Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters-Chapter 1065 - 603 The Chosen One

Chapter 1065: Chapter 603: The Chosen One Chapter 1065: Chapter 603: The Chosen One Clippers waited for four days, finally getting the outcome.

Lakers with a 4-2 series win eliminated Harden and Howard’s Rockets, advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals.

Yu Fei and Kobe faced off again in the playoffs.

Since Yu Fei’s journey west in the summer of 2007, every year’s playoffs seemed to end up with him meeting Kobe, but each time, he was the victor.

Although this season’s Lakers are the best they’ve been in recent years, they lost both of their matches against the Clippers right before the regular season ended, and now meeting in the playoffs, even the most ardent Lakers fans knew the odds were not in their favor.

One pre-semifinal episode or, should I say, a cause of widespread controversy, was Durant narrowly beating Yu Fei in the regular season MVP voting, clinching his first MVP trophy of his career.

“Aesthetic fatigue,” like “you’re too young,” is a phenomenon not to be ignored in the NBA award evaluations.

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Even though Yu Fei seemed a better fit than Durant, the media wanted to vote for someone who hadn’t won before because Yu Fei had already claimed the MVP six times.

To avoid excessive public pressure, they also put Yu Fei on the shelf early by electing him DPOY.

As a result, the media were first blasted by Fei’s critics online and are now being blasted by Fei’s fans for not voting Yu Fei as MVP.

But this kind of online backlash has no real impact on journalists; negative attention is still attention, and as long as their personal safety isn’t threatened, it is not a big deal.

Yu Fei’s camp detested this outcome.

After all, Yu Fei currently has as many MVPs as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and if he could win this year’s MVP, he would become the player with the most MVP titles in history.

Now, this historic moment had to be delayed.

And next year, who knows who else might emerge, with the media possibly relapsing into their “aesthetic fatigue” narrative.

Yu Fei’s own thoughts, however, were significantly different from those of his team.

He actually liked the DPOY a lot.

After all, he had won every award before; MVPs? He had so many that they couldn’t even fit in one cabinet. What was the use of having so many? Any more would just overflow. It was the DPOY that felt fresh.

What a man over 30 needs most is novelty.

So, on the day Durant received his award, Yu Fei congratulated him on Twitter and posted a photo of his DPOY trophy, saying, “Clearly, we both got what we wanted.”

Yet such a simple tweet led to much speculation from outsiders.

Critics thought it was evidence of Reebok and Nike manipulating the awards.

The media believed the GOAT was satisfied with the outcome.

But Durant, who benefited from the “aesthetic fatigue” towards the GOAT, was far from grateful toward the media and still told journalists who asked stupid questions, “I hope you think carefully before you speak.”

This contempt for the fourth estate may not have immediate consequences, but in the long run, it impacts personal reputation.

Then came the semifinals.

Los Angeles fans were thrilled because both the Clippers and Lakers’ semifinals would be held at the Staples Center.

Since the rise of the Clippers, an interesting game emerged during the battle of Los Angeles: counting the number of fans for each team at the Staples Center on the night of the game.

In Yu Fei’s first year with the Clippers, Lakers fans were clearly in the majority.

But the number of Clippers fans increased steadily over the season, to the point where they matched the Lakers this season, with Clippers fans outnumbering Lakers fans at the final two regular season games.

Tonight, the ratio of Clippers to Lakers fans at the venue is 6:4.

The change in the fan base reflects the different upward trajectories of the two teams.

“If Lakers fans want to see your total points surpass Karl Malone next season, you’ll need to trade Melo,” Yu Fei “kindly” reminded.

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Kobe sarcastically retorted, “The game hasn’t even started, and you’re already thinking about next season? Don’t you have confidence in yourself?”

“No,” Yu Fei answered with a smile, “It’s better for you to start thinking about next season sooner rather than later, to prepare for the offseason. It’ll be good for you.”

Kobe snorted coldly and threw out that classic line: “Don’t think you’ve got this locked down!”

Only this time, the context in which he said the phrase was a bit off, not like in the promotional clip for the 2019 FIBA World Cup.

After that, no more idle chatter as both teams quickly set up their positions for a high-scoring showdown at the Staples Center.

Lakers’ game plan wasn’t wrong. Their defensive resources were really limited. Anthony’s defense was like a blind box, different every day. Little Gasol’s defense had obvious limitations of the era, which Yu Fei had exposed publicly during that year’s Empire battle. As for Kobe, at 37, he could no longer be fully committed to both offense and defense as in his youth. Now Kobe could either focus on offense or just “direct traffic” on defense.

The Lakers’ only defensive spearhead was Tony Allen. As a short shooting guard and defensive specialist, he could impact individual players but couldn’t support the whole team’s defensive system, like an interior defensive anchor would.

Therefore, outscoring the opponent was the Lakers’ only choice, but the biggest problem with this plan was that they had far fewer scoring options than the Clippers. So as Kobe and Anthony’s energy started to decline, the suspense of the game vanished.

In the third quarter, the Clippers were only ahead by 6 points, but with Kobe and Anthony missing shots consecutively and the Lakers committing a turnover, the Clippers seized the opportunity. Two trailing three-pointers followed by a fast-break slam dunk suddenly extended the lead to 14 points.