The clamor of media day was drawing to a close. The reporters were satisfied, every one of them convinced they had reaped plenty, and they could hardly wait to rush back to their newsrooms to turn the Grizzlies' infighting into tomorrow's sports headline.
According to the schedule, the team still had one last item: taking the new-season team photo.
However, Rudy Gay did not show up.
His stated reason for absence was “a sudden physical discomfort.”
Hearing that official explanation, one reporter could not help joking, “If I were Rudy, after listening to Eli's words, I would probably feel ‘unwell’ too.”
“More than unwell,” a fellow reporter said with a laugh, “I might have thrown up on the spot.”
More observant people noticed that not only was Gay absent; President Jerry West also did not appear at the photo shoot. In his place was Vice President Dick Versace. This detail immediately sparked more speculation.
As everyone knew, the relationship between West and Versace was far from harmonious.
See? This was the fate of a long-quiet small-market team suddenly receiving enormous attention. All the long-accumulated problems had not appeared overnight; they had existed all along, only no one had cared before. And when a nationally watched superstar like Xu Ling arrived in Memphis, all the previously ignored hidden dangers were inevitably exposed under the spotlight. The reporters keenly caught West's absence and quickly linked it to internal conflict, but no one looked into a fact: since becoming the team's president, Jerry West had never once attended any preseason team photo.
Not once.
He thought very highly of himself and always believed his presence would take away the attention that the coaching staff and players deserved. This was his long-standing principle.
This was Jerry West. He never deliberately cultivated his own influence, but once the team he had built with his own hands hit rock bottom, he would take all the blame upon himself.
And in that president's office overlooking the training court, Jerry West had just turned off the media-day broadcast. Eli's calm yet cutting replies from the screen still seemed to echo in the air.
His face was frighteningly dark. After a moment of silence, he said to Laura Granckler, “Tell Rudy to come to my office. Tell him to come right now!”
Gay arrived late, sauntering into the office with an indifferent expression.
West did not ask him to sit. He watched him with a heavy gaze, his tone stern but not a roar: “Rudy, I watched you come into the league. I remember what you were like in your rookie season. Humble, eager to learn, willing to give everything for every opportunity. Tell me, what exactly turned that young man into what he is today? Choosing to complain publicly through the media and create unnecessary division inside the team?”
West paused briefly, then continued: “You and Eli aren't destined to be incompatible. If you were truly willing to get to know him, you would find that your styles can completely coexist, even complement each other. You could have become a frontcourt pairing the whole league would envy.”
On the surface, Gay still maintained an air of humility, his head slightly lowered, but his eyes drifted elsewhere. Inside, he was full of contempt and disdain for the logo man's lecture. Coexist? Complement? It sounded nice, but wasn't it just saying that damned Chinese man should rise above everyone and have the whole team following his lead? On what grounds?
West saw through his perfunctory attitude, his voice growing colder: “Rudy, talent can open doors for you, but professional attitude and vision determine how far you can ultimately go. You are still young; you have plenty of time to compete with Eli, and enough talent to become a far better player than I imagine.”
Hearing this, Gay merely muttered vaguely, “I understand, Jerry. I will keep it in mind.”
Then Gay left.
West knew in his heart that this was merely perfunctory appeasement. But what mattered most to him at that moment was to clearly convey the front office's attitude; even if it was only a hypocritical gesture, he had to make Gay believe that the team still superficially maintained the position of ‘believing he and Xu Ling could coexist.’
After that, he instructed his assistant Laura Granckler to ask Xu Ling to come over.
Xu Ling came a little later because he had just finished the team photo.
When he walked into the president's office, West was lost in thought over the new season's schedule.
“Jerry,” Xu Ling said as he naturally entered and sat down across from West, “you wanted to see me?”
Apart from the tryout and signing days, Xu Ling and West had had very little direct contact.
In his memory, the only time West had called him on his own initiative was to ask about Jarrius Jackson. Xu Ling had given a positive response at the time, and not long after, the Grizzlies signed Jackson.
No matter what West had been considering in that move, and no matter whether this always unsmiling old man had done it to give his third overall pick a trustworthy teammate in a new environment—all of it gave Xu Ling the sense of being respected because he was valued.
Therefore, even though he knew perfectly well why West had summoned him, he did not show any displeasure, and simply waited calmly for the other man to speak.
West wasted no words on empty pleasantries and came straight to the point: “Eli, I appreciate your toughness; it is an indispensable quality in a leader. But your handling of this today was too impulsive.”
Xu Ling remained silent, not responding.
“We all know what you said was true, but you shouldn't have aimed the spearhead so directly at Rudy!” Clear displeasure surfaced on West's face. “By doing this, you have left neither you nor Rudy any possibility of turning back, and you will make the whole league laugh at us!”
“Why do we need room to turn back?”
West's gaze sharpened: “What?”
“Why do we need to turn back?” Xu Ling repeated. “Of the Grizzlies' past, which part is truly worth remembering?”
Since taking over the team in the spring of 2002, West had admitted that he had made mistakes and wrong decisions, but in the end he had helped this once-disgraced team reach the playoffs three years in a row. That was enough to console the fans.
He had never imagined anyone would dismiss all of this so lightly.
Xu Ling's rhetorical question hit like a bullet, striking without warning the part of West's heart that could least be touched.
The logo man flew into a rage in an instant. He sprang to his feet and said agitatedly, “Don't jump to conclusions about things you know nothing about! The Grizzlies may not have a glorious history, but they are still the beloved team of countless people in Memphis! You have no right to pass judgment—do you hear me? As things stand, you have absolutely no right to tell me ‘the past isn't worth remembering’! Unless you can lead us to better results through real action!”
“Until then, what you need to do is get the hell back out there and pretend everything is normal! Keep training, keep preparing, pretend you and Rudy can still coexist, pretend the media-day circus was just a young man's momentary impulse! Then greet the new season together like a damned team!”
This was the second old man Xu Ling had encountered since transmigrating who had lost control of his emotions and roared at him.
What Xu Ling had really meant to express was that he had no interest whatsoever in ‘patching things up with Gay.’ But West had clearly misunderstood him.
Or had he truly misunderstood?
Even if West had not lost his temper, would this conversation ultimately not have arrived at this same ending anyway?
What did Xu Ling really want?
To trade Rudy Gay?
Undeniably, he did have that desire. But training camp was underway, and the trade window was still far from opening. However deep the conflict, they had to temporarily conceal it and maintain surface calm.
The moment he stepped out of the president's office, Xu Ling suddenly realized the true core of West's furious words:
Pretend.
Pretend nothing had happened, and then wait quietly for something to happen.
Outside the president's office, West's female assistant Laura Granckler still wore a professional smile. Clearly, she had long since taken in all the shouting from inside the office.
“Is Jerry's temper always this unstable?” Xu Ling asked casually.
“Believe me,” Granckler said, her smile unchanged, “he has always been like this.”
The next day, training camp continued as usual.
If there was anything worth mentioning, it was that Rudy Gay had not expected the Mr. Sixty Million to still be willing to pass to him after the media-day incident, which led to him catching a pass with his face in practice like Hanamichi Sakuragi.
He got a nosebleed because of it.
Xu Ling stood to one side, hands on his hips in helplessness: “If you are planning to tell the reporters I punched you until you got a nosebleed, I won't deny it.”
In the distance, Lowry burst out laughing, and the others were drawn into laughter as well.
For a moment, Marc Iavaroni almost forgot about the media-day affair.
His team looked too normal.
That degree of normalcy made his scalp prickle and his spine run cold.
But the Grizzlies being normal did not mean the outside world would let media day go.
Media outlets rushed to report on the Grizzlies' media-day incident. Obviously, Gay, who had actively stirred up trouble, received more criticism, but the merciless Xu Ling was also considered to have a nasty personality.
This was especially true among some Nike-aligned media people.
Take ESPN's Rick Bucher, for example. In his column he wrote: “Rudy Gay may be the fuse, but Eli's reaction proves precisely that Rudy's accusations were not baseless. Forget that TTU ‘half-court terminator’; Eli is more arrogant than we imagined. In that respect, he may be the closest to his draft comparison. We may truly be witnessing the rise of the next Kobe Bryant.”
Without a doubt, as the most influential sports media in the world, ESPN had countless ties with major leagues and major sports brands.
Bucher's statement was a microcosm of this.
The impact of this matter was so great that even Xu Ling's college mentor, Bob Knight, stepped forward to speak for his disciple.
“Utter nonsense!” Knight once again displayed his unreserved protectiveness toward his disciple. “You can ask other people who have worked with Eli; no one will say he is arrogant, and no one will say he is the kind of person who enjoys privileges! I will say it again: this is nonsense. Everyone who has worked with him thinks he is the best person they have ever met. Rudy Gay is the first exception so far. Now I ask you, is it everyone else who misjudged, or is Rudy Gay lying? Answer me!!!”
In the end, it was ESPN's star writer Bill Simmons who came out to clean up the mess.
In his 2007-08 NBA season-preview column, he wrote: “In my original plan, the Grizzlies were ranked tenth among Western Conference teams, because I believed Eli could make an impact on a team with a decent roster. Maybe he would not be as great as he was at TTU, but I absolutely believed he would get the Grizzlies back on track within a few years. But now I am wavering. I believe in Eli, but I do not believe in a broken team. Pau Gasol does not want to stay there, Rudy Gay has fallen out with him; does he have any help? You cannot turn the tide single-handedly! So I rank the Memphis Grizzlies fourteenth in the West, ahead of Minnesota and behind Seattle.”
Simmons's point was easy to understand: leave it to time.
Indeed, time could answer all questions. But the battles among sports brands ran from morning till night.
After training camp ended, the Grizzlies set off for Las Vegas for preseason games. They faced the Toronto Raptors, Indiana Pacers, and Los Angeles Clippers in succession, then traveled to Texas to battle the Houston Rockets, where Yao Ming played, and the Utah Jazz.
In this two-week, five-game preseason journey, the Grizzlies went 3-2. Xu Ling averaged 26 minutes per game and put up all-around numbers of 22 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists, shooting 52%, showing excellent adaptability to the intensity of NBA-level competition.
However, behind the eye-catching individual performance, obvious problems remained—he averaged 2.5 turnovers per game, a particularly conspicuous number. Especially when executing the SSOL offensive system heavily promoted by head coach Marc Iavaroni, Xu Ling's decision timing and passing choices in fast transitions still fell short of the system's requirements. At times he seemed hesitant; at other times, in pursuit of speed, he made some unnecessary passing turnovers.
But preseason was exactly the place to find problems. To help Xu Ling get used to the rhythm of the NBA, Iavaroni had him play full-time point guard in the five preseason games; this situation would not occur during the season.
Judging from the process, Xu Ling adapted quite well.
However, not everyone thought so. For example, ESPN senior reporter Chris Sheridan, after the Grizzlies finished the preseason, published a commentary titled “What Exactly Did Adidas Buy for Sixty Million Dollars?” The article sharply questioned the rationality of Adidas's high-priced signing and portrayed Xu Ling as ‘a marketing product ill-suited to the team's current system and overrated.’ More strikingly, Sheridan explicitly pointed out that the equivalent value of this contract was enough to rival the one Nike had offered LeBron James back then.
Did this mean Adidas already regarded Xu Ling as a LeBron-level superstar destined to shine for an era?
Obviously, Adidas would never sit by and watch Nike-aligned media apply public-opinion pressure on Xu Ling.
Soon, David Aldridge, an authoritative reporter for The Washington Post, wrote a rebuttal, launching a forceful counterargument with an article titled “Shortsightedness and Prejudice: Why Are We So Quick to Define a Young Man's Future?”
In the article, Aldridge pointedly noted: “Mr. Sheridan has cleverly ignored Xu's defensive anticipation, the intuition of his off-ball movement, and his clutch stability beyond his age. To completely deny a genius based solely on five preseason games that do not count and an immature tactical system is thoroughgoing shortsightedness. History has repeatedly told us that evaluating genius requires patience—do not forget, around this time in 2003, Ricky Davis still thought LeBron James would become his ‘good sidekick’ in the future.”
For a time, the public-opinion war between sports brands was launched, with Xu Ling as the protagonist and Memphis as the battlefield. When had the people here ever seen such a spectacle?
In the midst of this chaotic atmosphere woven from clamor, expectation, and doubt, the Grizzlies stumbled through all of their preseason travels and welcomed the regular-season opener at the end of October.
They would host the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, led by Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili.
That morning, Xu updated a tweet:
“When the sun rises, forget yesterday. Good morning, Blues City.”
Chapter 64