The Way of Basketball: Never Talk Shit to Him!
Chapter 91 - 89 I wish I had an ’anti-fan’ system.

Chapter 91: Chapter 89 I wish I had an ’anti-fan’ system.

The next morning, as expected, the game once again became the focus of attention all over the United States.

Barkley expressed his disappointment in LeBron James’s actions, "I never thought he would do something like that on the court, don’t tell me it was unintentional. He’s not a child anymore, even though more and more media are calling him a high school student. He should have known what could happen to the little O’Neal flying through the air after a push like that. Even in the ’90s, that would have been an action not allowed by the referee."

The New York Times mocked LeBron James’s exit from the game, "The ’Chosen One’ who claimed he wouldn’t be easily injured, chose to leave the game for the sake of Cleveland and the entire team. How noble of him!"

No wonder the New York Times is so sarcastic—the image of LeBron James making previous promises to the media is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Yet when a similar situation actually occurred, he did exactly the opposite of what he said.

If the New York media didn’t get a couple of digs in, they wouldn’t be the New York media.

Besides these media outlets, there were many others that reported on the game from different angles:

"Faced with Su Wan’s provocation, LeBron chickened out. At that moment, Su Wan looked more like a King than LeBron!"

"Too scared to shoot! Faced with the same open shot, Su Wan coolly made his basket, but LeBron didn’t dare take the shot!"

"Arguing with Pacers fans, LeBron’s unseemly behavior made him look like a high school student!"

...

There’s truly a rich array of content!

You can’t blame these media outlets for finding so many angles—the game had given them too many opportunities to criticize LeBron James.

Especially having just watched Kobe and Su Wan go head-to-head on the court, they expected LeBron to do the same against Su Wan.

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LeBron’s performance really didn’t satisfy the media.

Su Wan also saw these reports the next day, feeling instinctively that something was off but couldn’t put his finger on it, so he phoned Bill Duffy.

"I did it!"

Bill Duffy admitted it straight away.

He had his reasons for doing so, "LeBron’s team is contacting the media, they are preparing to create a wave of publicity to shift the attention away from LeBron; from what I know, the focus of this diversion is supposed to be us. But at the moment, I don’t know from which angle they will attack. So I had to preempt them and spread as much unfavorable public sentiment towards LeBron as possible."

A rather helpless measure, but what could be done when Nike was behind LeBron?

When it came to media resources, Bill Duffy naturally couldn’t compete with such a giant.

After hearing Bill Duffy out, Su Wan realized what was wrong... usually, under such circumstances, LeBron’s team would quickly contact the media to clear his name, but this time, they uncharacteristically didn’t issue any statements immediately.

Considering LeBron’s performance the night before, even the Nike-affiliated media felt the pressure.

The usual spin tactics obviously wouldn’t be enough to mitigate the impact quickly.

In this case, shifting focus became the best strategy.

Bill Duffy’s conjectures also sounded logical to Su Wan.

After all, he was now LeBron’s biggest rival.

Clearing one’s name is simply a matter of proving that LeBron was right—if they couldn’t prove he was innocent, then the next best thing was to prove that his rival was the problematic party.

It’s a simple spin logic.

Soon, Su Wan witnessed the power of the Nike-affiliated media, as well as the direction of their spin:

"Another dispute, the Huaxia rookie had three altercations in half a month—all three incidents reviewed!"

"Trouble follows the controversy-loving rookie; can this really be the future for Indiana?"

"From ’Auburn Palace’ to last night’s conflict between Su Wan and LeBron, why does this season’s Pacers team keep erupting in disputes!"

...

You have to admit, it was quite ruthless.

They labeled the entire Pacers team as "troublemakers," so in this way, even if LeBron played dirty, he could be forgiven.

Speaking of which, the future defenders of LeBron will use similar tactics to justify his actions—the most notable being the 2016 Finals. Whenever someone mentions that LeBron won a "comeback" with the help of the referees, his fans would say, if it weren’t for the referees, it should have been the Thunder Team in the Finals that year.

Since you can rely on the referees to take out the Thunder, we can rely on them to take out your Warriors.

Their playbook was moral high ground defense, "to act on behalf of heaven," turning "wrong" into "right."

After seeing these press releases, Bill Duffy called Su Wan within two hours to discuss a strategy.

Under normal circumstances, it should be his job as an agent to come up with a solution, but having seen Su Wan’s abilities in manipulating public opinion, at this point, everything was deferred to Su Wan. Whatever he said, Bill Duffy would follow.

At the moment, Su Wan was on his way to the stadium. No matter how tumultuous the outside world was, he still had to practice. Regardless of what the media were arguing, as long as he performed on the court, everything would calm down.

Of course, Su Wan definitely wouldn’t let LeBron’s team throw dirt on him without retaliation, simply relying on his court performance to shut them up.

That wasn’t his style.

Moreover, he was very clear about how important public opinion was...

Just look at LeBron, who merely had four championships, and other than that, no discernible advantage in accolades compared to the other members of "President Mountain." How did he manage to leapfrog over "Magic" Johnson and "Big Bird" Bird to directly compete with Michael Jordan?