I just posted them together.

(End of this chapter)