Champion Creed
Chapter 827 - 827 277 Simply keen on dancing on the opponent's grave asking for monthly tickets!

827: 277: Simply keen on dancing on the opponent’s grave (asking for monthly tickets!) 827: 277: Simply keen on dancing on the opponent’s grave (asking for monthly tickets!) Tracy McGrady finally saw the real Roger, a Roger he had never seen before.

He was no longer the good big brother who inspires you to move forward.

Nor was he the always amicable good friend.

Tonight, McGrady could feel that Roger had only one purpose on the court: to utterly destroy you!

Even with a 22-point lead, Roger said it wasn’t over.

McGrady had a deeper understanding of Roger.

Roger was indeed a good person; that wouldn’t change.

But he was competitive, resilient, the backbone of this terrifying Hawks team.

When he smelled blood, he didn’t care if the blood was from his own friend.

This reminded McGrady of the Baby-Faced Assassin and Magic; every time before the 1988 and 1989 finals started, Isaiah Thomas would kiss Magic.

Indeed, not just a hug, but a kiss, like the kind at a wedding when two gay men get married.

But no matter how intimate they were before the game, once the game started, both turned into competitive, tough bastards.

Even a good guy like Magic would maliciously foul his old friend, the Baby-Faced Assassin, not cutting any slack despite their pre-game intimacy and personal history.

When he was young, he really didn’t understand why Magic and the Baby-Faced Assassin would come to blows in the finals, even sowing the seeds for the Baby-Faced Assassin’s public mockery that Magic got HIV from heroin.

But now McGrady understood; the playoffs are like a seductive cult ritual, evoking the deep desires from within a person and completely transforming them.

Or rather, allowing a person to completely be themselves, facing their truest desires.

This is the difference between the playoffs and regular season.

His carefree teammate Larry Hughes becomes obsessed with victory.

While the big brother he always admired turns into a bloodthirsty devil.

As they returned to the locker room at halftime, none of the Magic players spoke, because everyone knew they were going to be humiliated tonight.

No matter what, this would be an irretrievable defeat.

The Magic had no idea how to wipe out that 22-point gap in the second half.

This is the despairing aspect of the playoff-mode Hawks, causing opponents of insufficient hierarchy to completely lose confidence.

Doc Rivers was still employing his “leash dog strategy,” but clearly, chicken soup couldn’t save someone gravely ill; no matter how nutritious, it couldn’t be absorbed.

As the second half was about to start, Bob Costas, commentating the game, felt as incredulous as the fans.

“When Larry Hughes said he wanted to talk about the second round, we could roughly guess what would happen today.

Roger would destroy him ruthlessly, and he did.

But what we didn’t guess was that the Hawks led by 22 points in just half a game!

We were all wrong; the Magic might lose by 30 points tonight, or even more!”

The article “win by at least 20 points” from the “Atlanta Constitution” was already quite bold, but compared to Roger’s real performance, this media outlet still seemed overly conservative.

With the start of the third period, the Hawks still fielded their full starting lineup.

The defeat in the first game could no longer be reversed, but Roger certainly wouldn’t be content to concede so easily.

Losing a game in the series is normal, yet Roger felt unhappy about this “normality.”

Falling behind in the first round of playoffs for the first time made Roger want to do something to compensate.

Therefore, he decided to double the payback in the second game.

Roger continued to defend McGrady, showing no slack despite the 22-point lead.

McGrady looked at Roger, whose gaze was sharp, from beyond the three-point line, feeling for the first time, “I don’t know how to deal with this guy in front of me.”

In the regular season, most of the time, McGrady was unstoppable on offense.

He could blow past taller defenders with one step, while traditional second-position players found it challenging to truly restrict a tall guy standing at 206 cm.

Roger had the physique of a traditional second-position player, but the difficulty in handling him was that he excelled at timing for steals and interference, perfectly compensating for some of his height and reach disadvantage.

Moreover, because Pierce performed well today, the Magic couldn’t double-team Roger, so McGrady had to single-handedly defend a fully powered Roger, making his already weak stamina even more stretched.

The fatigue would cause fluctuations in McGrady’s jump shot accuracy.

This is the cost of matching up with Roger on both offense and defense, requiring you to overcome a series of interconnected challenges.

McGrady had already used various methods to overcome difficulties in the first half but only managed 6 points.

But no matter what, the Magic Team now needed McGrady to step up.

That’s the playoffs; star players have to shoulder the responsibility, so they can move to the next round.

But McGrady chose not to take on the responsibility; he decided to pass the ball to Larry Hughes.

Is Tracy McGrady a coward?

Yes, yet no.

If you know the 2008 playoffs and understand how McGrady played with injections in every game, draining fluid just to stubbornly fight the Jazz.

If you’ve seen the No.

1 in red jersey in Game 6, burning the last spark of his career to score 40 points, just to preserve the hope of victory, then you absolutely wouldn’t call Tracy McGrady a coward.