Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

"Sprewell, you take the ball up," Yu Fei seemed to yield the ball handling, but in fact, he left the rough work of dribbling past the half-court line to The Madman.

If there was any rookie who had left a deep impression on Sprewell last season, it was undoubtedly Yu Fei.

He wouldn't forget how in last season's opener, Yu Fei, playing his first game, dared to provoke him and made a crucial put-back basket at the last moment to secure the victory for the Wizards.

Sprewell still couldn't believe that Jordan would trade Yu Fei.

With such a visibly promising future, what was Jordan thinking?

"I'm okay," Sprewell said.

"If you're okay, that's good," Yu Fei said over his shoulder as if it were a matter of course.

For some reason, Sprewell felt that Yu Fei had an air of arrogance about him.

As if he were the leader of this team.

No matter how high his potential, a second-year player does not lead a team.

As Sprewell thought this, Tim Duncan's face flashed through his mind.

Yu Fei ran to the frontcourt, facing off against Anthony Mason, who was of a completely different size from him.

"Yo, sophomore, why did MJ let you go?" Mason fancied himself humorous.

Then Sprewell dribbled to the frontcourt and passed the ball to Yu Fei.

Yu Fei executed the kind of offense Karl wanted to see most.

No hesitation, no fakes, he directly dribbled to the right side, using his speed to shake Mason off and didn't hesitate to seize a shooting opportunity, decisively taking the shot.

"Swish!"

"Why would you ask me something like that?" With the silky feel of the ball leaving his hand, Yu Fei couldn't help but smile proudly, "Which number team is the Bucks in your life? Have you not been discarded enough times? What, you want me to share with you the feeling of being abandoned? You must be the master in that, right?"

Some people like to joke about others' dark histories, but once someone steps on their tail, they jump.

"Maybe I should teach you how to talk to a veteran!" Mason said angrily.

An enraged Mason had only one way to play the game, and that was to keep demanding the ball.

And no one on the Bucks dared challenge him when he was in such an uncontrollable state.

The ball was soon delivered into Mason's hands.

Yu Fei was the one guarding Mason.

Mason tried to use his body to bump Yu Fei away, "I'm going to f*** you up, you damn sophomore!"

He confidently dribbled forward, aiming to thoroughly push Yu Fei aside.

But even though Mason had some of the most developed muscles in NBA history, his weight was only 113 kilograms, while Yu Fei had beefed up to 106 kilograms during the offseason. Yu Fei just didn't have those bulging muscles, so it seemed like a huge difference.

And Mason's plan to simply push Yu Fei aside with his body was doomed to be wishful thinking.

Not only did Yu Fei withstand his impact, but he also slapped the ball away afterward and pushed forward, snatching the ball from his opponent.

"Foul! Foul!" Mason screamed uncontrollably at the referee, "F***ing foul!"

Before his complaint was over, Yu Fei had already dunked in the frontcourt.
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He jogged back as if looking at a stupid dog, "Stop barking, you don't really think a dumbass like you has any star privileges in the game, do you?"

Mason muttered an 'F'-word under his breath and slammed into Yu Fei.

Anticipating this, Yu Fei was only pushed back a step before he pushed back even harder.

In their terms, they were just jockeying for position.

This wasn't fighting.

But if anyone dared to box out like this in a real game, the referee would give them both a technical foul.

Ray Allen of the White Team was staring, dumbfounded.

For someone like him, a "black sesame" (black on the outside, white on the inside), Mason was someone he would never want to mess with in his life.

Long before Mason joined the team last year, his friends had warned him. Mason had a versatile skill set, but sometimes he was too obsessed with ball-handling; once he got the ball, the offense ended.

For George Karl, who hated players hogging the ball, Mason was the cockroach on the team, whom he had confronted last season.

But Mason, with the most terrifying expression Ray Allen had ever seen, roared at Karl, "Shut your beak, you fat pig!"

Mason completely changed the Bucks' players' views of George Karl.

Karl backed down in front of Mason.

He had tried to get the management to trade Mason, but the general manager Larry Harris, who was at odds with Karl, refused to do so, on what grounds? Mason was the Bucks' most important reinforcement during the last offseason, and trading him would mean that the management's work during the offseason was a total failure.

Larry Harris, who had taken over as general manager last summer, refused to take on that responsibility.

Of course, Karl thought this was Harris's revenge on him.

But none of that mattered anymore. What mattered was that Karl had backed down in front of Mason; he wasn't the tough guy, at least not the kind of tough guy he imagined himself to be. He could no longer make the players believe he was a tough guy, listen to his tough talk, play his brand of tough basketball. That was why the Bucks, predicted to be second in the Eastern Conference last season, ended up in the lottery zone.

Mason was the root cause, but the fatal blow was the bankruptcy of Karl's authority as head coach.

Because the coaching staff couldn't control him and didn't have the courage to bench him, and the management was unwilling to trade him, Mason became the Bucks' one and only privileged player.

He might even be the most privileged player in Bucks' history.

It was this guy who thought he was "the supreme being under the heavens" in the United States, yet in his second year in Milwaukee, he met his destined downfall, Sukuna.

Mason got the ball again, switched from facing the basket to backing down, and then encountered Fei's despicable "pull the chair" tactic, crashing into thin air, falling down, and losing the ball out of bounds.

"Coward! Coward! You don't dare to confront me head-on!" Mason yelled angrily, "You damn coward!"

"How can I confront you head-on when you're backing down, you imbecile who must've been raised on shit?"

Personal attacks are the lowest form of trash talk, but sometimes they are effective.

Especially when Mason had been consistently frustrated and couldn't vent his anger on Fei.

Losing his reason, Mason decided to press Fei for the entire court.

Fei, who hadn't planned on handling the ball, took the ball-handling role straight from Sprewell's hands.

Sprewell had no objection.

Because it was clear that Fei had become the protagonist of this stage, and he too wanted to see how things would unfold.

Fei dribbled the ball as if walking a dog, speeding up, slowing down, changing direction, continually shaking Mason off without accelerating past him.

He was like those internet streetball celebrities in the future who dribbled to tease dogs for sheer boredom.

Mason was shaken by Fei from the backcourt to the frontcourt.

It could be said that the nature of the scrimmage had changed.

The match up to this point was more like a one-on-one between Fei and Mason, rather than the five-on-five that the coaching staff wanted to see.

But, no one interrupted the progress of the game.

Fei became the complete antithesis of George Karl's basketball philosophy.

For a full 20 seconds, the ball was entirely in his hands.

Fei faked left and right, then suddenly exploded, completely disintegrating Mason's balance with a major crossover to the left, sending Mason sprawling to the floor.

After that, Fei charged to the basket, no one daring to guard him, and Dan Gadzuric simply stepped out of the way.

Fei dunked the ball ferociously.

Fei held onto the rim with one hand, veins bulging in his arm, giving the rim a hard yank.

Fei's body language and the power of the dunk clearly demonstrated his rage, yet as he passed by Mason, he scornfully smiled, "Is this the head-on confrontation you wanted? Heh."

"Did they... did they have any unpleasant encounters before?"

Dan Gadzuric didn't know what Fei's motive was for treating Mason like this in the first scrimmage.

"He shouldn't have brought up Michael," said Ratner, who knew the reason, "That's off-limits."