Volume Four: Golden State's Golden Age
Chapter 686: A Long Road Ahead
In the end, the Warriors defeated the Nets 123–104 with their superior strength. After domestic CBA fans saw Zhou Qi's response, they curiously asked, "Is the NBA really that much better? How big do you think the gap between the CBA and NBA is?" The comment received tens of thousands of likes, nearly matching the likes on Zhou Qi's Weibo post. Both teams treated the game like a regular-season matchup, leaving the fans in attendance thoroughly satisfied. The Warriors paid the Western Regions Team a $650,000 buyout fee, and Zhou Qi finally became a free agent, signing a four-year minimum-salary contract with the Warriors. If the lousy association wanted achievements to show off, didn't it all come down to the national team's results? When Yi Jianlian returned to China, he received a hero's welcome. The media gave him extensive coverage, and the fans did not blame him either. In the other four games, Yi Jianlian had also been the Huaxia Men's Basketball Team's leading scorer. The Warriors were the defending champions, the undisputed best team in the NBA. With Curry, the league's top player, and Zhang Yu's explosive popularity, they had an enormous fanbase in Huaxia. Zhang Yu promised that these two games would not be handled perfunctorily and that Warriors fans would not be disappointed. Yi Jianlian and Zhou Qi said they would give it their all and put on a wonderful game for Huaxia fans. Yi Jianlian said seriously, "But after NBA fans explained it to them, they learned that other NBA teams generally did not do this. They did not interfere with players' offseason training." When it came to things like developing campus basketball, commercializing the CBA, or protecting players' rights, the lousy association could