Chapter 584: Who Is Deliberately Setting Up a False Trail?

"LeBron is barging around, and Steve Nash is like a toy—this is so frustrating. A guy like LeBron shouldn't be playing point guard; it's a crime. He's showing far too little respect for the first point guard in history to win back-to-back regular season MVPs."

Magic Johnson was hollering on television.

His words didn't sound particularly respectful toward Steve Nash. After all, Magic was still quite the grudge-holder—he was the greatest point guard in history, and Steve Nash at his peak had outshone him at times.

Kenny Smith beside him said in exasperation, "Hey, Earvin, you were the first one to play this kind of thuggish style. When he played back in the day, he was even more shameless than LeBron. At least LeBron hasn't used his big butt to back down and isolate Nash, but you used to do that all the time." Qianqian Xiaoshuo

Magic laughed it off and said, "Actually, it's nothing remarkable. This is called a mismatch advantage."

Then Barkley took over the conversation, saying, "Right now, LeBron is slaughtering everyone in Jieke Fan's fashion. I have a feeling Miami is going to pull off a comeback victory. And look at the lineup Spoelstra has put out there—what a genius idea."

Steve Nash picked up the pace of the offense, but James stayed glued to him, and he couldn't unleash the full speed of his "Child of the Wind" mode like in his prime. He was forced to stop.

Once the wind stops, its effectiveness drops sharply.

James was like a deceleration brake disc. When he lowered the engine speed of the Knicks, his tall teammates calmly returned to their positions.

James had cracked the Knicks' offensive surge and corrected the flaws in the Heat's lineup.

He dragged the Knicks into a half-court game.

The Heat seized the strategic initiative.

However, the Knicks, drawn into a half-court game, did not fall into a scoring drought because of it. Fan Xi's movement left Ray Allen unable to track him, and Steve Nash's passing remained tricky and imaginative.

When Fan Xi ran to a position of absolute advantage, Nash used his outstanding court vision and brilliant passing technique to bounce the ball through James's defensive line, delivering it into Fan Xi's hands.

Fan Xi caught the basketball, and with just a slight feint, he got Xiaoen Badi'er's defense to leave its feet. He bent low and slipped into the paint. Though the Heat had a forest of tall players, Fan Xi leaped up and effortlessly completed his glide, treating the defenders on both sides as if they didn't exist, and laid the basketball into the hoop.

Elegant.

Fan Xi's agility was something the Heat simply could not defend.

The game continued.

The Knicks did not change their lineup. Although Larry Brown's eyes signaled a substitution, Fan Xi refused with a look.

The Knicks switched their defensive assignments—Josh Smith switched onto James, Steve Nash went to chase Ray Allen, and Fan Xi moved to Haslem's side.

Haslem quickly stepped up to set a screen for James. James used Haslem's screen to blow past Smith's defense. Fan Xi rotated over to help, and James took two steps on the drive before spinning around. Fan Xi dropped back and hurried over to body up against him.

But James had already passed the basketball into the paint. Xiaoen Badi'er, freed by Camby's screen, got open, received the pass, and laid it in easily.

James was playing a completely different style of game. Earvin Johnson said this reminded him of the 1.0 version of LeBron James.

But Charles Barkley corrected him, saying this was the ultimate version of James—he was far more powerful than in his younger days. The current James had fully entered another state. He was now an ultimate demon lord who unified passing, cutting, and shooting in one.

However, standing across from James was likewise a great demon lord who unified passing, cutting, and shooting.

Fan Xi's approach was entirely different from James's. He served as the team's secondary playmaker, the stirring stick in the Heat's defensive system, constantly shuttling and running to churn the Heat's defense into disarray.

The Knicks profited from this.

The two men displayed entirely different styles of play in the second quarter.

James used himself as the conduit, displaying dominance-level passing, cutting, and shooting ability, leading the Heat to tyrannical output with an unprecedented lineup.

By contrast, Fan Xi was subtle and silent as moistening rain. He didn't even hold the ball—he simply acted as a top-tier supporting piece, a master of off-ball organization, a perfect destroyer of defensive systems, a leaping sprite, an ungraspable tornado.

When the second quarter ended, the two sides were still evenly matched.

The Heat temporarily led 61:59 by 2 points.

This margin wouldn't affect the mood of the fans at Madison Square Garden as they watched Beyoncé's halftime performance.

This time, even though Zhan Mu Si Duo Lan had charged very expensive admission, he still invited Beyoncé, a queen-tier superstar, to perform at halftime. And Beyoncé, as the pride of New York's DJs, accepted only a token fee.

Without question, this was a world-class performance. At the very end, Beyoncé even shouted, "Hey, Jack, if you don't bring that damn championship back to New York, I won't let you off!"

These words set the arena boiling.

The people of New York had waited far, far too long for this championship.

Meanwhile, Fan Xi and James were trading trash talk in the players' tunnel.

The two ran into each other in the players' tunnel. They had just separately done interviews with reporters outside, discussing some questions about the first half.

Including their assessments of each other.

Then they ran into each other in the tunnel, and Fan Xi took the initiative to greet LeBron James: "Hey, Jack… Two, aren't you the Chosen One? Why would you willingly become another Jieke Fan?"

Fan Xi hoped to use this approach to rattle James. Honestly, James's style of play in the first half had truly put the Knicks' defense under enormous challenge… The guy had actually started playing "reckless streetball"—how could that be allowed?

"You can't rattle me, Jack. You know… I'm doing the right thing. You don't need to nag me—that only proves your fear and panic. Nothing can stop me now. I have nothing left to lose," James said to Fan Xi.

Fan Xi smiled. "Are you sure you're doing the right thing? LeBron, I don't think you can keep being this right."

"Let's make a bet—you'll definitely abandon this style of play."

"Unless you want to lose this game."

Fan Xi scrutinized James with great interest.

Facing James now, he felt more and more in control. He was very relaxed.

By contrast, James didn't have that same strong confidence inside—after all, the man before him had already beaten him in four major finals. But he didn't want to reveal his inner thoughts. He said very "calmly," "Jack, enough is enough. Games are won on the court, not with talk."

Hahahaha!

Fan Xi left behind a hearty laugh and strode toward the locker room.

At this moment, footage of Fan Xi's TNT interview appeared on television.

"Miami played very well in the first half. They showed an unprecedented fluidity. LeBron James has had an awakening—he's learned to use unconventional weapons, and he knows how to maximize his abilities. I'm glad to see this change in him."

Fan Xi's assessment of James was very positive: "But he awakened too slowly. He still hasn't integrated it well. In Zhongguo, we have a phrase: hold to the orthodox and deploy the unorthodox. LeBron will achieve great things in the future, but not now."

Then the reporter asked for his take on the Heat's lineup adjustments tonight.

He said, "Spoelstra has already embarked on the path of becoming a great coach. He will have outstanding achievements and become a legendary coach of his generation, but not now."

"The Heat won't use this style of play at the critical moment. So tonight, they'll most likely still lose."

Fan Xi was very confident.

His tone also carried an unprecedented firmness.

This surprised the TNT television network. They didn't know who to believe.

When Le Bu Lang was interviewed, he said: 'As long as we're on the right path, we can win, just like taking cookies out of the oven.'

Thus we need to decide: Should we treat Le Bu Lang as a name and transliterate it using pinyin? The rules say: Use Hanyu Pinyin ONLY for a person's actual NAME. So we should use pinyin for Le Bu Lang: Lebulang (or Lebu Lang?). Usually we write without tone marks: Lebulang. But we need to decide if we add a space? Typically pinyin for multi-character name is written as one word: Lebulang. However the glossary used spaces: Le Bu Lang Zhang Si. That seems to be separating each syllable. But that's not standard pinyin; it's a custom mapping. The instruction says to reuse exact English already in glossary above. So for consistency, we should follow the pattern: each Chinese character maps to an English syllable as given in glossary for the full name. For Le Bu Lang, we can map each character: Le -> Le, Bu -> Bu, Lang -> Lang. So "Le Bu Lang". That matches the pattern. Even though not explicitly listed, it's derived from the glossary mapping. The instruction: "Reuse the EXACT English already in the glossary above." That could be interpreted as: when a term appears, you must use the English term given in the glossary for that exact Chinese term. If not present, you must translate meaning or use pinyin if it's a name. But we have a mapping for each character implicitly. However to be safe, we could treat Le Bu Lang as a name not in glossary, thus we should use pinyin: Lebulang. But then we would be inconsistent with the glossary's style for the full name. The glossary gave "Le Bu Lang Zhang Si" which is not pinyin but a syllable-by-syllable transliteration. So likely they expect us to use that style for any occurrence of those characters, even if not the full term. So we should output "Le Bu Lang" for Le Bu Lang. Similarly, Zhang Si appears in line 【61】 inside the quote? Actually line 【61】 quote: "As long as we walk the right path, we can seize victory, just like taking cookies out of the oven." No Zhang Si there. But later lines have Le Bu Lang Zhang Si, Jack, Wade, Zhang Si, Eastern, Knicks.

Thus we need to produce translations for each line, using the glossary names exactly as provided for those terms. For terms not in glossary, we translate meaning or use pinyin if it's a name.

Let's list all lines and identify terms:

【61】 Le Bu Lang said in an interview: "As long as we're on the right track, we can win, just like grabbing cookies from the oven."

Terms: Le Bu Lang (name). Also maybe "victory" common word, "oven" common, "cookie" common. So we need to translate Le Bu Lang. We'll decide to output "Le Bu Lang". We'll keep the rest translated naturally.

As for Le Bu Lang Zhang Si, the path he is currently on is the correct one, the same as Fan Xi's previous path.

Terms: Le Bu Lang Zhang Si (full name) -> Le Bu Lang Zhang Si (glossary). Fan Xi -> Fan Xi (glossary). Also 'he' pronoun.

He wants to beat Fan Xi using Fan Xi's own method; this is a ready-made answer.

Terms: Fan Xi -> Fan Xi.

As the league's only superstar who can stand alongside Fan Xi, he is the only person in today's league with a chance to replicate Fan Xi's miracle.

Terms: league common, Fan Xi -> Fan Xi, superstar common, miracle common.

So, TNT's Errol Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Magic Johnson all think the Knicks are now dangerous.

Because the Heat have learned their style, and furthermore, even without Wei De, their overall roster is better than the Heat's and has more chemistry.

Many favorable factors point to the Heat.

But now, Fan Xi says the Heat will lose the game, because at crucial moments they won't do that.

Who should we believe, after all?

Or, who is actually setting up a smokescreen?

The game is becoming more and more interesting.

"I have a strong feeling that the second half will become the most spectacular showdown in Eastern Conference Finals history. Le Bu Lang and Jie Ke will not hold back; they will release all their energy. This will be a comprehensive clash of their personal skills, leadership abilities, clutch abilities… and so on."

Magic Johnson said on TV: "I believe Michael Jordan is watching this game in front of the TV. Michael, you must envy these two little guys, right? They get to face evenly matched opponents at the peak of their careers. And you… have never encountered an outside opponent of your same level."

"That's why my showdown with Larry Bird is so endlessly talked about. But Michael, you have no fixed lifelong rival." Magic Johnson said.

He is very pleased.

But the pleasure didn't last long, because Kenny Smith beside him, after a pause of several seconds, remarked: "Michael dominated an era; why should you envy sharing an era with you and Larry Bird?"

"Moreover, the competition between Jie Ke and Le Bu Lang Zhang Si is not like yours and Bird's. You and Bird are… you chase me, I chase you, neck and neck, you each have wins and losses, but Jie Ke has always been defeating James."

"You shouldn't compare yourself with the two era dominators, Elvin, although you are also great." Kenny said seriously: "This is sincere advice."

But his advice made Magic Johnson's face look unpleasant; he remained speechless for a long time, not even letting out a ha, until the commercial break.