After the trip to Orlando, Su Feng and Kobe returned to Philadelphia on a night flight.
Although Kobe had been heartbroken by his idol, Hardaway, he was overjoyed to have taken a photo with the "Shark" O'Neal and obtained his signature.
As for Su Feng, he certainly hadn't expected Kobe to actually bring him to O'Neal, with whom they had even become acquainted…
That was possibly fate!
….
The next day at 4 AM.
It was the day of Su Feng's induction ceremony into his new team, but Su Feng and Kobe didn't relax on their training schedule.
Believe it or not, Kobe hadn't come for Su Feng's sandwiches, and neither had Su Feng for Kobe's Brick Shot Points…
"Hurry! Where are the sandwiches? I'm starving!" Kobe said without much patience as soon as they met at the basketball court.
Su Feng chuckled. "Don't worry. I made you a special breakfast today."
Kobe shot Su Feng a suspicious look. "I only want sandwiches."
Then Su Feng pulled a lunch box out of his bag and passed it to Kobe.
"What's this?" Kobe asked, puzzled.
"Tofu
"Tofu pudding? Are… Are you sure it's edible? Gulp… Eh? It's sweet. Yum."
Holding a bowl of the so-called "tofu pudding" in his hands, Kobe had forgotten about the sandwiches all of a sudden.
He was wolfing down the food hungrily. The tall and glorified image he used to hold in Su Feng's mind had begun to collapse…
Su Feng forced a smile and said, "Ahem, I actually prepared a spoon for you…" Tofu was no cheap product in the States.
It had cost him a great sum of money just to make two bowls of tofu pudding.
But when he thought of the Brick Shot Points…
"Money is nothing," Su Feng reminded himself.
After Kobe had finished the last bit of his bowl of tofu pudding, he noticed that Su Feng's tofu pudding looked different from his.
"Why is yours red?" Kobe asked out of curiosity.
"Mine is spicy," Su Feng replied.
"Spicy?" Kobe was drooling.
Before Su Feng could speak, Kobe snatched the bowl of red tofu pudding from Su Feng's hands and swallowed a mouthful…
"FU**! FU**! FU**!" Kobe cursed loudly.
Su Feng handed him a bottle of energy drink immediately.
Kobe was a true man. He had dared to challenge himself to Su Feng's spicy tofu pudding, which was on the upper scale in terms of spiciness.
"How can this thing be spicy?!"
Kobe shoved the bowl of spicy tofu pudding back into Su Feng's arms. He turned to Su Feng with a look of protest, as if saying, "You heretic!"
Su Feng couldn't explain himself to Kobe, because he was a firm believer of "spicy tofu pudding", just like he believed in sweet rice dumplings.
"But this is far from filling…" Kobe looked at Su Feng pleadingly as he patted his belly.
Su Feng shrugged. "Rust assured. I brought more than enough sandwiches."
That set Kobe floating with joy again as if he had already forgotten about his terrible experience with spicy tofu pudding…
….
Clang, clang, clang!
Su Feng and Kobe went to school together after the morning training.
One thing that's worth mentioning was that Su Feng and Kobe had been streamed into the same class thanks to Joe Bryant.
Su Feng was not a new face to the class either as many knew him from the friendly match.
Anyway, Lower Merion students had also heard about his heroic incident in the previous semester.
Kobe patted Su Feng's shoulder and said, pointing at a buff black girl, "Hey, Su, that's Tina. Do you want me to introduce you to her?"
Su Feng shook his head. "I'm not interested in girls."
"Tina's father is an NBA basketball player. My English wasn't good when I just came to the US, and I've improved a lot thanks to her," Kobe told Su Feng.
Su Feng nodded in acknowledgment. Soon, a thought crossed his mind… Kobe's story.
Tina…
"Is her surname Lucas?" Su Feng asked.
"Ha, I thought you just said you weren't interested in girls. Let me tell you, Tina is a sports genius." Kobe laughed.
As expected!
Tina Lucas… If Su Feng's memory didn't fail him, the girl's father was the famous John Lucas.
The first overall pick of the 1976 NBA draft, the star of the Houston Rockets, the current coach for the San Antonio Spurs, the future…
Head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers!
However, John Lucas wasn't a stellar coach as much as he was an outstanding basketball player. Su Feng remembered this because he had read in Kobe's biography that he had attended the same school as John Lucas' daughter.
However, Su Feng didn't know that they were actually in the same class.
In Su Feng's former life, when Kobe announced that he wanted to skip college and join the NBA, John Lucas wanted to make sure that the Philadelphia star Kobe had indeed reached the NBA standard. John had done so via his daughter's help.
Therefore…
John had brought the best player of the Philadelphia 76ers, Jerry Stackhouse, to Lower Merion.
Stackhouse was only a first-year player back then, but he had achieved a spectacular result of 19.2 points per game during the Rising Stars Challenge. Hence, he'd very much like to teach the arrogant kid Kobe a lesson when they first met.
You ask how it went?
Naturally, Stackhouse was defeated.
The audience of that match recounted that Kobe and Stackhouse were equally excellent, though Kobe had a slight upper hand.
One thing that's worth noting was that somehow someone from the Lakers learned about this one-on-one match, which made them even more determined to pick Kobe at the NBA Draft.
Hence, it was fair to say that this match had pushed Kobe into the limelight. At the same time, it changed Stackhouse…
Just kidding. It didn't affect him at all!
Not only had he remained his arrogant self after the defeat, but Stackhouse had also become rather aggressive during his subsequent interactions with Iverson…
In the 96/97 season, Stackhouse made an average of 16.1 shot attempts each game, with a poor goal percentage of 40.7%. His average number of assists per game also dropped to 3.1 times, which severely disrupted the attack strategy of his team. This also destroyed the 76ers' managers' dream of building golden double guns in the backcourt.
And that's it.
Not long into the 97/98 season, Stackhouse continued to behave in his own way, disregarding other people's advice. Hence, the managers of the 76ers fired him…
Afterward, Stackhouse joined the Detroit Pistons and became a "scoring machine", but many doubted whether he could be counted as a successful basketball player…
Ahem, back to the topic.
After one day of lessons, the induction ceremony for Su Feng into the Lower Merion High School basketball team was held at the indoor basketball court of the school.
There was nothing special about the ceremony. All the members introduced themselves, the coach presented a set of sports attire and basketball shoes to Su Feng, and that's all.
However, Kobe wanted to spice it up.
"Sing a song, Su!" Kobe suggested at the end of the induction ceremony.
Su Feng looked at the head coach, Gregg, who nodded helplessly.
Alright…
Singing was definitely not Su Feng's forte.
Although he only knows a few non-Chinese songs…
He couldn't possibly sing any of them given the current circumstances!
Just to name a few, he knew "Love Song: Red Berries in
But please, he was in the United States, not the Soviet
Wait a minute, Su Feng now remembered that he actually knew one or two English songs.
"Ahem…"
Su Feng cleared his throat and began his performance.
"You know you love me, I know you care,
"Just shout whenever, and I'll be there…
"Like baby, baby, baby, oh!
"Like baby, baby, baby, oh…"
Kobe had wanted to pull a prank on Su Feng, but now he was dumbfounded.
Despite Su Feng's mediocre singing skills, the song was exceptionally melodious…
The song was called "Baby", written by a Canadian young man. Su Feng had spent much effort learning this song in his former life so that he could flirt with girls…
"Well sung! Su, who wrote the song? I've never heard it before!" Kobe was the first to clap his hands after Su Feng's performance.
Su Feng pondered for a while and said, "I don't know, but it's not me. Okay. I'm done singing. Coach Gregg, may I ask what we are training today?"
It would take another decade before the debut of this song. Hence, it was no surprise that Kobe hadn't heard it before.
Personally, Su Feng wasn't interested in singing, even less so in memory work. He wondered what kind of brain it had to take to recite lyrics and scripts, like the main characters in many novels.
Su Feng couldn't remember the full lyrics of any other English songs, though he could recall the most famous scenes from some movies or the chorus lyrics of a few songs.
Some authors simply didn't know how to write realistically!
But Su Feng's life goal was still to join the NBA, become a basketball superstar, and marry a rich, pretty girl!
Luckily, Kobe and the other team members didn't care much about the fact that they hadn't heard of the song. It was natural, given the poor availability of information in the 1990s.
Therefore, Su Feng had passed the challenge effortlessly. "Anyway, who would want to find trouble with someone as handsome as me?" Su Feng thought.
….
To Su Feng's surprise, he successfully integrated into the team faster than he thought he would.
Since he was the new member of the team, he had expected that his team members might try to bully him. He had even thought about how he should react in some of the possible situations.
However…
During the training, every team member was willing to pass the ball to Su Feng. They would also smile at him, even if he had failed to score.
"Is it because of my handsome looks?" Su Feng made a careful guess.
After the training, the point guard Schwartz resolved Su Feng's confusion.
"Su, I think you probably know… Actually, we are all scared of Kobe," Schwartz whispered.
Su Feng nodded.
"After we lost the state championship last year, Gay said, 'That's alright. Our opponents were too pro'. And you know what happened to him afterward?" Schwartz still had shivers when he recounted what he had been through in the previous season.
"What?"
"Kobe stared at Gay for a whopping four hours and 58 minutes. You know that? It's not like how we normally look at people. He was like… a mamba. Yeah, like a mamba staring at his prey!" Schwartz said.
"Wow…" Su Feng wanted to say "I wouldn't expect any less from the Black Mamba", but he kept the words inside upon seeing that Kobe was not far away.
"After that, Kobe demanded everyone to train with him, day and night, because we won't be able to win the state championship before graduation if we don't train hard enough.
"But, Su, I trust that you know it too. Kobe's stamina and physical strength… we can keep up with him!"
"After that, many senior members of the basketball team quit.
"And most importantly, Kobe has been very strict with us even during normal training.
"If we don't pass the ball to him during training or competitions and attempt to shoot by ourselves, well, it's fine if the ball gets in, but if it doesn't… He'll stare at you for God-knows-how-long!
"But, Su, did you notice that Kobe actually smiled when you couldn't score during practice today?
"And when you did score, he even patted our shoulder and said, 'Good pass! That's how you should do it!'
"Su, you are our savior!
"I've heard about you. You must be the angel the Lord has sent to protect us!" Schwartz exclaimed, brimming with emotion.
Su Feng was speechless.
"What on earth!!
"Should I grow a pair of wings now?!"
However, Su Feng now understood that the team members had actually misunderstood Kobe.
Kobe's English was rather poor when he had just come to Lower Merion. Hence, in many cases, he was unable to communicate well with his team.
Coupled with Kobe's strong desire for winning, he would naturally be very strict with his teammates as well as himself.
Su Feng patted Schwartz's shoulder and wanted to say something to comfort him. But then he thought…
"Isn't that what the future point guards of the Lakers will have to go through?"
….
After the conversation with Schwartz, Su Feng walked toward Kobe, who seemed fully engrossed in a small notebook. Curious, he asked, "What are you reading? Are we not going to the special training now?"
There was something unusual in Kobe's eyes.
"We are having a friendly match with Ridley High School the day after tomorrow," Kobe said.
"They were the champions last year."
"And the year before.
"And the year before the year before.
"They… have been the state champions of Pennsylvania for six consecutive years."
"The real-life version of the Sannoh Industry Affiliated High
"We must defeat them in order to become the state champions ourselves!" Kobe said with the utmost seriousness.
Su Feng nodded. But if he remembered correctly, Kobe would not win that state championship until he was in grade 12. But Su Feng also seemed to remember that…
In grade 11, the team that Kobe had lost to was not the legendary Ridley High School.
"Su, I must win the state championship, and I will!" Kobe said.
"I know… I want to win it too." Of course, Su Feng had to win the state championship… How could he join the NBA without it?
According to the inter-school basketball competition schedule in the United States, friendly matches would be held before the start of the official matches in November.
Su Feng knew that he still had time to improve himself further.
After all…
Su Feng was no longer satisfied with his high-school-level basketball skills.
Luckily, though, he could turn to Kobe for help.
"Let's go for extra training, Kobe!" Su Feng suggested.
"Sure!" Kobe felt that his passion and perseverance had finally been understood…
….