Chapter 552 Nike's Big Crisis

The game ended on the 20th, and the turmoil within the league occurred on the morning of the 21st.

The NBA represented by Stern and Nike have completely torn their faces apart, and Stern played three heavy cards in a row.

First, Artest's lip language and the confession of the psychologist were put together on the Internet.

To be honest, Artest provoked Sakuragi Hanamichi for despicable purposes and was instructed by Nike. In fact, it goes without saying that American fans can guess it even if they use their toes to think about it, but before that, they still firmly supported the Cavaliers and Artest, and even attacked Sakuragi Hanamichi and put pressure on the league to impose heavy penalties. That was only because this matter did not involve other "BUFFs", which was also the main reason why Phil Knight did not care too much about it.

But when this video was released, the trouble it caused was far beyond Phil Knight's expectations.

The main reason is that Artest's insults were too vicious. If you insult Sakuragi Hanamichi as a "weakling", it's normal trash talk, but if you insult someone's family, to be honest, it's really unacceptable.

For the "simple" American people, 9,999 out of 10,000 men will choose to fight back with fists. There is no room for negotiation. If the temper is a little bit more irritable, they will even touch the gun directly.

The fans of the Supersonics just thought that Sakuragi Hanamichi was too naive and didn't know how to insult back when provoked, so they couldn't refute it online, but now they have found a reason.

——You don't fight? Where are you from? I'll say hello to your parents, wife and children, please don't fight, I like this the most!

Most Cavaliers fans still know shame, which made the water army hired by Phil Knight a little unable to lead the rhythm, but this was just the beginning of the reaction.

Immediately afterwards, the Women's Federation intervened.

You can insult people if you want to, why do you associate a woman with that kind of work when you see her? Isn't this discrimination against women?

And it would be fine if someone else said this, but the key is Artest. This guy has a history of discrimination against women!

So, under the leadership of the Women's Federation, the majority of American female compatriots joined the war of words, and criticized Artest to pieces. By the way, they also started to criticize Nike, saying that Nike taught Artest to say this, and they are the ones who discriminate against women the most. Their shoes are for men to wear, and women? Women are all J-girls in their eyes! Don't buy their shoes!

In this era, the United States is not black life is not expensive enough, and the glass guys have not occupied half of the sky, so the group that cannot be offended the most is this group. Once this BUFF is added, it is simply a matter of life and death. No one can struggle at all, let alone a businessman. Even the most powerful politicians dare not speak up. Even Clark has a tigress in his family... You can only coax them well.

Phil Knight's head is about to explode. How did he provoke these snake-spirited lunatics again? Who set the pace?

The answer is obviously Yang Dong.

As early as the Nike Summit a few years ago, and after hitting Artest with a tactical board last time, the "glorious image" of the Women's Federation has been deeply rooted in Yang Dong's mind. Therefore, not only has he maintained a good relationship with the Women's Federation in recent years, he has donated a large amount of materials and money, and even joined the Women's Federation...

How can the Women's Federation not like a strong woman full of masculine breath and generous?

She is now the vice chairman of the Washington State Women's Federation! To provoke this group, it is as easy as eating and drinking water for her. Women can pick bones out of eggs, let alone such an obvious attack point.

With the two rhythms, the call for "heavy punishment of Sakuragi Hanamichi" that was still in full swing last night has disappeared instantly, and the league also issued a notice of "Sakuragi Hanamichi is exempted from punishment" at around 8 pm.

Nike lost this game miserably and had no power to fight back.

Immediately after the announcement that Hanamichi Sakuragi was exempted from punishment, the league also announced two important news, which were two finishing blows to Nike.

First, referee Bavetta admitted to accepting bribes from Nike and deliberately relaxed the standards of whistling during the game, which led to the escalation of conflicts on the court. He has now resigned. At the same time, the league will file a lawsuit against Nike in the New York federal court on the charge of commercial bribery.

For things like commercial bribery, the punishment intensity varies in different states. As one of the commercial centers and economically developed regions in the United States, New York State has very strict legislation on this. Once the charges are proven, Nike will not only face a sky-high fine, but the direct perpetrator will also face the risk of imprisonment.

As for the damage to its brand image, it goes without saying that it will be a heavy blow. Of course, that will have to wait until Nike loses the lawsuit. But judging from the information provided by the league, there are both witnesses and evidence, which are very complete. In addition, Stern has deep-rooted relationships in New York. It is simply difficult for Nike to win this battle, or even impossible.

At the same time, the league also gave another piece of news, that several senior executives of the league were fired.

They were all people who were found by Stern to have financial dealings with Nike, including his senior executive assistant Adam Silver.

Frankly speaking, there is no need to check how many people in the league have received benefits from Nike. Stern knows it very well, after all, even he himself has received it.

But so what? Those he received were just some valuables, which he had collected aside to prevent this hand, and he could withdraw at any time.

He also gave these executives a chance, hinting that this action would inevitably involve a wide range of people, hoping that they would confess voluntarily like Bavetta, hand over the bribes, and the league would let bygones be bygones.

Unfortunately, most people thought he was just joking, even including Silver, whom he originally valued the most.

Although Stern knew that Silver had no way to express his grievances, the bribes Nike gave him had long been squandered by him or used for promotion and interpersonal relationship maintenance, after all, his current salary was not high.

But, so what?

This kind of thing is not just a personal behavior. A new emperor has new ministers. Nike fell, and it was inevitable that some people would be sacrificed.

This time he dismissed more than 30 executives in one go, just to make a thorough cut with Nike.

And these three consecutive punches, even if Phil Knight was shrewd and had already assessed the risks, he was still a little breathless.

Nike's sales are bound to plummet, and the stock market will inevitably fluctuate greatly.

But this is not the most terrible thing.

For a company as big as Nike, the so-called bad news, the so-called market shrinkage, the so-called stock market turmoil, etc., can only be regarded as natural disasters. It is impossible to kill such a giant. What really kills him are the rats that come here smelling blood... the capital tycoons on Wall Street!

The heavy blow of the league, the attack of Under Armour, and the defection of the dogs are just a trigger.

As long as they lead the whole country to sing the bad news about Nike, will those Wall Street tycoons who even have blood on their breakfast miss such an opportunity?

They will short Nike, and then use the capital that is rich enough to rival a country to easily tear Nike into pieces like paper in the stock market!

They hold the sharp knife that will kill Nike!

Phil Knight knows this too well. He also plays with capital and has good connections on Wall Street, but it depends on who he is compared with.

Compared with Chu Bufan, one of the six giants of the world's largest and most popular company, Phil Knight's connections on Wall Street are not worth mentioning.

Chu Bufan appeared in the conference room yesterday and sent such a signal to the NBA shareholders. It was also the most important signal that caused the entire league shareholders to betray themselves!

Ordinary people can't see these deep-level competitions at all. They all think that Nike's opponents are just the NBA and a group of players. In fact, no one knows what they are enduring!

Phil Knight knew that he was destined to not be able to sleep in the next half month.

The only way to save Nike now...

He immediately mobilized all his connections on Wall Street, and at the same time used some false signals to try to stabilize those capital tycoons first, so that they would choose to wait and see.

What to wait and see? Wait and see if Nike has a chance to turn around and assess the risks of shorting Nike.

Then Nike needs to take advantage of their wait-and-see period to send out good news that can stabilize the morale of the army, such as the Cavaliers winning!

As long as the Cavaliers can beat the Supersonics and LeBron can replace Lin Dong, even if it still cannot offset all the negative news about Nike, at least it proves that Nike can still survive, still has cards to play, and still has a chance to turn around!

That would prevent those capital tycoons from looking down on Nike and shorting it. After all, they don't really have a mortal enemy with Nike. Shorting is also risky. Once the risk is greater than the benefit, even the hungry wolves on Wall Street will not take action.

Win, win, win!

Phil Knight's two old eyes are almost stinging red. He doesn't care about any grudges now. There is only one thought left in his mind: let the Cavaliers win and beat the damn Supersonics!

But how easy is that?

Now that Sakuragi Hanamichi and Chandler are exempt from punishment, they can return to the court in G2, while Artest on the Cavaliers side has to bid farewell to this round of the series due to injuries. The game arranged for the Supersonics has reduced the Cavaliers' personnel. How can they win?

Phil Knight thinks that it depends on the coach!

As early as the afternoon of June 21, the Cavaliers had directly relieved Mike Brown of his position as head coach. Phil Knight originally wanted to invite Chuck Daly to come out.

This head coach, who is famous for his defense, has blocked Michael Jordan, and has led the American Dream Team 1, is one of the most famous and powerful coaches in NBA history. He is particularly good at using people and is highly respected. He is obviously the best candidate to coach the Cavaliers at the moment.

Unfortunately, Chuck Daly, who is retired at home, is in a bad health and rejected Phil Knight's temporary rescue proposal at a sky-high price.

Then he went to Duke University to ask K to come to the rescue and offered a sky-high price of 3 million US dollars, only to let K coach this round of series.

However, earning 3 million US dollars in ten days is a sky-high price anywhere, but K was unmoved... In his words, my reputation is far better than 3 million, and I will not coach a team that is destined to lose for money.

To put it bluntly, K didn't think the Cavaliers had any chance of winning, and he knew that Nike's 3 million was not easy to get, and he would take the blame after the loss.

Until the 23rd, when the two teams played Game 2, the Cavaliers' head coach was still undecided.

Artest, one of the starting five, was missing, and the only person sitting in the coaching booth was the original assistant coach.

Not to mention the Sonics fans, even the Cavaliers fans couldn't be optimistic about them.

Fortunately, after two days of adjustment, O'Neal finally returned to form, scoring 27 points and 19 rebounds, and together with LeBron (32 points) and Wade (25 points) scored a full 84 points. The Sonics' defense was no longer as effective as in the previous game. Facing the bombardment of the Big Three, coupled with Kidd's strict defense after learning his lesson, Payton was exhausted early and lost his combat effectiveness.

And Chandler's foul tactics were "cracked" by O'Neal's 8-for-14 free throw rate, so that Chandler left the game early with six fouls. After losing Payton and Chandler, the Sonics could only rely on Sakuragi Hanamichi and Lin Dong on the defensive end, but after all, there were only two people. If they chose to defend the inside, they would lose the outside. If they chose to pull Sakuragi out to defend LeBron alone, O'Neal would kill all around. Rukawa Kaede and Iguodala's defensive abilities were obviously far behind these super giants, so that the Sonics' overall defense was lackluster.

However, the Sonics still won, 111:124, ‘only’ won by 13 points.

Won on offense.

Lin Dong scored a mediocre finals triple-double for his personal data, 44 points, 11 rebounds and 15 assists, but the Sonics had 6 players scoring in double figures.

Payton, who played only one and a half quarters, scored 11 points and 5 assists, Chandler, who played only half the game, scored 10 points and 3 rebounds, Sakuragi Hanamichi was so exhausted in the paint that he scored 24 points and 12 rebounds, Rukawa scored 12 points with 4 super-fast 3-pointers, and Iguodala also scored 12 points with 4 3-pointers. These five main players alone scored 113 points, and the firepower never stopped. The smooth offense and internal and external linkage left the Cavaliers helpless.

Unable to defend!

Losing two home games in a row also made almost all of the United States lose confidence in the Cavaliers.

Wall Street began to surge, and basically everyone involved in finance had already smelled the taste of a feast.

Phil Knight was already extremely anxious, and he spent a lot of money, and finally invited a great interim head coach for the Cavaliers at a sky-high price of 3 million US dollars.

Lenny Wilkens, the former coach of the NBA with 1,000 wins, was also the former head coach of the Sonics who led the Supersonics to win the only championship before 2002.

He was nominated for the Hall of Fame twice, once as a player and the other time as a coach, and was also one of the 50 superstars selected by the NBA in 1996.

Although he has been retired for a long time, Phil Knight still has high hopes for this legendary head coach in NBA history, because when the Supersonics won Game 1, this great god was in the mood and wrote a technical post on the Internet about "small ball tactics".

This is the first person to describe the Supersonics' playing tactics as "small ball", and the first person to propose the concept of small ball.

What is small ball? It's not that their players are short. This has nothing to do with the height of the players. It's that the Sonics' style of play has made the most of the space. The court is very big for them, and there are empty spaces everywhere, so it seems that the ball is small and the people are small. To put it bluntly, it is to use a wide-angle lens to magnify your perspective, and then analyze this set of tactics on this basis.

This is an upgraded version of sports warfare.

Lenny Wilkens has thoroughly analyzed the Sonics' style of play from the inside out, and more importantly, he even proposed a solution.

What's so great about the Sonics' lineup? I think everyone in the league will mention their offense now, Lin Dong's unsolvable containment, Sakuragi Hanamichi's inside dribbling, and Rukawa Kaede and Iguodala's unreasonable 3-pointers on the outside, plus the overall extremely efficient offense and defense conversion and ball conduction, so that the Sonics can always control the rhythm of the entire game in their own hands, and there are too many scoring points.

But for a coach like Lanny who has won thousands of games, he obviously sees more than just the Sonics' offense.

The truly terrifying thing about this Sonics team is their defense!