No brothers, no basketball. When it comes to basketball, we not only love basketball itself, but also the feeling of fighting with our brothers on the court because of this carrier.
In the basketball world, there are countless pairs of well-known brothers on the court who have impressed us. Dayao and Liu Wei may be the pair with the most delicate relationship among them.
From their youth to their forties, the relationship between the two has changed several times in the past 26 years.
What remains unchanged is that to the wider public, Yao Ming is always the first person mentioned, and Liu Wei is just the defender who passed the ball to Yao Ming.
"I am very happy to be able to return to Shanghai. Maybe I will end my career after this season. I am very grateful to everyone for accompanying me through this year." After the Shanghai team ended this season's CBA schedule , Liu Wei was unwilling to leave for a long time after playing at home. He walked around the stadium to thank the fans, choking up and crying several times during the process.
?Obviously this season is likely to be defender Liu Wei’s last dance.
This time, we will review this period of brotherhood that has been recorded in the history of the National Basketball Team from Liu Wei’s perspective.
If Yao Ming is a Chinese boy who combines both Eastern and Western cultural traits and successfully integrates them to the outside world, then Liu Wei is a Chinese at heart: reserved, taciturn, deep but simple.
These two people with such contrasting personalities got connected because of basketball and have become good friends since they were teenagers.
Liu Wei and Yao Ming were both born in 1980 and met when they were 14 years old. They were recruited into the Shanghai Youth Team together.
The two hit it off and became good friends. They encouraged each other on and off the court and took care of each other in life. They formed a team and went to the United States to attend a Nike training camp together.
During those days in the United States, due to lack of funds, Liu Wei gave up one hamburger every day to Dayao, who had a larger appetite.
At the age of 16, Liu Wei first joined the National Youth Team and showed Yao Ming his jersey to express his pride and encouragement. Two years later, it was Yao Ming who advanced to the national team, and Yao responded in kind to Liu Wei.
In 2002, the two continued to grow and worked together to end the Bayi team's six consecutive championships and win the CBA championship for the Shanghai Sharks. After that, Yao Ming, who grew faster, went to the NBA's Houston Rockets.
After Yao Ming came to the NBA in the early days, Liu Wei contacted Yao every day using MSN to share each other's lives. But everyone knows that between two brothers, there is always a fast one and a slow one. From then on, the two of them were actually in two different worlds.
There are always people who walk fast and people who walk slowly.
In this timeline, we are all familiar with Yao Ming’s story, but we know very little about Liu Wei’s world, and we have ignored Liu Wei’s growth.
Liu Wei was present and no one noticed anything strange. Liu Wei retreated, and it was difficult for anyone to catch him.
Liu Wei, who was once criticized wildly by fans, was once Asia's leading point guard, and he was also a rare powerful guard. You must know that it is not just a random Asian guard who has the NBA's inside dribbling skills.
02-03 season: In the post-Yao Ming era, Liu Wei took up the banner of Shanghai, averaging 23.9 points, 6.7 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.5 steals, and 3.9 turnovers per game.
Liu Wei’s CBA season scoring average record for local point guards was only recently broken by Guo Ailun.
It has always been Liu Wei's goal to study abroad and even challenge the NBA. He still practices more every day as always, and has built a yellow body that is 92 kilograms but can still dunk at will.
Dayao's trip to the NBA is naturally an invisible stimulus for Liu Wei.
In 2004, the Sacramento Kings signed Liu Wei with a non-guaranteed contract. After Liu Wei returned to the United States with the team after playing preseason games in China, he was told that he was temporarily unable to stay in the team's regular season lineup. , or go to the Development League first. In addition, due to many factors off the court, Liu Wei also had no chance to try the Development League and completely left the NBA stage.
A year later, another opportunity to study abroad appeared. The powerful Perth Wildcats of the Australian League offered Liu Wei an olive branch and offered him a one-year contract with an annual salary of one million after tax. No matter in terms of financial gain or improvement of personal skills, it was the most suitable and expedient choice for Liu Wei at that time. After signing the contract, Liu Wei was invited to play in the Australian League All-Star Game.
Unfortunately, the relevant parties discussed it for a long time and still disagreed with Liu Wei's departure. Liu Wei still kept the signed contract at home, but his personal passport was never at home during Liu Wei's peak period.
Watching his brother Yao on the other side grow up in the NBA and be selected as an All-Star, Liu Wei was happy to contact his brother and started to wash up, but he also had to gradually let go of his dream of studying abroad.
For a long time afterwards, Liu Wei was still the best point guard in the country, but his ability was not enough to save the Shanghai team by himself. After Shanghai won the championship in 2002, it fell into a downturn. The overall strength of the team has been at the bottom of the league. It has missed the playoffs for many years in a row. The ball market has gradually declined with the disappointing record.
In the 2008-2009 season, the Shanghai team experienced the darkest season in team history. With only one foreign player, it lost 44 of 50 games.
After the season, the team's sponsors withdrew their funding, and Yao Ming, who had a deep friendship with the Shanghai team, became the team's new owner. When the new financial owner Yao Ming needed Liu Wei the most, out of his love for the team and brotherhood, Liu Wei renewed his contract with Shanghai at a price far lower than the Bayi Team's recruitment offer contract.
The relationship between Liu Wei and Yao Ming has also changed, becoming master and servant. In the three years of cooperation, although the Shanghai team's performance has been ups and downs, Liu Wei's performance has remained stable and he is still the reliable main point guard of the Shanghai team.
But, business is business.
Seeing that his performance was not improving, Yao Ming could not accept that failure was still the main theme of the Shanghai team. He resolutely pressed the reset button and wanted to carry out in-depth reforms of the Shanghai team and bring NBA things to the Shanghai Sharks.
"Is my salary too high? It's okay to lower it." Liu Wei was holding back what he said in his heart, but he never said it out loud because Yao Ming's team directly issued an eviction order and informed Liu Wei that his contract would not be renewed during the season. Please find another job later.
This operation also pushed Yao Ming to the forefront, and the outside world continued to speculate whether the relationship between Yao Ming and Liu Wei had deteriorated. However, in subsequent interviews, Yao Ming has been avoiding talking about this moment, and Liu Wei has been the same, but frankly he and Yao Ming can no longer be teammates.
But the human heart is full of flesh. The introverted Liu Wei did not say it, but wrote about the discomfort of leaving his home team on Weibo, especially during that period, when his child was just born in Shanghai. . Four years after leaving Shanghai, Liu Wei stopped updating Weibo.
However, time will tell everything about brotherhood.
In 2017, Yao Ming became the chairman of the Basketball Association. In order to avoid suspicion, he transferred all the shares of the Shanghai team. The Shanghai team’s team building ideas also changed. There are many young people in the team, but they lack the ability to change clothes. room leader. At this time, they thought of their old captain Liu Wei who was far away in Sichuan. At that time, veteran Liu Wei had a second spring in Sichuan, averaging 36.5 minutes per game, averaging 17.6 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game. He was also loved by Sichuan fans.
However, when Liu Wei heard the news that he could return, he still wanted to return to Shanghai immediately without hesitation, because his second child was about to be born.
Initially, Liu Wei had one year left on his contract with Sichuan.
Yao Ming, who has been confirmed to be the chairman of the Basketball Association, made a call to the owner of the Sichuan team. The latter also agreed to reach a verbal agreement with the Shanghai team as a favor and terminate the contract early.
Only during the offseason, the Sichuan team's defender Wang Ruheng was taken away by the Shandong team. There was a temporary shortage of players in the backcourt and Liu Wei was needed to hold the line.
As a result, Liu Wei was kept in Sichuan for another year.
In order to untie the bell, one must also tie it.
After that, the media finally captured the two of them in the same frame.
How to describe this basketball brotherhood?
To conclude with a sentence from Yao Ming's autobiography, that is: "Many people started together, but one left, and another, and another, and in the end, only a few people stayed. The more and more people stayed. The less, the more special it is."
In the long journey of life, everyone may have his own Liu Wei and his own Yao Ming.