Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Yu Fei said, "I would rate him at 95 points because he still had two unnecessary mistakes."

At that time, the outside world realized that Yu Fei was really strict with Durant.

After playing a good game, Durant exuded the youthful vigor of a young man.

He proudly spoke about his own game and, regarding the 95 points Yu Fei had given him, he said, "I would give myself 90 points."

Then, everyone would think that it wasn't that Yu Fei had high demands on him, but that he had high demands on himself to begin with.

After undergoing data shrinkage and injuries at the start of the season, Chris Bosh fully integrated into the Supersonics' tactical system with the arrival of the new year.

Because the team no longer required him to strictly play outside.

He could shoot threes, but hadn't fully transformed into a space-playing big man. He still maintained his core capabilities from his Raptors period, only that he nearly regressed at the start of the season.

In some ways, Bosh was the biggest beneficiary of Roy's injury.

Originally, the Supersonics did not need Bosh to exert core strength, but with Roy injured and the dual-core outside transformed into a single, and with Yu Fei's transformation, he no longer demanded that all his inside players become tools like Kwame Brown.

This style that didn't exploit teammates' playing space was heralded by Karl as the ultimate form of a ball-handling core.

And the dividends of Yu Fei's successful transformation, at a time of Roy's injury, were reaped by Bosh.

Just looking at the data after the new year, Bosh's averages reached 22 points and 10 rebounds, comparable to his time with the Raptors, while Yu Fei's average points dropped gradually from 30 points to 28, and, according to his current scoring trend, it could potentially decrease to around 26.

Durant, who should have massively benefited from Roy's injury, though he played his dream position of small forward, did not see an increase in his ball-handling rights or tactical status. Instead, there were more restrictions on what he could do with the ball.

Yu Fei's demands on him intensified.

Thus, most of the time, Durant was struggling and in pain.

He was not Yu Fei.

He couldn't do at the small forward what Yu Fei could; he had his own qualities. His greatest quality was offense, and Yu Fei's control over the ball was much stronger than Roy's, imposing much greater restrictions than when Roy was around.

But Durant really had no right to complain.

Because Yu Fei's restrictions were not to suppress him but, strictly speaking, to make him better.

The evidence was that after Durant started playing small forward, his average assists increased from 2 to 4, even though his turnovers also increased, which precisely showed he had more opportunities to control the ball than before.

Seeing this situation, Nike was naturally unsettled.

When Durant refused a pre-game interview claiming he was "afraid of being scolded by Yu Fei," Nike began to hype up the narrative of Yu Fei bullying and oppressing his teammates for his own gain.

However, after stirring this up for a while, they found that Yu Fei's average shooting attempts not only hadn't increased but showed a slow declining trend.

On the other hand, Chris Bosh's average shooting attempts gradually increased to 15 shots per game.

So, was it Bosh, who came to join the team, that suppressed Durant in the end?

Such an inverted conclusion could only invite ridicule, and the narrative of Yu Fei suppressing Durant fizzled.

But the rumors about Yu Fei's strict leadership and not allowing anyone to play outside the system grew louder.

Behind the scenes, a force urgently needed to tear a breach in Yu Fei's comprehensive and multifaceted defense; only then could they break the sanctified image built around the singular empire of Yu Fei.

ESPN's senior writer Charley Rosen wrote after Yu Fei scored Durant at 95, "Frye Yu is becoming the modern Oscar Robertson. What matters is not your performance, but whether you played according to his plan. Anything outside the plan is not allowed."

Inside the Supersonics' locker room, the atmosphere was completely different.

Barely anyone talked about the scoring, but many were chatting about Twitter.

Kwame Brown recently found that a Twitter account named "quiresultan" was unusually active.

Whenever Brown posted a self-promoting tweet, this account would quickly come to comment, and often, the content was demeaning.

"I've seen this account too," Little O said. "He's quite famous in topics related to the NBA."

"This guy even attacks Frye, whose fan could he be?"

"Seems like a LeBron fan," Little O said.

Hearing this, Brown said, "That makes sense, only that person's fans would act this way."

Durant, sensitive, listened as his teammates discussed his online persona, feeling secretly pleased.

He could freely insult others off-screen, and they wouldn't know it was him, the only thing they could do was block him.

So what? If he could have one avatar, he could have two or three.

Such unreserved venting of his negative emotions was therapeutic for Durant, his pressure was too great.

After Roy's injury, Yu Fei seemed to lose certain restrictions, imposing his will on him without reservation.

It was like a father demanding his son to excel, but it was just his vanity and presumption. He felt he could mold a distinct Durant, but Durant only wanted to become the Durant he wanted to be.

Roy could ease that pressure, and Durant could even take his frustrations out on Roy on the court, but with Roy absent, he was just a passive punching bag.

It was like a spring; the more Yu Fei pressed, the flatter he got, but he didn't dare to retaliate with the same force. The internet became a tool to rebound his negative emotions.