Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters Chapter 546: 384 Durant's Unique Disinterest

Chapter 546: Chapter 384 Durant’s Unique Disinterest

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“In the first half, we had only one tactic, which was to give the ball to Frye and have everyone else stand far away,” George Karl told an ABC reporter during halfti. “You have to admit it’s effective.”

The reporter asked, “Will you stick to this strategy in the second half?”

Of course, Karl wasn’t foolish enough to publicly reveal his strategy for the second half.

However, since the Supersonics’ tactic of focusing on Fei in the first half was nearly an open secret, digging a pitfall for the opponent here wasn’t out of the question.

“That depends on whether our opponents have other counterasures,” Karl said. “If a pair of shoes fits well, you should keep wearing them, and it’s the sa with basketball gas.”

...

There was a past grudge between Doug Rivers and George Karl that hardly anyone talks about now.

Back when Rivers was young and beca the head coach of the Orlando Magic, Karl and other established white head coaches weren’t too pleased.

Why? Because they had worked for over a decade to earn their positions as head coaches. What about Rivers? As soon as he retired, he was invited to be a comntator, and with his excellent eloquence, he was considered a naturally gifted coaching talent. Then, without any experience as an assistant coach, he beca an NBA head coach.

In LOL, because the LPL didn’t win the World Championship until the S8 season, a large influx of new viewers during that ti period began to asure a player’s quality solely by their World Championship titles, marking the beginning of the “what championships do you have” era. If the sa standard were applied to the NBA back then, Karl could indeed be considered an underachiever.

When soone is deed useless for too long, they beco prone to wild thoughts and problematic ideologies, leading to irresponsible talk.

Karl envied Rivers’s good fortune and was jealous of his rapid rise to a prominent position. He refused to believe it was because Rivers was a so-called natural coach; he needed to find a reason for himself, and he quickly did.

Karl publicly stated that Rivers was favored because of his skin color and believed that more black coaches would receive similar treatnt in the future.

Naturally, his comnts were questioned for racist undertones, and Karl eventually apologized. Since then, he didn’t have much to do with Rivers.

The arrival of Fei marked the ascent of Karl’s career. He is now a four-ti champion coach, and there are very few in NBA history who have won more championships than him. With his enhanced status, Karl wouldn’t continue to waste ti on Rivers.

But that may not be the case for Rivers.

The offender often forgets, but the victim always rembers.

Rivers rembered the humiliation Karl had caused him; he always saw Karl as his arch-nesis, even if Karl found such a notion perplexing. But that’s how Rivers felt.

This hostility was clearly reflected in Rivers’s halfti interview.

When the reporter asked Rivers if the Celtics were caught off guard by Fei’s explosion, Rivers partly agreed: “I really didn’t expect Frye to score 33 points by halfti; this is rare, but we can cope.”

“Coach Karl ntioned they would continue to exploit Frye’s individual matchup advantage. What do you think?”

“I think that’s Karl’s way to success, and we are different,” Rivers said. “We don’t have a best player like Frye, but we have a group of guys who want to win the ga, just wait and see.”

Karl’s success was because of Fei, while the Celtics’ success at this stage was because his players wanted to win.

The subtext of this statent is, without Fei, Karl is nothing. And Rivers’s own success wasn’t because he had the Big Three, but because he made his team “want to win.”

At the North Shore Garden, fans were busy making purchases during the halfti break.

“`

So wanted beer and cooked snacks to accompany it, while others craved greasy fast food. The scene was a ss, and by the end of the ga, the sacred ground of Boston basketball fans would be reduced to a landfill.

Danny Ainge was already accustod to such occurrences.

Compared to the Old Boston Garden where he had once played, the North Shore Garden was practically heaven.

Watching the superteam he had assembled being battered by the world’s number one player, fighting alone, it was hard for Ainge not to think of the past.

He was a participant in Jordan’s so-called “God wears no. 23” night.

In his mind, Yu Fei now was like Jordan back then: lacking a competitive team, but the first half of the ga served as another wake-up call for Ainge.

The current Celtics were by no ans as invincible as the 1986 Celtics.

“But, one person can’t win for sure.”

In the front row of the Garden, ESPN’s “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons excitedly said to his friend House, “When I say win, I don’t an win or lose a single night, but win or lose a season. You can’t tell Frye could replicate his performance tonight in every ga of a series!”

House was a die-hard friend of Simmons’, who had worked as a bartender for a while before becoming famous as a “sports writer,” and it was under those circumstances he t House. Unlike Simmons, House was a pure Yu’s supporter.

“Well, that’s not necessarily true, Bill,” House replied. “Before Frye, could you believe soone would average a triple-double over a modern basketball season? Before Frye, could you believe soone could score 70 points over LeBron’s head? He’s a man cursed by the no. 23, yet he led the Bucks to four championships in five years under that curse. I think he’s the son of destiny, he can do anything!”

Even during a Celtics’ ho ga, Yu Fei was still the biggest topic at the scene.

As the center of attention, Yu Fei told his teammates in the locker room, “I’m feeling good tonight; I’ll keep attacking in the second half.”

Roy asked, “What if they double-team you like in the second quarter?”

Yu Fei replied, “I’ll pass the damn ball, then you damn well better make the shot!”

Everyone burst into laughter.

Then, Durant, with a solemn expression, apologized to his teammates, “Sorry, I didn’t play well tonight; I’ll make up for those mistakes in the second half.”

Whenever good guy Durant showed up, everyone liked him.

“How are you going to make up for the mistakes? With your ssy shooting?” Yu Fei asked.

Durant didn’t know what Yu Fei ant by “ssy shooting,” and that was precisely the key to his transition from NCAA to NBA. Because of the different levels of the league, the difficulty of offense was also different. In the NCAA, Durant’s talent could solve a lot of problems, but in the NBA, the interference he faced was much stronger, and those shots that could be easily made in the NCAA were hard to nail down in the NBA.

The simplest example would be if a 2K novice tried to control the peak Jordan; the result might be worse than Jordan Poole’s. It’s a matter of choice and cognition. If one can’t properly recognize their own characteristics, even Yu Fei would play like a cancer on the court.

In the second half, Yu Fei’s offensive onslaught did not diminish.

However, the Celtics had already established the right cognition.

Even if Yu Fei single-handedly defeated each one of them with unlimited one-on-ones, it was still better than double-teaming him and allowing him to assist his teammates in making all kinds of opportunity shots.

The forr was Yu Fei fighting four opponents alone; the latter was one leading four.

Pierce continued to suffer.

Being dominated in the first half was bad enough, but in the second half, Fei treated him as nothing more than a test subject for low-post offense.

Against Pierce, Fei tried post-up hook shots, step-back jumpers, and various combinations of footwork.

To Pierce’s despair, the sa Big Fei ntioned in the scouting reports as liking the low post but not being efficient, played him like he was holding all the aces.

The montum in offense and defense is a zero-sum ga, and the more Pierce was toyed with in defense, the more anxious he beca on offense.

He wanted to respond to Fei, but his mind was unsettled.

Even with excellent fakes and offensive skills, his final shots were affected by his mindset, and his shooting percentage was way below average.

“Why aren’t you barking anymore, Paul?”

With five minutes left before the end of the fourth quarter, Fei caught the ball with one hand and looked at Pierce mockingly.

Fei had already scored 48 points, more than half of which he scored over Pierce.

Pierce had no excuses and could only focus on defending.

Then Fei dribbled the ball between his legs backhand, combined with a spin, a set of movents with full aesthetic points, surprising the Garden fans, and then shot over Pierce’s head.

“Swish!”

That was his 50th point of the night.

“Paul Pierce can’t stop Frye, he just can’t!”

The Celtics had realized by the third quarter that Pierce wouldn’t get the better of Fei that night, so they concentrated their forces on pounding the ball inside.

Just as Fei had dominated Pierce, Garnett did the sa to Kwa Brown and Rashard Lewis.

However, even at their peak, the scoring efficiency of the big n inside couldn’t compare with that of an outside player.

Garnett would push an inch inside, but Fei was a mile higher outside.

The already leading Supersonics, with Fei’s aggressive offense, slowly expanded their lead.

It was 8 points at the end of the first half, 11 points by the end of the third quarter, and now it was 14 points.

With five minutes left in the ga, a 14-point gap was quite big.

Now was the ti for strength, and the Celtics needed stability in their inside offense.

But Garnett’s tendency to take jump shots rather than fight inside at crucial monts dood him not to be a superstar who provided a sense of security when storming the bastion.

Faced with Brown on five fouls, Garnett made another post-up turnaround jumper.

“Bang!”

Brown grabbed the defensive rebound and passed the ball directly to Fei.

The Celtics’ defenders, intimidated by Fei’s fearso offensive threat, unspokenly closed in on him, wanting to surprise him with a double-team.

“You think you can stop like this?”

Fei scoffed and suddenly threw the ball to the left.

Kevin Durant followed up to the frontcourt; he didn’t know Fei would pass, he just instinctively kept up.

When the defense’s attention was drawn away by Fei, he didn’t expect Fei to pass either.

But he was still prepared to catch and shoot.

He was a born scorer.

Fei’s unexpected pass was caught by Durant, who was given a sea of open space by the Celtics, and he rembered what he had said in the locker room.

He would make up for his first-half mistakes.

“How do you make up for mistakes? With your ssed-up shooting?”

The cutting taunt from Fei echoed in Durant’s mind.

Yes, he was going to use his ssed-up shooting to correct his errors.

“From beyond the left three-point line, Kevin Durant’s three-pointer~~~~~” Tom Heinsohn’s voice sounded as if he was about to have a heart attack, “he scores! The kid scores! We can’t give him space, we can’t give him so much space…!!!”

Heinsohn spoke for the fans, but it was too late to change anything.

Durant hit the dagger three-pointer, extending the Supersonics’ lead to 17 points with only four and a half minutes left in the ga.

The Celtics requested a tiout.

Durant exhaled as if a great burden had been lifted. This wasn’t a ga-winner, not even a key shot that changed the montum, it was just like hamring the final nail into the Celtics’ coffin for the night. Even if not him, soone else would have done it. But it ant sothing different coming from him.

Had the first-half criminal truly redeed himself in the second half?

Fei walked over.

Durant wanted to know what Fei thought of it, he even hoped to hear so praise from him, but how could he be so presumptuous? It was a chance created by Fei drawing the defense of three players; making the shot was expected, miss it and go die.

“Good shot,” Fei said indifferently, “keep it up.”

That was enough, Durant asked for nothing more.

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