Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Chapter 813 813 I love you

?Chapter 813: I love you Chapter 813: I love you That’s for sure, Yu Fei and Durant and other SuperSonics stars had a much easier time getting fouled compared to Kobe and James.

So, the next day after the game ended, they sent a compilation of controversial officiating decisions to the League.

The Lakers believed that the referees had adopted double standards in handling fouls on shots for both sides.

Once the issue was out, the Lakers were even more passive in the media.

“This absolutely makes no sense,” Bill Simmons, a Celtics fan who strongly dislikes the Lakers, openly sided with the SuperSonics, “Although both teams like to shoot threes, the Lakers are on another level; their average shot attempts per game are 10 more than the SuperSonics. Under these circumstances, how can you expect to get more free throws on the road than the home team?”

This is a classic argument, how can a shooting team expect to get fouls?

Media figures like Simmons siding with the SuperSonics were just the beginning, followed by regional media that disliked the Lakers team all stepping into the fray.

As a historical victim of a notorious refereeing incident, the local media in Sacramento wrote after the event: “We support the right of all sports to pursue fair officiating, but that does not include the Los Angeles Lakers. They are the spokespersons for the dark side of NBA history, and you can’t find a team that benefits more from officiating at this level of competition than them. The SuperSonics should be grateful that they have Seattle’s big market behind them, and the whole State of Washington watching them. This is why the Lakers won’t be able to pull off what they did in 2002 in Seattle.”

The bigger the market rivalry, the more intense the external disputes become.

Initially, public opinion overwhelmingly drowned out the Lakers, but later, media from California started to rebound from the bottom.

“Kevin Durant can wrap his hands around Kobe, creating fouls, but LeBron James, facing multiple SuperSonics attacking him physically, still doesn’t get any calls. Are you telling me this is because the Lakers shoot too often?” producer Adam Carolla, born in Philadelphia but settled in Los Angeles, launched a counterattack for the Lakers on Twitter.

“The Los Angeles Times” even recreated those biased situations against the Lakers in text as if it were a basketball commentary.

“The ghost of Tim Donaghy is wandering the court; such is the reality of Key Arena.”

“Los Angeles Daily News” described how unfair the officiating in Game 3 was with sharp criticism.

Following that, Fei’s assistant Lin Kaiwen quoted this news on Twitter.

“So far in the series, we have had 6 more free throws per game than the Lakers, but we make 11 fewer three-point attempts per game,” Lin Kaiwen wrote, “I don’t deny the existence of home-court advantage; I think it’s not worth making a big fuss over. Why do Lakers fans like to complain about the referees? I suppose it is the mindset brought by the long-term ‘privilege’. In the first round and the semifinals, the Lakers had 14 more three-point shots per game than their opponents but still got 9 more free throws per game; maybe that’s the scale you’re used to, and you need that advantage, so keep complaining, the world doesn’t revolve around you!”

Ever since Lin Kaiwen replaced Anthony Lawson as Fei’s full-time assistant a few years ago, he has seemed, to outsiders, like Fei’s alter ego.

All matters that required Fei’s personal opinion had to go through him.

And his statements on social media were often seen as Fei’s thoughts.

This silent war escalated.

From the internet to real life, the supporters of the SuperSonics and the Lakers were clearly divided.

On the game day of Western Conference Finals Game 4, SuperSonics fans clashed with Lakers fans in Seattle.

The cause was that SuperSonics fans provoked Lakers fans wearing team jerseys, but the other side was also hot-tempered; after verbally sparring briefly, the confrontation escalated into a physical altercation.

This atmosphere of mutual hatred began affecting the players.

For the Lakers, the SuperSonics were like another Celtics.

Fittingly, the SuperSonics’ uniforms were also mainly green.

All the green teams seemed indistinguishable.

Moreover, Yu Fei himself was a nemesis of the Lakers team.

Whether it was leading the similarly green-uniformed Bucks to defeat a discordant Lakers in the 2004 Finals or transferring to the SuperSonics and sending the Lakers home from the playoffs year after year ever since.

Kobe wanted to rejuvenate the Lakers, to prove he could succeed without Shaquille O’Neal, but Yu Fei was his obstacle.

Fortunately, O’Neal’s attempts to chase a fourth championship after leaving Kobe were also thwarted by Fei.

In people’s eyes, the once-dominant OK was like Napoleon and Talleyrand of the NBA.

Wherever Fei went, he always wore the green jersey, fighting for the green team.

This significantly provoked the inherited PTSD of Lakers fans against green teams.

And this year, the narrative of “sole empire vs. evil empire” escalated the antagonism between the two factions to a critical threshold.

The series of controversies after Game 3 catalyzed the hostility of their mutual hatred.

The SuperSonics’ game against the Lakers was still scheduled for that same afternoon.

When the Lakers team bus arrived at the venue, countless fans outside the stadium chanted insulting slogans.

These hateful emotions stirred Kobe’s fighting spirit.

As a child, Kobe always wanted to be Magic Johnson, as his grandfather would always send him recordings of Showtime Lakers games.

Back then, Kobe dreamed of representing the Lakers at the Great Western Forum, with just a few seconds left on the clock, counting down in his mind, three, two, one, he made The Shot, bathed in the cheers of the crowd.