Chapter 546: Chapter 384 Durant’s Unique Disinterest

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“In the first half, we had only one tactic, which was to give the ball to Frye and have everyone else stand far away,” George Karl told an ABC reporter during halftime. “You have to admit it’s effective.”

The reporter asked, “Will you stick to this strategy in the second half?”

Of course, Karl wasn’t foolish enough to publicly reveal his strategy for the second half.

However, since the Supersonics’ tactic of focusing on Fei in the first half was nearly an open secret, digging a pitfall for the opponent here wasn’t out of the question.

“That depends on whether our opponents have other countermeasures,” Karl said. “If a pair of shoes fits well, you should keep wearing them, and it’s the same with basketball games.”

There was a past grudge between Doug Rivers and George Karl that hardly anyone talks about now.

Back when Rivers was young and became the head coach of the Orlando Magic, Karl and other established white head coaches weren’t too pleased.

Why? Because they had worked for over a decade to earn their positions as head coaches. What about Rivers? As soon as he retired, he was invited to be a commentator, and with his excellent eloquence, he was considered a naturally gifted coaching talent. Then, without any experience as an assistant coach, he became an NBA head coach.

In LOL, because the LPL didn’t win the World Championship until the S8 season, a large influx of new viewers during that time period began to measure a player’s quality solely by their World Championship titles, marking the beginning of the “what championships do you have” era. If the same standard were applied to the NBA back then, Karl could indeed be considered an underachiever.

When someone is deemed useless for too long, they become prone to wild thoughts and problematic ideologies, leading to irresponsible talk.

Karl envied Rivers’s good fortune and was jealous of his rapid rise to a prominent position. He refused to believe it was because Rivers was a so-called natural coach; he needed to find a reason for himself, and he quickly did.

Karl publicly stated that Rivers was favored because of his skin color and believed that more black coaches would receive similar treatment in the future.

Naturally, his comments were questioned for racist undertones, and Karl eventually apologized. Since then, he didn’t have much to do with Rivers.

The arrival of Fei marked the ascent of Karl’s career. He is now a four-time champion coach, and there are very few in NBA history who have won more championships than him. With his enhanced status, Karl wouldn’t continue to waste time on Rivers.

But that may not be the case for Rivers.

The offender often forgets, but the victim always remembers.

Rivers remembered the humiliation Karl had caused him; he always saw Karl as his arch-nemesis, even if Karl found such a notion perplexing. But that’s how Rivers felt.

This hostility was clearly reflected in Rivers’s halftime interview.

When the reporter asked Rivers if the Celtics were caught off guard by Fei’s explosion, Rivers partly agreed: “I really didn’t expect Frye to score 33 points by halftime; this is rare, but we can cope.”

“Coach Karl mentioned they would continue to exploit Frye’s individual matchup advantage. What do you think?”

“I think that’s Karl’s way to success, and we are different,” Rivers said. “We don’t have a best player like Frye, but we have a group of guys who want to win the game, just wait and see.”

Karl’s success was because of Fei, while the Celtics’ success at this stage was because his players wanted to win.

The subtext of this statement is, without Fei, Karl is nothing. And Rivers’s own success wasn’t because he had the Big Three, but because he made his team “want to win.”

At the North Shore Garden, fans were busy making purchases during the halftime break.

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Some wanted beer and cooked snacks to accompany it, while others craved greasy fast food. The scene was a mess, and by the end of the game, the sacred ground of Boston basketball fans would be reduced to a landfill.

Danny Ainge was already accustomed to such occurrences.

Compared to the Old Boston Garden where he had once played, the North Shore Garden was practically heaven.

Watching the superteam he had assembled being battered by the world’s number one player, fighting alone, it was hard for Ainge not to think of the past.

He was a participant in Jordan’s so-called “God wears no. 23” night.

In his mind, Yu Fei now was like Jordan back then: lacking a competitive team, but the first half of the game served as another wake-up call for Ainge.

The current Celtics were by no means as invincible as the 1986 Celtics.

“But, one person can’t win for sure.”

In the front row of the Garden, ESPN’s “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons excitedly said to his friend House, “When I say win, I don’t mean win or lose a single night, but win or lose a season. You can’t tell me Frye could replicate his performance tonight in every game of a series!”

House was a die-hard friend of Simmons’, who had worked as a bartender for a while before becoming famous as a “sports writer,” and it was under those circumstances he met House. Unlike Simmons, House was a pure Yu’s supporter.

“Well, that’s not necessarily true, Bill,” House replied. “Before Frye, could you believe someone would average a triple-double over a modern basketball season? Before Frye, could you believe someone could score 70 points over LeBron’s head? He’s a man cursed by the no. 23, yet he led the Bucks to four championships in five years under that curse. I think he’s the son of destiny, he can do anything!”

Even during a Celtics’ home game, Yu Fei was still the biggest topic at the scene.

As the center of attention, Yu Fei told his teammates in the locker room, “I’m feeling good tonight; I’ll keep attacking in the second half.”

Roy asked, “What if they double-team you like in the second quarter?”

Yu Fei replied, “I’ll pass the damn ball, then you damn well better make the shot!”

Everyone burst into laughter.

Then, Durant, with a solemn expression, apologized to his teammates, “Sorry, I didn’t play well tonight; I’ll make up for those mistakes in the second half.”

Whenever good guy Durant showed up, everyone liked him.

“How are you going to make up for the mistakes? With your messy shooting?” Yu Fei asked.

Durant didn’t know what Yu Fei meant by “messy shooting,” and that was precisely the key to his transition from NCAA to NBA. Because of the different levels of the league, the difficulty of offense was also different. In the NCAA, Durant’s talent could solve a lot of problems, but in the NBA, the interference he faced was much stronger, and those shots that could be easily made in the NCAA were hard to nail down in the NBA.

The simplest example would be if a 2K novice tried to control the peak Jordan; the result might be worse than Jordan Poole’s. It’s a matter of choice and cognition. If one can’t properly recognize their own characteristics, even Yu Fei would play like a cancer on the court.

In the second half, Yu Fei’s offensive onslaught did not diminish.

However, the Celtics had already established the right cognition.

Even if Yu Fei single-handedly defeated each one of them with unlimited one-on-ones, it was still better than double-teaming him and allowing him to assist his teammates in making all kinds of opportunity shots.

The former was Yu Fei fighting four opponents alone; the latter was one leading four.

Pierce continued to suffer.

Being dominated in the first half was bad enough, but in the second half, Fei treated him as nothing more than a test subject for low-post offense.

Against Pierce, Fei tried post-up hook shots, step-back jumpers, and various combinations of footwork.

To Pierce’s despair, the same Big Fei mentioned in the scouting reports as liking the low post but not being efficient, played him like he was holding all the aces.

The momentum in offense and defense is a zero-sum game, and the more Pierce was toyed with in defense, the more anxious he became on offense.

He wanted to respond to Fei, but his mind was unsettled.

Even with excellent fakes and offensive skills, his final shots were affected by his mindset, and his shooting percentage was way below average.

“Why aren’t you barking anymore, Paul?”

With five minutes left before the end of the fourth quarter, Fei caught the ball with one hand and looked at Pierce mockingly.

Fei had already scored 48 points, more than half of which he scored over Pierce.

Pierce had no excuses and could only focus on defending.

Then Fei dribbled the ball between his legs backhand, combined with a spin, a set of movements with full aesthetic points, surprising the Garden fans, and then shot over Pierce’s head.

“Swish!”

That was his 50th point of the night.

“Paul Pierce can’t stop Frye, he just can’t!”

The Celtics had realized by the third quarter that Pierce wouldn’t get the better of Fei that night, so they concentrated their forces on pounding the ball inside.

Just as Fei had dominated Pierce, Garnett did the same to Kwame Brown and Rashard Lewis.

However, even at their peak, the scoring efficiency of the big men inside couldn’t compare with that of an outside player.

Garnett would push an inch inside, but Fei was a mile higher outside.

The already leading Supersonics, with Fei’s aggressive offense, slowly expanded their lead.

It was 8 points at the end of the first half, 11 points by the end of the third quarter, and now it was 14 points.

With five minutes left in the game, a 14-point gap was quite big.

Now was the time for strength, and the Celtics needed stability in their inside offense.

But Garnett’s tendency to take jump shots rather than fight inside at crucial moments doomed him not to be a superstar who provided a sense of security when storming the bastion.

Faced with Brown on five fouls, Garnett made another post-up turnaround jumper.

“Bang!”

Brown grabbed the defensive rebound and passed the ball directly to Fei.

The Celtics’ defenders, intimidated by Fei’s fearsome offensive threat, unspokenly closed in on him, wanting to surprise him with a double-team.

“You think you can stop me like this?”

Fei scoffed and suddenly threw the ball to the left.

Kevin Durant followed up to the frontcourt; he didn’t know Fei would pass, he just instinctively kept up.

When the defense’s attention was drawn away by Fei, he didn’t expect Fei to pass either.

But he was still prepared to catch and shoot.

He was a born scorer.

Fei’s unexpected pass was caught by Durant, who was given a sea of open space by the Celtics, and he remembered what he had said in the locker room.

He would make up for his first-half mistakes.

“How do you make up for mistakes? With your messed-up shooting?”

The cutting taunt from Fei echoed in Durant’s mind.

Yes, he was going to use his messed-up shooting to correct his errors.

“From beyond the left three-point line, Kevin Durant’s three-pointer~~~~~” Tom Heinsohn’s voice sounded as if he was about to have a heart attack, “he scores! The kid scores! We can’t give him space, we can’t give him so much space…!!!”

Heinsohn spoke for the fans, but it was too late to change anything.

Durant hit the dagger three-pointer, extending the Supersonics’ lead to 17 points with only four and a half minutes left in the game.

The Celtics requested a timeout.

Durant exhaled as if a great burden had been lifted. This wasn’t a game-winner, not even a key shot that changed the momentum, it was just like hammering the final nail into the Celtics’ coffin for the night. Even if not him, someone else would have done it. But it meant something different coming from him.

Had the first-half criminal truly redeemed himself in the second half?

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Fei walked over.

Durant wanted to know what Fei thought of it, he even hoped to hear some praise from him, but how could he be so presumptuous? It was a chance created by Fei drawing the defense of three players; making the shot was expected, miss it and go die.

“Good shot,” Fei said indifferently, “keep it up.”

That was enough, Durant asked for nothing more.

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