Basketball Legend: When Pride Still Matters

In the seven games leading up to Christmas, with Yu Fei on protective suspension, the Wizards only won three of them, beating only the Heat and the Atlanta Hawks, two negligible weak teams. Their sole commendable victory was against the Knicks in their third encounter, which they won thanks to Jordan's far beyond physically demanding 44-minute appearance and a beautiful near-game-winning shot.

But the three wins couldn't make people forget the Wizards' inherent problems.

Will Yu Fei really be traded? When will the trade be completed?

Jordan's tenosynovitis seems to be getting worse—why not control his playing time?

This month, the Wizards have become the NBA's traffic king, surpassing even the OK Lakers in media drawing power.

These past few days, offers have been laying on Jordan's desk from various teams.

The Atlanta Hawks are willing to trade Shareef Abdur-Rahim for Yu Fei and are even willing to accept Ratner's trash contract.

The Philadelphia 76ers are willing to trade Aaron McGee plus two unprotected first-rounders for Yu Fei.

The Warriors Team didn't make a direct offer but insinuated that they didn't have any untouchables—the Wizards could have anyone they wanted...

All these offers indicate that other teams view the current Yu Fei as an All-Star level asset; for a rookie who hasn't even played two full months in the NBA, such a rating is quite astonishing.

December 24th

The Wizards had a few days off, affording them some much-needed adjustment time.

But ever since Yu Fei's complete fallout with Jordan, the atmosphere within the team has been rather strange.

Yu Fei still joins them for practices and scrimmages, but aside from Chris Whitney and Kwame Brown, no one approaches him actively.

In the eyes of the others, Yu Fei is someone about to leave the team, and they still have to be teammates with Jordan; would getting too friendly with Jordan's adversary now mean adding your name to his blacklist?

These days have been the busiest for the Wizards' beat reporters.

In the beginning, The Washington Post was the only media following the Wizards. After the incident involving Yu Fei, the Post suddenly gained a significant boost in attractiveness due to their exclusive insider information on the Wizards, going from slightly superior to local competitors to a significant lead in sales.

To this end, The Washington Times secured the qualifications to dispatch a beat reporter to the Wizards through connections with Abe Pollin.

The Times' reporter, Thomas Flynn, was a basketball expert on the sports pages with a long history of covering Wizards' games.

On the night of Yu Fei's "He said he's trading me," Flynn was a witness, one of the many reporters in that media room.

Today was Flynn's first day, and his goal was to get coach Doug Collins to talk in detail about Jordan's tenosynovitis.

Lately, the potential trade involving Yu Fei had left Collins with much frustration, and the worsening of Jordan's tenosynovitis due to increased playing time brought about another issue—people, or rather the media, were questioning Collins's ability and integrity because he had once claimed Jordan was fine. He was no longer appearing to be a normal coach but rather a nominal coach, raising the fundamental question—who is leading the team?

Who holds the sway in the team? Including the game rosters, starting lineups, playing time, game strategies, and team morale, as well as whether Collins will be fully trusted and if he would prioritize the team's interests over those of a player? This question has been present since the beginning, back at the Wilmington training camp, where Collins nonchalantly and at times even smugly denied that Jordan had any serious health issues. Was he unaware of Jordan's knee problems? Was he concealing the truth about the players' health conditions? If yes, why? Was it because he lacked authority and refrained from doing what was best for his team because of Jordan? Since the training camp, had Jordan threatened him to remain silent or cover up the truth?

Flynn knew that as a newcomer on his first day, directly confronting Collins with such questions might easily upset him, but he didn't mind. In the sports world, local media usually treat their own with kid gloves unless they perform terribly or have serious problems, resulting in a boundary that seemed sacrosanct, a rarity in political reporting.

In political reporting, as soon as something becomes an issue, the media eagerly go toe to toe with candidates or officials, who assume the risks themselves. By contrast, coaches, like players, may behave quite rudely. They vent their emotions without restraint, often on live television broadcasts. Lloyd Carr, head coach of the University of Michigan football team, angrily responding to a politely posed question from an ABC sideline reporter about his coaching retorted, "Why would you ask such a stupid question?"

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Coaches in various sports periodically lash out at journalists or slam them fiercely, and the journalists typically consider such outbursts part of the job. They learn to know when to back down for the sake of career preservation and find that they have plenty of room to maneuver.

But Flynn was a sports journalist without a sense of boundaries.

"I wish Michael hadn't played for so long," said Collins to Steve Wyche.

Flynn approached him with a question, "Michael and Tim Grover both said they were aware of the tenosynovitis during the training camp—when did you become aware of it?"