Yu Fei's feelings for many basketball stars came from his memories of a past life, and Iverson, since retiring, made regular trips to China to "cash in" every so often, basically just spending his own reputation without consolidating his connection with Chinese fans like McGrady did.
This was someone who didn't seem to know how to "harvest leeks" properly. The most joyous Yu Fei remembered seeing him in China was surrounded by dubious princesses in a KTV.
After the event, Yu Fei went back to the hotel to rest, then got on the bus with his teammates, heading toward the 76ers' home court, the Wells Fargo Center.
The Wells Fargo Center was not named as such until 2010.
Since the 76ers' starting power forward was Derrick Coleman, Collins tried putting Yu Fei at the four spot as a starter tonight.
By doing so, Richard Hamilton was back on the starting roster.
Now, all Coleman had left was a poor reputation and a body that retained a shred of talent.
Even though Coleman had talent that may have made Karl Malone envious, he now couldn't assert absolute dominance over Yu Fei at the power forward position.
Larry Brown saw Collins's move to put Yu Fei at power forward as a mistake and let the team play around Coleman at the start of the game.
However, Coleman was only weighing 230 pounds at the time, not much better than Yu Fei.
Without the most important advantage of internal play, physical confrontation, and his skills not great enough to compensate for the lack of physicality, Coleman's seriously declined physical condition was completely restrained by Yu Fei.
At the start, Yu Fei gave Coleman two consecutive blocks, both leading to the Wizards' counter-attacks.
Then Iverson switched to god mode on offense, devouring Chris Whitney alive, while on defense, he also intercepted passes intended for Yu Fei, the two sides entering the second quarter in a tie.
Yu Fei, temporarily acting as the starting power forward, didn't orchestrate high-post offense for the Wizards as well as Ratner. He rather used his offensive threat from the foul line to the paint to cause greater chaos, either taking shots himself or distributing the ball in the disarray.
Jahidi White was the beneficiary of Yu Fei's melee-style gains.
"Young people really can do some irrational things when they're hot-headed..."
Collins played the ostrich, pretended everything was fine, and picked up his clipboard saying to Yu Fei, "Frye, after the timeout, we'll play it like this..."
Collins drew a nice tactic, but the finishing point was Jordan.
Jordan who went 1 for 6 in the third quarter.
The tactic was good, but Yu Fei didn't trust tonight's Jordan.
Still, Yu Fei wasn't going to waste Collins's timeout. Since the tactic was drawn this way, they would play it, but he prepared himself for Jordan definitely missing the shot, ready to rush for the rebound.
After the timeout, the Wizards started moving according to the tactics drawn by Collins.
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Things went smoothly, and a moment before Jordan showed up for the ball, Yu Fei released the ball early. As it left his hands, he was already sprinting toward the basket.
Jordan took the shot with graceful form, but he might have been the first in the arena to know the ball was going to miss.
A player's touch doesn't lie!
"Bang!"
Coleman was already in position and needed just a light jump to grab the rebound, but he didn't foresee someone coming in behind him with such reckless force for the board.
Yu Fei practically leaped onto Coleman's body to secure the rebound, and at the moment the crowd roared, slammed the ball hard into the basket.
It might have been a foul, but the NBA is after all a business league. For a moment of brilliance that could make season highlight reels, referees normally don't complicate matters for the offensive side.