When pride still matters

Chapter 491 A greater failure is approaching (Unity)

After halftime, the Sonics changed their previous decline against the Lakers in the second game and gave the world a very impactful on-the-spot performance.

54 is better than 67
The Lakers, sitting at home, trailed by 13 points.

"The last time they played against each other, the Sonics didn't have Brandon Roy or Chris Bosh. Even if Frye scored 64 points, he couldn't win the game. But tonight, Chris Bosh's comeback was completely "Changing the situation of the game, does this mean that Chris' status in Seattle is not as marginalized as we thought?"

In ESPN's live broadcast seat, Mike Breen threw a professional question to his former professional partner next to him.

Mark Jackson admitted: "Chris did show a greater impact tonight than Brandon."

As a former professional coach, Jeff Van Gundy has a broader vision than Jackson.

"What's interesting is that the Lakers have never seen the Sonics with a full lineup. Whether it was that Christmas game that attracted worldwide attention, or the second game that allowed LeBron to end his six-year losing streak, or tonight's game, the SuperSonics "The Sonics have never been complete," Van Gundy said. "They didn't have Chris Bosh on Christmas Day, and tonight, they didn't have Brandon Roy. What's interesting is that even though the Sonics are missing a star player. The team still takes the initiative on the court.”

Jackson reminded: "Except for the second game."

"Even in the second game that allowed LeBron to end his six-year losing streak, Frye scored 64 points. We can say that he took the initiative on the court, but lacked helpers..." Van Gundy then expressed his point of view , "Once Frye has a capable helper, the rhythm of the game will completely fall into the hands of the Sonics. This is something the Lakers need to reflect on."

Then, Brin mentioned: "Also, Kevin Durant did not perform well in the first half. LeBron's defense against him was very effective. If he plays his hand, it will be more difficult for the Lakers."

Van Gundy smiled meaningfully: "This is what the Sonics need to reflect on. If Chris maintains his condition and KD recovers in the second half, the Lakers may have to hand over this game."

For the Lakers fans at the scene, the first half was not a pleasant viewing experience.

The team was beaten hard, and the coaching staff never came up with effective countermeasures.

Even an outsider can see how advantageous Bosh is at the four position.

There are two main celebrity fans who are extremely passionate about the Lakers, one is black and the other is white. The black man is the rap king "Dog" Snoopy, and the white man is Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson.

They all expressed dissatisfaction with Phil Jackson for allowing Bosh to dominate in the paint.

"Damn it, Nico! Let Andrew Bynum play with the Spaniard, Nico!" Snoopy swore angrily, "A fucking Spaniard is of no use, Nico! You are the fucking one. Do something, Nico! We’re going to be fucked by that son of a beach, Nico! Don’t lose to Seattle again, Nico~~~~~!”

Nicholson was not like Snoopy, talking nonsense like he was in trouble. His choice was to come to the aisle and talk trash to Yu Fei.

"You're going to lose tonight! Your new movie is as tasteless as your team's jerseys!" Nicholson shouted. "You'll never win an Oscar!"

Yu Feixiao asked: "I am an NBA player, why should I get an Oscar?!"

Apparently, Nichols felt that Yu Fei had plans to enter Hollywood in the future because he played a major supporting role in "Iron Man 2".

But Yu Fei’s attempt at Marvel is just a future investment to expand his influence.

"You will definitely win this year's Golden Raspberry Award!"

Nicholson cursed in the aisle.

Yu Fei smiled and waved: "I wish you good health. I hope you can see the Lakers win the championship again in your lifetime, but the premise is that you can live until the day I retire."

Nicholson's backlash also gave people the feeling of being drugged: "FUCKYOU!!! We have more than a dozen championships in Lakeland, and there are no shortage of one or two. You Seattle will never be able to compare! Even if you win three consecutive championships No match! FUCKYOU!”

For such a mentally disturbed person, Yu Fei could only wish him good health once again.

The scene of Yu Fei and Nicholson squirting was filmed.

Many reporters have already figured out how to frame their rhetoric.

Some photographers captured Nicholson's ferocious expression after breaking through the defense, as well as Yu Fei's smile.

Yu Fei walked down the aisle as fans on both sides waved frantically, trying to get an autograph.

Yu Fei saw someone holding an authentic player card from his rookie period.

Today, the value of this card has skyrocketed.

Yu Fei stopped and signed his name on the card.

Such a player card worth tens of thousands of dollars will often double in price after it is signed by the owner.

Yu Fei made a fan a small fortune with a raise of his hand, and then walked across the aisle with his trademark smile.

"Fry..."

“Look here, my lord!

"Fry, we love you...!!!"

Yu Fei raised his hands and walked away without looking back.

Behind him, Durant followed quietly.

As this year's Western Conference All-Star starter, Durant did not receive such a following on the road.

When he walked through the aisle that Yu Fei passed by just now, the only person who expressed anything to him was Nicholson, who didn't scold him enough.

"Skinny man, tell me the fuck your master, Kobe and LeBron will end his reign!" Nicholson yelled, "His good days are over! And, FUCKYOU!!!"

Durant will not regard Yu Fei as his master.

He was in a bad mood due to his poor performance in the first half.

James spared no effort and used 100% of his strength to completely prevent his offensive sense.

I originally wanted to ask Yu Fei some ways to deal with it, but now that Nicholson said this, he inevitably developed a bit of rebellious mentality.

"It's not my job to carry your message."

Durant said with a cold face.

If there weren't a lot of people there, he would have followed it up with "FUCK YOU TOO."

"Can't you tell, you, the skinny guy who was guarded by LeBron and turned into an idiot, still have a little temper!" Nicholson smiled and suddenly changed his face, "Don't you bastards all consider themselves servants of the empire? Frye is Your master, what’s wrong with this?”

Durant didn't need to ask where this impression came from.

Thanks to Kwame Brown, a bastard with little success, plenty of failures, and no self-respect.

This guy is on Twitter every day, posting dozens of tweets every day, each with the tag "#EmpireXX". This habit has spoiled the rest of the Sonics.

Now even young people such as DeAndre Jordan and Anthony Morrow are starting to do this.

As time goes by, won't everyone develop the habit of "Supersonics belongs to Frye alone, and the rest are his servants"?
At this moment, Durant only felt that he was using his trumpet to spray Brown too little.

He should catch the other person's lack of self-esteem and humiliate him all day long, and let that bastard know that a person who just wants to be a dog all day long will never gain the respect of others.

Being so provoked by Nicholson at this moment, Durant's already stable mood fluctuated greatly.

"I am not anyone's servant, and there is no empire in this world like you are talking about!" Durant said angrily, "If there is, it is also the Supersonic Empire, and it is an empire that belongs to all of us. We won three consecutive games. After the crown, it will be built, remember this sentence, FUCK YOU TOO!”

There were many media present.

They weren't originally that interested in Durant, but his confrontation with Nicholson attracted attention.

Everyone is an insider, so they naturally know that the essence of the "One Empire" that Yu Fei's camp has long promoted is to turn collective honor into personal honor.

Doing this may create gods in the short term, but in the long run, it may destroy the cohesion of the Sonics team.

So far this season, the Sonics have been troubled by injuries. They rarely have a complete lineup. Now that Roy has been injured for a long time, the suddenly vacated tactical position and the digestion of ball rights have become the team's themes.

Everyone is busy with their own affairs and has no time to compete for fame and fortune.

However, Durant's response to Nicholson indirectly proved that the outside world's concerns about the Sonics are justified.

They are not monolithic.

It is true that Yu Fei has a loyal dog like Kwame Brown under his seat, but not everyone regards him as the master of the empire.

Especially someone like Durant, who is regarded as hero material, is even less likely to willingly become a servant of the empire.

Many people in the media realize that there is still a lot to dig out behind this incident.

KD seems to be suffering for a long time.

What kind of distortion of human nature and moral decay lies behind it? Isn't it the mission of their fourth estate to let the world know the truth?
Durant walked quickly down the aisle, thinking that his biggest mistake just now was saying a foul word in front of so many people that a good man Adu should not say.

In fact, it doesn't matter whether it should be done or not, and no one will care.

His biggest mistake was the "I've got a story, do you have a drink" posture to media-hungry people.

Yu Fei's god-making project is nearing completion.

The Fourth Estate likes to create gods.

But what they prefer to do is to push one to the height of a god and then make him fall to pieces from a height of 90,000 feet.

How beautiful must that scene be?

One of the biggest problems in modern NBA game live broadcasts is that there are many extra links that fans are not interested in.

As if suffering from the same paranoia as Kobe Bryant, the league's rule makers insist that NBA head coaches must accept a halftime interview with the television station at the end of the first half.

It is called "open", but in fact this work is boring and torturous for all three parties.

The coaches didn't like it.

Coaches are definitely the professionals in the league who least want outside interference. Because exposure in front of the media has no commercial bonus for them.

This is no longer the 69s and s. The advantage of commercialization is that everyone who joins the industry makes money, and the players take the majority. When the players at the bottom have annual salaries of millions of dollars, how to restrain these people becomes the main issue for coaches. This would not have been so complicated in the s and s. At that time, NBA players generally went to college for three or four years, and coaches still had absolute authority. Superstars like Chamberlain would be benched at critical moments because of a bad relationship with the coach, losing a game with Bill Russell. In the final battle (the Finals), Tom Heinsohn was regarded as a reliable ambassador by the wineries because of his alcoholism.

It was a time when coaches could become stars.

Now, although coaches can sign eight-figure contracts, their commercial value is completely incomparable to those players with nine-figure contracts. Therefore, even if they are frequently on camera, it will not be of any real benefit to them, and they will also cause some unexpected troubles by talking too much.

Similarly, TV reporters hate halftime interviews because coaches are wary of them. If you are unlucky enough to meet a low-quality coach like Gregg Popovich who enjoys gossiping about reporters, he may become a public figure. Joke.

In the end, the audience didn't like it. Coach interview time is basically "bathroom time" for the audience. Those who are willing to stay in front of the TV and listen to the coach's nonsense are not ordinary people.

But even though this was an unreasonable policy that dissatisfied everyone, George Karl still had to come to the stage and act like he had been looking forward to this interview for a long time.

"Coach, how would you evaluate the first half of the game?"

"We performed well, I loved our energy, and I'm glad Chris Bosh had a great performance on the big stage!"

"The last time you played against the Lakers, Frye scored 64 points, but you lost. Does this mean that the more Frye scores, the more critical the SuperSonics' situation becomes?"

Carl was smiling. He wanted to tear the reporter's mouth open, but he couldn't.

So he tactfully sarcastically said: "Of course, it's like a strong man who is hungry. The hungrier he is, the more he eats."

Finally, the reporter's question finally had some quality: "Kevin Durant performed well against the Lakers in last year's Christmas game, but then when he faced the Lakers again, he seemed to be struggling. What led to this situation? ?”

Carl's answer was simple.

"Because opponents don't treat him as a kid anymore," Carr said. "Sometimes, we have to learn to grow."

Carr inspired everyone in the locker room.

Soon, he discovered that Durant was distracted.

So, he said to Durant: "Kevin, you are our only player who is not in the best condition. If we want to defeat the Lakers, we cannot do without your performance."

This was a polite statement because even if Durant didn't play much in the first half, the Sonics still led the Lakers by 13 points.

Durant said: "I will adjust as soon as possible."

Karl nodded and then turned his attention to Yu Fei.

With Durant's physical maturity, it is normal for his state to be submerged in high-intensity physical confrontations. Therefore, he must be led by someone.

It's not enough for Bosh to be awesome in the paint.

If Yu Fei fires from the outside, then the Lakers will truly be unable to care about each other internally and externally.

Before the start of the second half, Yu Fei said to Durant: "I will let the Lakers turn their attention to me, once their defensive intensity against you drops..."

Durant responded: "I'll make them pay!"

"What I want is your words." Yu Fei smiled.

For a moment, Durant really felt like a servant.

Because he couldn't defeat LeBron James on his own. If he didn't hide under Yu Fei's big tree, he would probably be lost for the whole game tonight.

In the second half, the connection between Yu Fei and Bosh was like overwhelming.

When Yu Fei called Bosh to do a 1-4 pick-and-roll, the Lakers, who were afraid of Bosh's power, made the stupidest choice in desperation. They did not choose the most mainstream method currently used to deal with pick-and-roll offenses—— Switch defense.

The Lakers' thinking is that Bosh's offense tonight was too unsolvable. He was already so fierce in the first half, and they couldn't let him open up in the second half. On the contrary, Yu Fei's offensive threat in the first half was not that great. Maybe he didn't feel it tonight?
The Lakers' defensive choice is to trust Kobe, who is facing off against Yu Fei, and let Kobe squeeze through Bosh's pick-and-roll without any effort. In this way, the players' personal struggles can prevent the pick-and-roll without switching defenses.

Squeezing the screen is a very old method of preventing pick-and-rolls. However, this trick is usually used to deal with those who have poor pick-and-roll quality, or who are unable to seize the opportunity to punish the opponent after getting the first open space through the pick-and-roll. Guard.

When it comes to the Sonics, they are two mismatches.

Bosh's pick-and-roll quality as the fourth position is excellent, while Yu Fei is the most terrifying ball-holding pick-and-roll attacker among active players.

Therefore, Kobe's squeeze screen was immediately responded to by Yu Fei's jump shot.

"Shh!"

Silky and crisp.

Yu Fei sarcastically said: "So defensive? It seems you no longer want to be in the best defensive team of the year."

What made Kobe angry was the next sentence: "But you should have scored long ago. Your defense in the past few years has been empty."

Yu Fei was actually using the same rhetoric about Kobe that others said he was not worthy of being in the defensive formation.

This is learning now and applying it now, but for Kobe, this is a heart-wrenching thing, because since last year, Kobe's high-level defensive statistics do not look like the best perimeter defender in the league.

"Who are you calling an empty airer?!"

When Kobe got angry, the game became more explosive.

In this case, James can only obey Kobe.

Kobe did not find his touch in the next few attacks, but instead let Yu Fei wantonly catch the Lakers' defensive counterattacks.

For a time, Kobe was suppressed, and it took two minutes for the Lakers to go from 13 points behind to 19 points behind.

As soon as James saw this momentum, he knew he could no longer watch on the sidelines. He took the initiative to attack with the ball and played 2+1 to stabilize the situation.

But this only quenches thirst but does not save lives.

The pick-and-roll cooperation between Yu Fei and Bosh was like a knife hanging on the Lakers' neck, falling quickly.

Bosh jumped out of the three-point line after a pick-and-roll, caught the ball and shot a three-pointer.

"Shh!"

Kojan's takeover came earlier than expected.

Although this trick is simple and crude, and it makes the team's skills and tactics lose their existence value, it is not easy to use.

Especially when you have the second person in the world and the third person in the world, one of them has no solution for XJBD, and the other has no solution for breakthrough, then it really doesn't take too much brains to fight.

However, the Lakers were too far behind, and Yu Fei and Bosh's pick-and-roll was also difficult to solve.

Both sides were going back and forth, both were scoring, but the point difference didn't move at all.

This is not the result the Lakers wanted.

Phil Jackson requested a timeout and asked James to wake up the triangle offense.

James did as he was told, and the first person to enter the tactics was Richard Hamilton, who helped the team clear the ball on the outside.

Just when the Lakers thought they could breathe a sigh of relief, Yu Fei dribbled over, which made people nervous, and James suddenly went to double-team.

Yu Fei flicked his finger and the ball came to Durant's hand.

The Lakers awakened the triangle offense, the Sonics awakened Durant, and suddenly the roles were reversed.

The Lakers used the power of their system to counter the SuperSonics' superstar power.

In the end, the SuperSonics, which had a big lead, was even better in terms of self-confidence.

Confidence is the best medicine to ensure the touch. Durant entered the state after flying away the defensive pressure, and even Anthony Morrow, who was somewhat invisible in the second half, regained his sight.

Finally, Kwame Brown relied on a bunch of shooters from the outside and began to steal chickens under the basket continuously.

Starting from the fourth position being blown out in the first half, the Lakers fell behind step by step.

Although Kejan Wang Zha is easy to use, it should not be used indiscriminately.

When falling behind too much, it will be difficult for anyone to come forward because the pressure and difficulty of scoring are different on both sides.

The suspense of the game spiraled in the third quarter. Finally, after the Sonics' symbolic Kwame Brown stole a chicken tip-in to widen the point difference to 29 points, the game entered the "everyone is back" mode that Seattleites love to see.

In the fourth quarter, the Lakers tried to fight again.

Then, Durant started beating up the lost dog.

The man known as the Son of America faced James again, but the situation was completely different from the first half.

Within a few minutes, he was holding the ball in singles, and he was making three-pointers over James' head at a 45-degree angle from both sides.

A wave of individual performances that scored 8 points in a row made the Lakers completely desperate.

James was off the court. His data happened to be a triple-double of 26 points, 11 rebounds and 19 assists. Yu Fei suspected that he came back to play in the fourth quarter just for this.

As for Durant, he seems to have regained his confidence in the wild cutting and picking.

I don't need Frye or anyone else's help, I can beat LeBron on my own!
Durant ended up with 28 points and 4 rebounds.

Just looking at the data alone, it's absolutely impossible to tell how difficult it was for him in the first half.

Yu Fei is the mastermind behind tonight. He is neither as brilliant as Bosh nor like Durant who sent the Lakers to the guillotine in the fourth quarter. He just controlled the entire game in a way that suffocated his opponents. rhythm.

24 points, 14 rebounds, 15 assists
It's obviously a big triple-double, but what was the biggest impression he left on people tonight?

Squirting with Jack Nicholson in the aisle.

When the game completely entered garbage time, ABC's Doug Collins said: "Frye played epic statistics, the SuperSonics are about to defeat the Lakers, maybe we should be concerned about LeBron's mental health. He just got rid of it not long ago After a long period of failure against Frye, he is now being dogged by an even bigger failure."

(End of this chapter)