章 14: Chapter 13 Cleveland's Mutation
After the game against the Magic Team, Su Wan's popularity in Las Vegas reached its peak.
Bill Duffy even lined up a local commercial event for him.
An hour on stage, and an easy $5,000 slipped into his pocket.
That was the good side, but on the downside:
The difficulty of activating "The zone" mode increased.
After the last game ended, he, as usual, mocked the rookie in the next game, but the opponent didn't bite, ignoring his "trash talk" during the game, and not making any eye contact with him, focused solely on playing their own game.
Fortunately, Su Wan shifted targets in time and began provoking other players on their team.
Finally, he found one with a quick temper who retorted, allowing him to activate "The zone" mode successfully.
But after the game ended, Su Wan felt rather disheartened when looking at his stats of 23 points, 6 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals, and 1 block.
In the previous three games, he had activated "The zone" mode as soon as he hit the court. Thus, he didn't really notice. In this game, in the minutes when "The zone" mode wasn't active, he felt like a waste, finding it a struggle just to get the ball, let alone put on a good performance.
He didn't like that feeling.
The next morning at 4 a.m., he crawled out of bed and headed to the temporary gym to get in some extra practice. He needed to reduce the gap between his real strength and his performance in "The zone" mode as quickly as possible. Otherwise, such a huge discrepancy might drive him insane.
That was just his personality.
What Su Wan didn't expect was that an ESPN reporter was staked out at the hotel, capturing photos of him. They thought they had a juicy scoop when they saw him leave the hotel before dawn. But, when they found out that Su Wan's destination was the gym, they respected him and wrote an article lavishing him with praise.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer republished this article.
Initially concerned that the team had picked a "troublemaker," the Cavaliers' fans changed their opinion on him significantly. Some Clevelanders even inquired with the Cavaliers' sales department about when Su Wan's Cavaliers' jersey would go on presale.
At this time, Su Wan received a call from Captain Zhang of the National Team, asking when he could join the team in Greece.
Su Wan recalled the original host's memories and realized that this was indeed happening.
Over the past year, he had always been playing warm-up matches with the National Team, preparing for this year's Olympics. Born into the Sharks and with Yao backing him up, he was able to stay in the United States after the draft and participate in the Cavaliers' summer league.
During this period, the original host kept in communication with Captain Zhang to avoid a "Wang Zhizhi incident." However, since Su Wan had taken over, they had lost touch, which made Captain Zhang extremely anxious, causing him sleepless nights.
Su Wan had no objection about wearing the National Team's uniform: "The summer league is almost over, and I will fly directly to Greece after that."
Hearing him say this, Captain Zhang was relieved, and the misunderstanding was resolved.
"By the way, Wan, I heard your performance in the summer league is quite good, recently all the news has been about you!"
"Not bad… Captain Zhang, I have something else to do right now, so let's talk another time."
With his worries eased, Captain Zhang expressed that he had always been paying close attention to Su Wan and offered verbal praise. If those words had come at the beginning of the call, Su Wan might have felt something. But now, after exchanging a few niceties, he hung up.
In the following days, Su Wan's life was a simple routine:
Hotel, temporary gym, Las Vegas Arena.
Despite some setbacks in the last two summer league games, he successfully activated "The zone" mode. In six games, he averaged 24.5 points, 6 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 1.5 steals, and 1.5 blocks per game. He only committed 3 fouls and 2.5 turnovers per game.
In "The zone" mode, his condition was at its peak, and his thought process on the court was incredibly clear, so he rarely made mistakes.
Players like Jamaal Nelson didn't really have that big of a skill gap with him as the game performance suggested. But his experience and his decisions on the court were extremely immature. This was also a very important reason why he dominated the summer league.
Leveraging his dominant performance in the Summer League, the Cavaliers concluded their Las Vegas Summer League campaign with an impeccable 6-0 record. Unfortunately, as the champions, there was no trophy, not even a Summer League MVP award to be had— that wouldn't be introduced until 2006.
However, his performance far exceeded everyone's expectations.
But the Clevelanders had no time to rejoice over this achievement.
A bolt from the blue struck from Salt Lake City:
The Utah Jazz offered a whopping 6-year, $68 million contract and signed Carlos Boozer to their ranks.
They were aware of the news that Boozer had opted out of his Cavaliers' rookie contract, which happened just two days ago. But wasn't it reported by ESPN that Boozer had agreed to sign a new contract and that Danny Ferri had given up the last year of his rookie contract because of it?
So why has Boozer now signed a new contract with the Jazz Team?
They needed an explanation!
Danny Ferri also needed an explanation; he frantically called Boozer's agent, but the latter had turned off his phone.
"Fuck!"
It was only now that he realized he had been royally screwed.
Boozer must have long harbored thoughts of leaving, which is why he made such a request.
The worst part was that he now had no way to deal with Boozer—having only played for the Cavaliers for two years, he couldn't trigger the "Bird exception." He could only watch helplessly as Boozer, the turncoat, defected to another lord.
Once acting in the player's interests, what he got in return was a "clown mask."
Not resigned to this, he chose to bombard Boozer through the media for his betrayal.
To which Boozer's camp flatly responded, "We never promised to re-sign with the Cavalier team."
Another knife was stabbed into Danny Ferri's chest.
Su Wan caught the news as it broke, and he wasn't surprised since he was already aware of the situation.
Boozer's departure was "betrayal."
But at its root lay the fault of the Cavaliers themselves:
They valued LeBron James a little too highly!
For the sake of LeBron, they would give up anyone else on the team.
While it's true each team has its "untouchables," the Cavaliers had taken it too far:
In 2002, to "tank" and ensure they got the No.1 pick and LeBron James, they traded away Andre Miller, whom they had personally selected and nurtured into the League's Assist King, sending him off to the Nuggets Team.
In 2003, to secure the developmental space for LeBron James, they were in a great hurry to offload Ricky Davis, who was averaging 20 points per game.
With these two precedents, even though Su Wan was unaware of this episode, it wasn't surprising to him that Boozer, already dissatisfied due to LeBron's arrival, which had reduced his shot attempts and caused his numbers to decline, would use trickery to leave.
Furthermore, this validated the saying:
The dog licks the dog; in the end, it is left with nothing.
LeBron, who was coddled by the Cavaliers, later abandoned Cleveland without so much as a hesitation, even brazenly staging a "nationwide broadcast."
These too were the retribution for the actions of the Cavaliers over the past two years!
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