Chapter 221

Korea is a very strange nation. When they learned that Girls' Generation was actually so close to Fan Xi, they didn't find it strange at all; instead, they felt an inexplicable sense of honor.

In their hearts, Fan Xi was a very high-level figure because he had achieved such great success in the United States; he must be Korean.

And when the photo of Fan Xi holding Im Yoona was sent back, they didn't accuse Im Yoona of being an unqualified idol as they would with other idols; instead, they called Fan Xi the 'National Son-in-law'.

For a time, Lu Yuan received a ton of advertising offers from Korea, but most of the offers hoped for Fan Xi and Im Yoona to shoot commercials together.

Lu Yuan asked for Fan Xi's opinion, and Fan Xi of course said yes.

Who would turn away money?

As for him and Yoona, there really was nothing.

Although he was mesmerized by Yoona's well-proportioned, snow-white, delicate, and slender legs all night long; no wonder Girls' Generation had another name called 'Legs Generation'.

Im Yoona had burrowed into Fan Xi's arms at that time because Chen Ye was grilling there and a piece of charcoal exploded with a crackle; startled, Im Yoona lunged toward Fan Xi.

Fan Xi was very gentlemanly; he held Im Yoona with both hands, one hand around her shoulder to comfort her, and one hand on her waist, feeling that slender, smooth, yet resilient waist.

This hug invisibly brought Im Yoona and Fan Xi's relationship much closer. After saying goodbye that night, the two chatted a lot on social media.

Fan Xi even sent a few photos of his childhood in exchange for some of Im Yoona's portraits.

The two's emotions were a bit ambiguous; it was clearly more than friendship, but not yet a romance.

However, the Korean media's fueling of the fire would certainly ignite a raging blaze between the two.

In a world without Fan Xi, the NBA remained locked out until December 2011 before officially starting.

Now, the butterfly effect had produced some very, very astonishing changes.

The NBA, the owners, and the players reached a kind of tacit understanding because of a Wall Street report. This report pointed out that if the NBA continued to lock out, it would bring unprecedented damage, a large number of fans would be lost, and the booming commercial atmosphere of the previous season would end, ultimately hurting everyone.

In this detailed report, the commercial value of the Western Conference Finals, Eastern Conference Finals, and the Finals of the previous season ranked in the top four, top three, and top two of all sports brands in North America; the only thing that could surpass them was the Super Bowl.

Furthermore, data showed that the NBA's commercial influence was in an unprecedented state of explosion. Superstars like LeBron made the North American market full of vitality, while Fan Xi raised the Asian market to an unprecedented height.

Currently, everyone was looking forward to the arrival of the new season, and people had strong expectations for the grudges and rivalries of the previous season.

If the NBA fell into an endless lockout at this time, not only would a large number of mid-level players leave for other leagues, but the NBA fans whose appetites had been whetted would also scatter; no one was willing to follow a movie with no end in sight.

This report depicted how promising the NBA's prospects were to everyone. Under the media's push, both sides finally showed signs of loosening.

The owners began to stop being stubborn about the hard salary cap, and the players' bottom line of a 57% share of total revenue was also slowly retreating.

With the opportunity to make the cake bigger, no one was willing to flip the table directly.

Things were moving in a good direction.

Fan Xi also finally finished filming the movie at the end of August. He returned to the training camp and saw that the eight domestic athletes had become visibly stronger. After nearly a month of training, the most intuitive performance was that their physiques had changed significantly.

Leonard and Butler got new jobs at the training camp; they turned into defensive demons, beating them up every day. Their defensive quality and physical confrontation made these young men suffer, but also let them feel what true confrontation was. They learned in confrontation and grew in confrontation.

Self-confidence was slowly accumulating again in the ruins after being destroyed.

Although there was still a huge gap between them and Leonard and Butler, and the gap continued to widen: while they were improving, these two were also improving, and the magnitude of their improvement was much greater than theirs.

Stephen Curry visited this training camp the day after Fan Xi returned; he came as a sponsored athlete.

With the NBA lockout, NBA players would not receive salaries, NBA teams could not negotiate with players, nor could they sign or trade players. At the same time, players could not use team training facilities for any reason, and teams could not hold any summer training camps, exhibitions, team meetings, or coaching gatherings. In addition to this, NBA team websites could no longer use players' images or use players as representatives for promotion.

However, there were always those who skirted the rules.

For example, Kevin Durant and the others were currently playing in the Drew League in New York to maintain their condition. Kobe also went to guest star twice, scoring 55 and 38 points respectively, and he kept urging Fan Xi to come over and play.

Fan Xi was just too busy.

Stephen Curry's arrival brought a new shocking education to the domestic young men. Curry didn't look like he had strong talent; he was even clumsy at dunking. However, his way of playing was outstanding and unparalleled, and his shooting ability completely rewrote the players' understanding of shooting.

The Basketball Association leaders were amazed after seeing it and hurriedly found Fan Xi, saying: "We can completely cultivate young players in this direction. Curry's talent is not as good as Leonard's or Butler's, but he can play at this level. I believe that in the future, there will definitely be young players who reach his level; even if it's just entering the rotation in the NBA, that's good."

Fan Xi smiled.

He said: "Some talents are visible, and some talents are invisible. You only see Stephen's relatively mediocre running and jumping ability, but you ignore his body control ability and coordination. Most importantly, you might not know that his hand-eye coordination might be one of the best in the world today."

"He is a born shooter."

Fan Xi said not without envy.

Fan Xi had also polished his own shooting skills; he hadn't been idle this offseason. He tried his best to strengthen his shooting ability and his back-to-the-basket ability.

However, talent was too important.

Fan Xi's shooting was always missing something; his two-stage jump shot lacked accuracy, and imitating Curry's one-stage jump shot resulted in a slow speed and a low release point.

He couldn't smoothly transition the open-shot technique he got from Reggie Miller into a pull-up jump shot.

This was what troubled him the most.

Although Fan Xi poured cold water on the Basketball Association leaders, he still encouraged the players in front of them: "If you want to overcome the bottleneck of your own talent, the only way is to enhance your shooting, making your release faster, more accurate, and harder to defend."

Fan Xi established a formidable prestige in front of the team members.

Because in the training camp, Butler and Leonard beat them like ghosts. Yet Fan Xi could always defeat them in one-on-ones.

Although Fan Xi was shorter and the whole world said Fan Xi's offensive technique was terrible.

But his weakest point could take down two forwards who focused on defense.

From this, one could see what level Fan Xi's strength had reached.

Fan Xi's training during this period definitely showed significant progress compared to the previous season. In terms of one-on-one, he might not rank in the top fifteen or even top twenty among perimeter players in the league. However, put him in a game, and Fan Xi was definitely at a superstar level.

However, Fan Xi himself believed that he was still half a step away from being a true superstar.

Although in the previous season's Finals, Fan Xi had already established his reputation as a superstar and solidified his status there. Even the media most critical of Fan Xi dared not rank Fan Xi's name outside the top ten of active players.

Fan Xi was very eager to cross this half-step distance as soon as possible.

"I heard some news. This labor negotiation will likely produce a 'Fan Xi Clause'." In the evening, Stephen Curry said while chatting with Fan Xi: "Billy Hunter of the Players Association said that we cannot continue to exploit super rookies. He used you as an example, saying that if a rookie can turn the tide in the Finals and take the pearl under the crown, why should there be restrictions on their renewal contracts?"

This proposal was hard to refuse.

Because team owners also needed to please these super rookies so as not to offend them. The latest information circulating was that the owners' definition of a super rookie was relatively harsh.

Only those players who had been elected as regular season MVP or Finals MVP during their rookie contract, or who had been selected as an All-Star starter twice, or who had been selected to the All-NBA Team twice (regardless of which team) were eligible to use the "clause" to get a big contract.

This clause was practically tailor-made for Fan Xi and Rose, because among active players, only Rose and Fan Xi had won these two MVPs during their rookie contracts. And they could renew their contracts immediately.

Fan Xi only signed for two years, and his contract expired next year.

Some media said that Fan Xi took full advantage when signing the contract because he didn't even complete the renewal with the Lakers based on the standard rookie contract format, but the whole world knew he was a first-year rookie. Now, he could immediately get a max contract renewal of 30% of the salary cap; you know, LeBron James hadn't even achieved this goal yet.

Fan Xi's third-year salary could surpass James'.

James took a pay cut when joining the Heat.

James had been very low-key recently; he hadn't been in the media spotlight, except for news that two football teams hoped to pay a lot of money to invite him to play football during the lockout period, there was no other news.

According to information revealed by sponsors, James had been training in Houston, learning back-to-the-basket skills and dream footwork from the famous back-to-the-basket master Hakeem Olajuwon.

Obviously, James was still brooding over the failure of the previous season; he might never forget for the rest of his life how he was whipped around like a spinning top by Fan Xi, eventually watching helplessly as Fan Xi used a practice-style jump shot to kill his championship dream right in front of him.

James repeatedly entered this nightmare.

He hoped to make a comeback in the new season; he wanted to fulfill his promise, he wanted to lead the Heat to win the championship.

It is worth mentioning that the Heat were frantically looking for a center. Although the salary cap being locked made it difficult for them to achieve much in the free agent market, there would still be plenty of veterans chasing championships who would flock to them.

These veterans still had gas in their tanks and were very experienced.

"Chris Paul said that if the Lakers don't win the championship next season, it's practically a crime."

Steve Nash told Fan Xi. This was a comment he heard backstage at the ESPY awards ceremony. Paul won this year's ESPY Sportsmanship Award, although everyone couldn't figure out what the criteria for this award were; was it because Paul was always dressed in a suit and had great fashion sense off the court?

Fan Xi did not attend this awards ceremony; Lu Yuan received the invitation, but Fan Xi had Chen Ye tear it up.

The ESPY is an awards ceremony hosted by ESPN. This media outlet was always fawning over James and had never given Fan Xi the respect he deserved; Fan Xi didn't intend to get along with them.

What's more, ESPN was a company under the Disney Group.

The relationship between Fan Xi and Disney... was simply hard to describe.

Who told him to abduct their most popular sweetheart princess? And he also made their idol boy band lose competitiveness in the market; now, in American schools, people were ashamed to like the Jonas Brothers.

"Chris is really guilty of terrible crimes." Fan Xi shrugged, saying disapprovingly.

"However, he actually said that Steve Nash would go to the Lakers to be his backup, and he said the Lakers would be a super battleship with no dead ends next season." Stephen Curry continued.

Fan Xi shrugged, raised his eyebrows, and said to Curry: "Then he's going to be disappointed."

That night, Fan Xi received a call from old Dunleavy. Old Dunleavy said to Fan Xi: "We can start imagining the lineup for the new season."

Old Dunleavy was the general manager of the Clippers.

He received accurate news that the new collective bargaining agreement would likely be completed in mid-September, which meant... the NBA would soon return to normal, and there would still be 82 games next season.

Many reports indicated that team owners were eager for the games to start as soon as possible.

"Perhaps we should finalize the head coach candidate first." Fan Xi said to old Dunleavy.

This was indeed a problem.

After all, for a train to run fast, it all depends on the engine.