Chapter 738: Chapter 498: Countdown to the Fall of the Empire (Combined) _2 Chapter 738: Chapter 498: Countdown to the Fall of the Empire (Combined) _2 His enemies exhausted every trick in the book to dig up a scandal, but all they could find was that his love life was a bit of a mess.

Ever since Yu Fei broke up with Hendrix Christina, he had become a “nomad.”

Leonardo DiCaprio would never touch a woman over 25, so what? For celebrities, as long as they can openly handle their relationships with the opposite sex, the public doesn’t care how many women they’ve been with. That’s why gossip never brought down Yu Fei.

However, the media didn’t believe that Yu Fei was without other faults.

Thus, they launched an all-around surveillance on Yu Fei.

The fall of Woods marked the pinnacle of Yu Fei’s business empire and the moment his life would be infiltrated without blind spots.

As the NBA trade deadline approached, the Supersonics welcomed the second game of Tyronn Lue’s era.

They were playing away against the Houston Rockets.

The two teams were not on the same level, but tonight Yao played like he had a 40% three-point shooting percentage, like Rudy Gobert, inside-outside, scoring 33 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 blocks with 5 of 9 from the three-point line.

On the Supersonics side, they lacked the urgency they showed against the Spurs.

When there is a lack of urgency, it often requires the coach to motivate the players, but Lue was lacking in this regard, even messing up the timing for calling timeouts.

Surprisingly, the Supersonics lost to the Rockets.

After the game, Yao Ming teasingly asked Yu Fei, “What’s up with your coach? Is he saving the timeouts for the next game?”

“Don’t let me see you in the playoffs!” Yu Fei said irritably.

Yao Ming snorted, “Damn, I don’t want to see you guys either. If we’re going to play, we’ll play against the best–we want the Lakers!”

Yu Fei was just about to say that the Supersonics were first in the Western Conference.

But then, he remembered that with this loss, they had already been surpassed by the Lakers.

“Heard your general manager wants to trade Scola for someone from the Lakers?” Yu Fei asked.

Yao Ming replied seriously, “Do you think I’m the kind of guy who would leak internal secrets?”

“If I already know about it, is it even a secret anymore?”

“You have a point,” Yao Ming joked, “but I definitely wouldn’t tell you that we tried to trade Scola for Bynum and that the Lakers hung up on us right then and there.”

Yu Fei just smiled without saying anything.

As the trade deadline was fast approaching, the Lakers holding Bynum up for bids to any team in need of a power forward was about to conclude.

A trade had to happen.

Because the matter had reached Bynum, he was ready to leave the team, and if they called about trades all this time without actually making a trade, it would only reflect badly on the Lakers themselves.

The Lakers being one win and two losses against the Supersonics in the regular season was a sore spot.

They could comfort themselves by saying the team hadn’t fully gelled yet, but everyone deep down had a huge ego–who would be the first to give up their position to adapt to another? Without sacrifices, the Lakers’ integration would never be complete.

Under such circumstances, to ensure a championship, they had to build an impeccable lineup.

Artest was not being threatening enough at the power forward position against the Supersonics, so they seriously needed to strengthen that position.

The Lakers first inquired about Kenyon Martin, then felt that Martin’s style was too old-school, not suitable for the Triangle Offense under Bill Simmons.

They hoped for a star power forward who could create space on the offensive end.

Such power forwards were rare; the best option would be Dirk Nowitzki of the Mavericks, who wouldn’t go insane, making a trade of Bynum for Nowitzki unlikely in the next hundred years.

But, Arenas’s gun incident sent the Wizards back to basketball hell.

The chain reaction from Tony Parker requesting a trade was that the Wizards had already lost their drive to progress.

This gave them a reason to trade their star power forward, Antawn Jamison.

Initially, they kept Jamison because Arenas strongly requested it, but now with Arenas in trouble himself, the Wizards no longer needed to cling to the past.

For the Lakers, Jamison was a far more attractive option than Kenyon Martin.

This season Jamison could average 20 points and 8 rebounds; his three-point shooting was nearly 35%, arguably the best offensive power forward at the moment. His arrival could greatly cover the Lakers’ weakness at the power forward position.

During the negotiations, both teams were brutally honest.

The Lakers needed a power forward, and the Wizards wanted young talents for long-term development.

Therefore, Bynum for Jamison was a win-win.

But the Lakers thought, since the Wizards wanted to tank, it wasn’t impossible to ask for several high-quality role players from them.

Besides Jamison, the Lakers were also interested in Wizards’ shooter Mike Miller.

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The Wizards naturally weren’t willing to let the Lakers take advantage for free; the two sides tugged for a while and finally reached a consensus the night before the trade deadline.

The League officially announced the trade: “Lakers will send Andrew Bynum, Luke Walton, Steve Blake, and their 2016 first-round draft pick to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Antawn Jamison and Mike Miller.”

After the trade was announced, the media was shaken.

The Los Angeles media called this trade: “The countdown to the fall of the only empire.”

Bill Simmons, the biggest Lakers hater on the planet, began discussing whether this Lakers team was the deepest in history.