Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

The Eastern Conference Finals opponent was the Brooklyn Nets, which was absolutely great news for Yu Fei and the Bucks.

Since the start of the playoffs, the media had been saying that these two teams were the Eastern Conference's kings, big and small.

The Bucks were the clear big king, and the Nets had established themselves as the small king with an 8-1 record.

But it's like Meng Huo could never beat Zhuge Liang no matter what, the small king could never beat the big king.

Compared to the Nets, who were swept by the Bucks during the regular season, their roster hadn't changed; it was just Jason Kidd suddenly entering MVP mode, mercilessly sweeping the Boston Celtics in the first round, and even sending off the second-seeded Detroit Pistons in four straight games, clearly outplaying Chauncey Billups, who was considered the Eastern Conference's second-best point guard.

Marc Stein of ESPN wrote on the night the Nets swept the Pistons, "Compared to last year, the Nets' mentality has clearly improved a lot. Last year in the Finals, they were like tourists wearing black socks, white shoes, and Bermuda shorts standing on the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street in Times Square, crushed by a purple and gold cleaning truck. Now they've come back for revenge, and the only thing standing in their way is the Milwaukee Bucks, the top seed in the Eastern Conference."

Yu Fei's presence had already caused a feud with the Bucks during the regular season.

Discover hidden content at empire

However, due to the Bucks' sweeping performance and Yu Fei's continuous evolution, the old grudges seemed to have been settled, and neither side had any extreme comments before the start of the Eastern Conference Finals.

It was the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, Byron Scott, who said that Kidd was his MVP, and if it wasn't Kidd, he would vote for Duncan.

In other words, as the hot favorite for the MVP, Yu Fei wasn't even in Scott's top two for MVP.

Yu Fei believed that Byron Scott's mistaken notion was entirely because he had been too lenient with the Nets during the regular season. If he had played against the Nets like he did against the Wizards (averaging 50 points in three games), he believed Scott would definitely see him as the first choice for MVP.

No worries, the MVP announcement was still a few days away, and he could make Scott reestablish his recognition of him.

Before the game started, Yu Fei and Ray Allen came to midcourt to warmly "greet" Kidd and Kenyon Martin.

"You've been rather quiet lately, I'm not used to it," Yu Fei said to Martin, "I still prefer to hear you say that I'm overrated."

Martin, having been severely schooled by Yu Fei, first reacted defensively, with the infamous "He's overrated" incident.

Then, when the Bucks swept the Nets in the regular season, with each game being a blowout win, no matter how tough Martin acted, he couldn't refute the fact that the Nets couldn't beat the Bucks.

Therefore, not to be seen as a weakling who only talks big, he greatly downplayed the matter.

But how could Yu Fei play by his rules? The more you want to downplay it, the more he wants to make a big deal of it.

This is the psychological trauma Kenyon Martin left after boasting of his team's strength and humiliating the Wizards in the first round of Yu Fei's rookie season.

Martin would probably need the rest of his career to make amends for that.

Moreover, Yu Fei is a man of principles; he knew that as time passed, many wouldn't know what Martin had done to him, so if he were to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in the future, he would still tell the story of how Kenyon Martin bullied others and called him overrated to the fans of that time.

As a player who had been forgotten by the world before Yu Fei's crossover, Yu Fei hoped that if people in the future remember Martin, they would remember him as a player without sportsmanship, verbal decency, or foresight.

In this regard, Martin might have to thank Yu Fei.

He might find it hard to be remembered fondly, but he has the chance to be infamous for eternity basking in the infamy of The Chosen One.

At this point, Martin didn't dare make any tough statements, simply saying fiercely like a tough guy, "When the series is over, we'll see who was overrated!"

He now knew to leave a line in all matters, but it was too late.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Yu Fei walked back with a smile.

Ray Allen asked, "Do you hate him that much?"

"Just like you hate AI, MJ, Kobe, George..." Yu Fei replied.

"I don't hate MJ," Ray Allen said.

"I don't hate him," Yu Fei paused, "but I'm really interested in making him hate me forever."

Why? Ray Allen could never understand why Yu Fei was so arrogant.

Even if there were conflicts, Yu Fei should have settled his scores by now and returned to normal.

But Yu Fei's approach was to keep adding new wounds to the other party after getting revenge. Even if he had no scores to settle, he could still make the other party experience the pain of having scores they couldn't settle.

He enjoyed this very much.

After the game started, the Nets' defensive intensity did indeed increase from the regular season; their zone defense still managed to trouble Yu Fei's penetration.

However, Yu Fei had already proven during the regular season that as long as his shooters remained accurate, the zone defense couldn't stop him.

Even if his teammates were off-target, Yu Fei could still prove to the Nets the most obvious area in which he had improved since his rookie season: the accuracy of his jump shot near the foul line.

In his rookie season, Yu Fei did not have a steady jump shot; he could be on for an entire game or off, with more times hovering between being accurate and inaccurate.

This instability was more evident against the Nets in the first round of playoffs.

During the off-season, Yu Fei practiced shooting, and during the Bucks' season, he took a substantial amount of jump shots in every game while serving as the primary ball-handler.