Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

Right when Yu Fei kicked off his Asia tour, "The Immortal Supersonics—How Frye Revived Professional Basketball in Seattle Within a Year," the book written by Hall of Fame author Jack McCallum as a beat reporter tracking the 2007-08 Seattle SuperSonics season, was officially published.

"When I'm old and gasping for breath, the things that happened this year will flash through my mind. Then, I will die peacefully,"

These were the words Yu Fei contributed as an inscription for the book.

Unsurprisingly, this became McCallum's most popular book since his 2006 work for the Phoenix Suns, "Seven Seconds or Less."

Due to Yu Fei's influential reach beyond the circle, the book remained on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list for two months.

There was a renewed wave of excitement for the Supersonics in the public sphere.

This was something Yu Fei, vacationing far away in Asia, couldn't have imagined.

In contrast to the United States, the biggest news Yu Fei made in Asia was his date with Japan's popular ingenue Yuriko Yoshitaka, which was captured by photographers.

"Frye, please tell me how you managed to shoot Cupid's arrow at Yuriko Yoshitaka after just one week in Japan?"

When Yu Fei tweeted his farewell message to Japan, thousands of people replied to the tweet.

"There is only pure friendship between Yuriko and me," Yu Fei replied earnestly.

But this claim wasn't convincing to many, as the paparazzi captured him and Yuriko Yoshitaka entering a hotel together.

As long as it was the offseason, Yu Fei's tabloid stories never ceased.

It was the same when he visited Korea.

Although he had a lot of business to discuss there, the rich in Korea instinctively felt that an energetic person like Yu Fei wouldn't just sit idle at night.

Rather than waiting for him to complain "the local gangs don't have manners," it was better for them to take the initiative.

For Yu Fei, it was about being polite and following the host's lead.

Moreover, even though he did nothing, people courted him with incredible enthusiasm, be it the local tycoons or the stars with thousands of fans.

This sort of unconditional, and sometimes no-holds-barred pleasing, often gave Yu Fei the illusion that he was a god when in Japan and Korea.

However, this illusion would dissipate in China.

Because in China, the stars, whether in social status or income, were beings the Japanese and Korean stars could only look up to.

Yu Fei was all too aware of what China's fans were sensitive to—since he already had a near-perfect image in China, he shouldn't take any risks.

This caused a great contrast in Yu Fei's Asia tour.

In China, he was a standard international sports megastar, attending events, discussing business, and taking endorsements, but outside China, his playboy image was well cemented in people's hearts.

This contrast gave Yu Fei much to reflect upon.

After returning to the United States, Yu Fei restarted his radio show, which had been on hiatus for a month.

The radio show could be said to have been his early fan-base solidifying tool; his fame in America once lagged behind LeBron James', and without the radio show, he wouldn't have amassed so many die-hard fans.

Now, the radio had become a bridge for fans to connect with him.

However, as Yu Fei's status rose and his daily schedule became busier, the frequency of the radio show also decreased; it was basically a monthly update.

So, whenever the radio was broadcast, fans were ready with an array of sensitive questions.

Today's show kicked off with LeBron James' "The Decision."

A fan from Cleveland asked Yu Fei, "If full marks are 100, how many points would 'The Decision' get on the scale of dumb PR stunts?"

"Zero," Yu Fei laughed, "I think he wasn't stupid. You think he was stupid because he seemed too high-profile, but consider this, his 'Decision' became the focus of the world just like Michael Jackson's obituary for a while. From a journalistic point of view, the special program was a great success."

As Yu Fei mentioned the other MJ, the next caller whimsically asked, "Frye, speaking of MJ, I still remember the day he died, a middle-aged woman who seemed not to care about music at all loudly asked me, 'Hey, do you know Michael Jackson is dead?' I immediately checked Twitter, and sure enough, the whole world was mourning him. Frye, if you were to suddenly pass away decades after retirement, do you think you'd be memorialized like that?"

To be honest, Michael Jackson had been as good as dead to Yu Fei. Whether in his previous life or this one. Because when he crossed over, Jackson had already become a public figure seen as a copper alchemist.

By the time he died at the end of June that year, he hadn't released any influential work for over a decade.

What difference did it make to the once King of Pop?

But the world is peculiar in that regard—when you die, people tend to love you more. Especially for those who fancy themselves as artists, death seems to be the ultimate form of art, making them greater posthumously than they were in life.

Michael Jackson's biggest tragedy was that all the blemishes of his life were proven nonexistent upon his death. He was someone who should have been greater in life than in death.

This involuntary thought made Yu Fei think of another MJ who had a direct impact on his career.

To Yu Fei, Jordan in his Wizards days was like MJ in his scandal-plagued years.

The misfortune of the sports world is that no matter how great a person once was, they all succumb to tarnish with age.