noveldrama
Chapter 772 772 508 LeBron Be Like Frye_3
Chapter 772 772 508 LeBron Be Like Frye_3
?Chapter 772: Chapter 508 LeBron, Be Like Frye_3 Chapter 772: Chapter 508 LeBron, Be Like Frye_3 Eight minutes into the game, the SuperSonics were caught in a scoring drought, and even though the mid-range-focused Lakers weren’t highly efficient, they could still score. The SuperSonics, on the other hand, became disorganized under the heavy double-teaming of Fei.
At this point, they were trailing by 7 points.
Fei finally couldn’t resist saying loudly to Coach Lu, “Stop the game!”
Coach Lu reacted, quickly running to call a timeout.
19 to 12
After eight and a half minutes of intense play, the SuperSonics were down by 7 points against the Lakers.
Coach Lu held the tactical board, exchanging glances with his assistant, but they had a stalemate.
Their problem was simple, the Lakers were aggressively double-teaming Fei, but once he passed the ball, they couldn’t capitalize on the open spots, because the others were also rotating, leaving Kwame Brown, who posed no offensive threat outside the three-second zone, open.
“Let Jermaine replace Kwame,”
Adrian Dantley had just started to suggest, but then he heard Fei say, “No, I’ll play the power forward, bring Shaun Livingston up.”
Brown still had to leave the court, but with Fei switching to power forward to match up against Artest, Livingston took over point guard duties.
Previously, everything had centered around Fei as the core player, but now with Fei moving to power forward and Livingston handling the ball, Coach Lu was somewhat uneasy.
“Will it work?”
He was asking both Fei and the other assistants.
“It will,” Fei said, “as long as I get the ball in the low post, their double-teaming won’t be effective.”
Coach Lu would soon understand what that meant.
“SuperSonics substitute Kwame Brown for Shaun Livingston, wait, Fei is playing power forward?”
ESPN’s Mike Breen looked at Jeff Van Gundy, “Jeff, what’s the intention behind the SuperSonics’ move?”
“The Lakers have been making a lot of early double-teams tonight. This can reduce Fei’s effective ball-handling time and use their rotation defense speed to give the offensively weak SuperSonics players open spots. But, if Fei has the ball at the power forward position,” Van Gundy said mysteriously, “premature double-teaming may not work anymore.”
Chris Bosh pulled out, giving the inside line to Fei.
Fei fiercely fought for position, even someone as tough as Artest couldn’t stop Fei from getting his spot tonight.
Inside the three-second area, Fei received the ball.
The Lakers’ double-team hadn’t positioned yet, and Fei had already turned and jumped up, releasing his shot.
This was the result of establishing a deep position; with a physical advantage, no extra movements were needed—just a direct attack.
“Swish!”
“What’s your defense doing?” Fei teased Artest, “Caught LeBron’s bug?”
Artest angrily said, “You just wait and see!””
The frustrated Artest tried to counter, but was defended by Fei.
Afterwards, the Lakers attempted to double-team Fei in the low post like before, but the difficulty with low post double-teams is that they can’t position in advance. They had to wait for Fei to receive the ball, and before that, they had to stay close to their man, quickly breaking away to double-team after Fei got the ball.
However, once Fei received the ball, even though double-teamers converged from all sides, on the court for the Lakers, only Big Z was taller than him, and no one could block his vision.
In the crowd, Fei found Durant.
Having observed the situation for a while, Durant suddenly exploded with a dunk, relieving Yu Fei of the defensive pressure on him.
From that point on, the game began to slip out of the Lakers’ control.
They were eager to utterly defeat the SuperSonics.
They wanted to prove that their players and coaching staff were better than those of the SuperSonics.
Coach Lu indeed wasn’t on par with Jackson, but he was like Yu Fei’s limbs, easily commanded. In this respect, the players and coaching staff of the SuperSonics were united in purpose, whereas the Lakers still had various calculations amidst formidable opponents.
James remained rational, Kobe hadn’t yet unleashed himself fully. Jackson issued various commands. Halfway through the quarter, the advantage that had been built was destroyed by what seemed to be an ordinary strategy of letting Yu Fei play in the fourth position from the SuperSonics.
In the fourth position, Yu Fei was still the primary ball handler.
After Durant joined the fray, his offense had an immediate impact on the game.
By the end of the quarter, the SuperSonics had tied the score. Entering the second quarter, the Lakers substituted Kobe for a rest, letting LeBron continue with Pau Gasol and four other shooters.
The SuperSonics rested Yu Fei, with Durant and Chris Bosh leading the second string.
Without Yu Fei, the SuperSonics’ second string lacked a stable system, relying on star players to drive the team, whereas the Lakers could play a genuine one-star, four-shooter setup.
The tense sense of mutual confrontation from the first quarter disappeared and was replaced by probing.
Both sides wanted to test the strength of each other’s second units in the Western Finals.
The results of the tests would determine the rotation sequence and the number of players for later in the game.
What troubled the Lakers was that the SuperSonics were fixated on Pau Gasol, decisively leaving him open, and partnered with Chris Bosh, DeAndre Jordan’s capability of defending the basket was much stronger than Brown’s. Once he positioned himself under the basket, assaulting the paint area again became a challenge for James.
The game was back to the starting point, and James needed to make Pau Gasol hit three-pointers.
But that was a false proposition, Pau could hit threes, but not a large volume of them.
LeBron’s second-unit offense was unsuccessful, the one-star, four-shooter strategy didn’t work out, instead, it was overtaken by the SuperSonics led by Durant and Bosh.
Jackson called another timeout.
“LeBron, do you want individual victory, or team victory?” Jackson’s deep voice hit him hard, “If you want the team’s victory, pass the ball to Mark, trust your teammates. Greatness isn’t just one style, you can absolutely be like Frye!”
To revise: The greatest contradiction in James was his desire to control everything while not wanting to be seen as a domineering ruler. He wanted to be omnipotent, but felt a moral burden about being seen as a ball hog. This conflicted mentality stemmed from childhood coaches who taught him that people like those who pass the ball on the court.
The deepest layer of this contradiction was his unwillingness to be viewed as selfish.
Thus, when Phil Jackson raised the banner of team unity and asked him to compromise for the current situation by passing to Pau, allowing the Spaniard to take control, he had already lost.
The Zen Master couldn’t solve Pau’s problem of producing from the outside, but he could solve the problem of LeBron having too much ball control.
It was simple, give the ball control to Pau, let him be the pivot, while you, LeBron James, couldn’t you just post up Bosh or Durant like Frye?
How pleasing does that sound?
In that moment, James seemed to realize the true nature of Frye Hell.
No matter how many times he expressed that he didn’t want to be Frye, no matter how he proved that he only wanted to be his unique self, no matter what he said or did or how he justified his actions, he could never escape the devil’s barrier that Yu Fei set for all the contemporaneous pursuers.
LeBron, be like Frye.
PS: Wishing all the high school seniors good luck in their college entrance exams.