At last, the Lakers' preseason began.
They finished the preseason with a 4–2 record.
For a team that had just undergone an almost complete overhaul, that was already a pretty good result.
But now, Bales and his haters were taking another shot at Wang Yi.
On his show, Bales said that preseason games didn't count. Plenty of teams played well in the preseason, only to fall flat once the real Regular Season began.
The haters echoed similar comments on Twitter, following Bales's lead. That left Wang Yi's supporters and Lakers fans furious.
Beverley, who had once played alongside Wang Yi, was especially unhappy and went straight after Bales.
"When we played together on the Kings, how did you talk about our poor preseason performance?"
"You said you'd known all along that the Kings wouldn't play well, that we were bound to finish at the bottom of the standings and might not even make the Playoffs."
"But now the Lakers are putting up good results, and suddenly you're saying preseason results don't count?"
"Why didn't you say preseason results didn't count when the Kings played poorly?"
Bales had no way to refute Beverley, but he had no intention of responding, either.
He was only trying to draw attention, after all. Beverley was arguing with him now—wasn't that exactly the kind of attention he wanted?
And Shaquille O'Neal, James, and the others were firing back at him too. That was all attention.
At last, October 23 arrived. The new season's opening game was about to begin.
As usual, the league had scheduled the two teams that had battled for the championship the previous season—the Lakers and the Detroit Pistons—for the new season's opener.
Shaquille O'Neal and Barkley were calling the game today. They were certainly heavyweight commentators.
"The Pistons' roster hasn't changed