Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

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After a day of rest, the Wizards set off from D.C. to Atlanta.

The status of the Hawks Team in the NBA was similar to that of the Wizards Team, the difference being that Atlanta, home of the Hawks, did not have media with powerful influence. Therefore, their poor performance went unnoticed, whereas the Wizards, being from D.C., had the nationally recognized newspaper "The Washington Post". As a result, every bad game they played, every terrible trade they made, and every bust they drafted were magnified by the media in an exaggerated fashion.

In the past three seasons, the Hawks Team respectively won 25, 28, and 31 games. Since announcing their rebuild in 1998, the team had always struggled to find the right direction. Fans' patience is limited, so this year at the draft, the Hawks burned their CPU in a decision that seemed to say, "Screw it, we want to win now," and handed off the third overall pick to get immediate help from Shareef Abdur-Rahim and others from the Memphis Grizzlies.

Players like Abdur-Rahim were all too familiar to Wizards fans, no different from Juwan Howard.

Just looking at the surface stats, you might think he was not too bad, managing to bring in 20 points per game. The problem was, after scoring his 20 points, he felt he had done his duty and left the rest to his teammates.

However, since the season had just started and Pau Gasol had yet to start dominating, the Hawks Team hadn't realized that they had become the biggest suckers since the 1998 Bucks.

Eager to return to the playoffs, the Hawks Team would go all out toward that direction before reality struck them hard.

The Wizards' goal was the same: to make the playoffs, or even more ambitiously, as one of Jordan's many sycophants on ESPN, David Aldridge, had outrageously claimed, "If Michael could lead the Wizards to the playoffs, it would be an honor more significant than his six championships."

Having performed poorly against the Knicks the night before, Jordan was bursting to unleash his inner fury.

The Hawks just happened to be in the way.

It was a win-win game, Jordan furiously scored 31 points, grabbed 6 rebounds, and dished out 6 assists with 1 steal. Thanks to his outstanding performance, Yu Fei, who had shown great promise in the previous game, saw his playing time reduced, only playing for 16 minutes against the Hawks and clocking in a workmanlike 9 points, 4 rebounds, and 1 assist.

Yu Fei did not complain, for others had it worse than him.

Kwame Brown didn't play a single minute.

Why? Doug Collins's explanation was, "I wanted Kwame to understand how 'the system' works from the bench."

He could have bluntly said that Brown was an idiot who couldn't even run the plays correctly, but he phrased it so delicately. Brown was lucky to have such a coach.

Yu Fei suffered the brunt of the media's Jordan hype.

In a post-game interview that lasted nearly 20 minutes, Yu Fei answered a dozen questions, over half of which related to Jordan.

Yu Fei was genuinely annoyed. Acknowledging that Jordan had played well that night was no problem—the stats were there for all to see, and the Wizards won— but were those numbers really "great"? Was such a big fuss really necessary?

The 31+6+6 scored by the retired geezer in his second comeback game was commendable, but if you were to scrutinize, he took a total of 30 shots.

When an Associated Press reporter asked Yu Fei how much he had learned from Jordan's game, he couldn't help saying, "Just like the viewers in front of the TV, I'm merely one of the many onlookers around MJ. You ask how much I learned from this game? It's not a good question, because I haven't learned any more than the viewers have."

Yu Fei left a bit of controversy behind and then returned with the team to the home court.

After another day of rest, they would welcome the Philadelphia 76ers at home.

Although the opponent was the Eastern Conference champion of the previous season, they were not to be feared, as the previous season's MVP Allen Iverson had undergone elbow surgery in September and would miss the first five games of the new season.

Without Iverson, the 76ers were literally a toothless tiger, intimidating in appearance but lacking the offensive prowess needed to dominate the enemy, even with Mutombo averaging 10 blocks a game, they still needed to solve the scoring dilemma.

Clearly, the 76ers couldn't compensate for the 30-point void left by Iverson with Aaron McGee, Eric Snow, or Mark Haplin, even though all of them had higher shooting percentages than Iverson— none of them averaged more than 12 points a game.

Beyond Iverson, the only dependable offensive option for the 76ers was Derrick Coleman, a notorious draft bust known for wasting his talent, who still had some fuel left. However, as a power forward, Coleman was hopeless on defense. While he could score, he was also able to give away even more points on the defensive end.

Therefore, Brown couldn't put all his hopes on him.

Once the game began, the Wizards Team quickly took control on the court.

Richard Hamilton turned in an excellent performance, whereas Jordan struggled a bit. The 76ers were probably the team he liked least at this stage of his career. Find exclusive content at m.v.l.e.mpyr

Their games were almost devoid of highlights; their only strength was torturing opponents on defense.

Hamilton, young and quick, could use his off-the-ball movement to escape through the muscle forest, but Jordan couldn't.

The 76ers' staunch defense successfully wore down Jordan's shooting touch, causing it to steadily deteriorate.

Whenever Jordan was out of form, it was Yu Fei's chance to shine.

Halfway through the first quarter, Collins took Jordan off and sent in Yu Fei as a substitute.

To everyone's relief, Collins also sent in Kwame Brown at the same time as Yu Fei.

It was the first time the Wizards' lottery brothers had been on the court together since the start of the new season.

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