Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Chapter 796 796 515 Kevin Durant Cant but Kobe

?Chapter 796: Chapter 515: Kevin Durant Can’t, but Kobe Durant Can_2 Chapter 796: Chapter 515: Kevin Durant Can’t, but Kobe Durant Can_2 This crossed Yu Fei’s bottom line. He considered the Twilight guy a friend, yet his girlfriend wanted to sleep with him? Putting that aside, Twilight Girl wasn’t very appealing to Yu Fei either. She was like the Hollywood version of Jiuwei Meiyi: nothing going for her except her looks, and the latter was good for nothing except her body.

Yu Fei wasn’t focused on looks, so he couldn’t be tempted by Twilight Girl.

With everyone egging him on like this, he felt quite helpless.

“Frye,” Durant joked with Yu Fei for once,”would you choose Twilight Girl or Scarlett?”

Yu Fei countered, “Are you going to be ’01 Kobe or ’03 Kobe tonight?”

“I want to be myself,” Durant stubbornly said.

“Don’t be yourself,” Yu Fei mocked, “I’ve had enough of that last game.”

Durant suddenly found the right use for “Kobe”: “Last game wasn’t me, it was ’03 Kobe!”

“The Kobe who took 47 shots to make 17?”

“Exactly!”

Yu Fei said, “I hope I don’t see the 2001 Finals version of Kobe tonight.”

Warm-ups were over.

Both team coaches were giving instructions to their starting players.

“This is our home court!” Coach Lu shouted, “Bring the energy! Play defense! We need to strike first!”

“No problem, this is our turf, just as it should be.” Yu Fei said before going on the court, as if assigning homework, “I’m scoring 50 tonight. KD will take 25, you guys just pick up another 35, and then we’ll have 110. Keep the Lakers below 100, and we’ll flip their second loss in Los Angeles.”

Hughes asked, “Isn’t 50 points a bit extravagant? That’s the Lakers.”

“You know what?” Yu Fei said, “I once scored 71 in a playoff game.”

Unfortunately, Hughes knew.

He nodded and said, “Mm, you scored 71 over LeBron’s head that night. I was there too.”

“So, any doubts now?”

“None.”

Both starting line-ups took the court.

SuperSonics stirred some discussion by changing two of their starting players.

ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy pointed out sharply, “This signifies the SuperSonics’ decision to shift their focus toward defense.”

However, Mark Jackson had a different opinion.

He believed that the emphasis of the SuperSonics was still on offense, since they had always been an offense-driven team.

The game started, DeAndre Jordan won the tip-off, Yu Fei advanced the ball quickly, and passed it to Durant who was following.

Durant reacted quickly, decisively deciding to shoot a three.

The shot was meant to catch the Lakers off guard, but it missed.

Since Durant shot quickly before the opponents got into position, their team was able to transition back fast. Although it didn’t go in, it also didn’t give the Lakers a chance to fast break.

James noticed that the SuperSonics had started to assign Yu Fei to guard him.

What did this mean?

The SuperSonics clearly understood that he was the core player of the Lakers.

Were they trying to make Mark relay a message to Kobe? To pretend that he was just a sidekick to Kobe?

Such tactics could only fool the ignorant.

With fighting spirit, James burst forward, intending to breeze past Yu Fei, but to his surprise, the opponent blatantly used his hands to block his way, completely disregarding the rules against hand checking.

Even for a historical caliber penetrator like James, it was impossible to break through freely when the opponent blatantly used their arms to impede his speed.

This move by Yu Fei totally caught James off guard.

Forced to pass, James ended up throwing the ball out of bounds.

“What are you doing?!” James turned to the head referee Scott Foster, flailing his arms and shouting, “He’s fouling! He’s blocking using illegal actions, didn’t you fucking see that?!”

Foster was famously known for never giving face to star players.

To him, James’s complaints sounded like the buzzing of a fly, and he said impatiently, “Keep up this trash talk, and even you will get a T!”

Upon hearing this, James cussed as he threw up his hands in frustration.

After that, Yu Fei didn’t dribble up but let Hughes bring the ball up the court.

James wanted to give Yu Fei a taste of his own medicine, but Yu Fei didn’t give him the chance. Arriving up front, he directly moved to the right post, backed into James, spread his arms, and shouted, “Larry, I’m open, pass the ball!”

How loud was Yu Fei’s voice?

Even the audience watching on TV could hear the word “pass” if they turned up the volume.

As for the audience in the front rows, they clearly heard what he said.

Unmarked?

The strongest small forward in the league was right behind him, and he claimed he was unguarded?

Hughes felt as if worlds apart. Years ago, he was LeBron’s wingman, tasked with guarding Yu Fei. Back then, Yu Fei was considered LeBron’s senior, and nobody could have anticipated how their relationship would deteriorate to this extent.

Yet, even though LeBron had grown into one of the top three players in the league, Yu Fei still didn’t respect him.

Hughes passed the ball.

When Yu Fei caught it, LeBron’s low post defense seemed very mediocre. He didn’t make it difficult for Yu Fei to receive the ball, nor did he apply pressure after the catch.

LeBron didn’t even lower his stance, seemingly very confident in his physical strength and power.

But Yu Fei, without any extra movement, turned and went for a jump shot with a subtle fadeaway.

“Swish!”

Yu Fei provocatively looked towards the Lakers coaching staff, his eyes fixed on the Zen Master, “Coach Jackson, why don’t you have someone guard me?”

“Don’t get too cocky!” Artest jumped up and yelled, “You can’t make every shot!”