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Chapter 248 - 129. Even if my great-grandmother coached the Knicks, they wouldn’t be in last place.

Chapter 248: 129. Even if my great-grandmother coached the Knicks, they wouldn’t be in last place.

After the final buzzer sounded, Iverson went over to embrace Zhang Yang, Felton, Gerald Wallace, Okafor... and others in turn, generously praising them online and heartily complimenting the youngsters’ performance.

Despite the loss, he played quite happily, as he hadn’t recklessly taken on others in one-on-one challenges like he did today in many years.

A slight pity was that after going one-on-one for 11 minutes, the rookie was exhausted and needed over half an hour of rest to recover. There’s no helping it, after all, he’s only 17; being able to play so many rounds consecutively is already pretty impressive.

Iguodala was not very happy, watching Zhang Yang forcefully take shots amidst double-teams and drawing fouls to push his score to 35 points... and also sinking one of two free throws, what was he trying to imply? That he wanted to surpass AI’s career-high score by one point?!

He took note of that grudge!

Actually, after Zhang Yang spoke those words, he forgot them; it was just trash talk, nothing more.

That foul he drew was just him wanting to test if he could make a tough shot, but then he was directly pulled down by the opponents, landing somewhat painfully and having to give up on continuing the attack.

Zhang Yang also enjoyed the game very much. Tonight, he understood why he had never heard any player speak ill of Iverson; as long as the game was played properly, Iverson, even in defeat, wouldn’t lose his temper, unlike those other guys who would show their nastier side when they lost.

When asked about his one-on-one with Iverson after the game, Zhang Yang replied, "Being able to score under any circumstance like The Answer, that’s what I aspire to!"

...

The Bobcats secured their playoff spot, and the media rushed to report it, while fans continuously debated it.

Half a year ago, who would have thought that the Bobcats could make it to the playoffs?

Zhang Yang, Felton, Gerald Wallace, and Okafor, the four young talents, became the center of the heated discussions.

Zhang Yang was the most talked-about and the most controversial.

His talent was compared to that of Garnett, Kobe, McGrady, and James.

Some said he was riding on the coattails of these stars, getting full support from the Bobcats as soon as he entered the NBA, learning from the mistakes they had made, thus avoiding many detours. This perspective gained a lot of support.

But many others thought this view was too one-sided; every high school rookie could see the lessons from those before them, but only Zhang Yang was able to use them to improve his own game.

Felton, while not as naturally talented as Paul or Deron, was praised for his maturity, stability, and strong leadership, becoming the linchpin of the Bobcats.

Gerald Wallace... well, the King was brought up to be criticized.

After his All-Star selection, his unfortunate early career earned a good deal of sympathy from fans.

Fun fact, Gerald Wallace was 18 when picked by the King, and his total playing time with the King in his first three years was less than what LeBron James, of a similar age upon entering the NBA, played in just his first month.

The topic of ’What if Gerald Wallace had been heavily cultivated right from the start of his NBA career’ flared up again.

Even Jordan didn’t expect to be dragged through the mud—what was he doing wasting his time with the Wizards for those two years? Why not start building a team sooner and draft Gerald Wallace while he was at it?

Okafor was praised as having the style of Duncan, with his biggest blunder since entering the NBA being his blind bulk-up that disrupted the team’s development process.

At the start of the season, the Bobcats’ 3-1 record didn’t raise any eyebrows, since two of those games were against weak teams, and in the two games against strong teams, they managed to win against the Rockets, who were missing McGrady, only by a buzzer-beater, and lost the other. Every year, weaker teams surprise everyone by ranking high early in the season, only to falter after a few more games. Indeed, the Bobcats quickly fell to the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

But looking back, the high start and low continuity of the Bobcats were due to Okafor’s excessive weight gain and subsequent injury, leading to a chain reaction. For quite some time, the Bobcats had only rookies Felton and Zhang Yang to rely on. It was odd that they won at all.

If Okafor hadn’t bulked up blindly during the summer, it’s not to say that the Bobcats could have quickly reached their April strength, but they might have improved their record sooner.

Of course, this argument was also contested, with some saying that it was precisely the injuries to Okafor and Gerald Wallace that gave Felton and Zhang Yang the freedom to perform in the early season... and so the debate continued.

Some fans didn’t want to engage in these controversial discussions, focusing instead on the game itself between the Bobcats and the 76ers, talking about Zhang Yang’s one-on-one with the AIs, his third game scoring over 30 points, his 19 games scoring over 20 and whether he could break 20, and his desire to become a scoring champion like Iverson...

Over at the Bobcats, the next afternoon they flew to New York and immediately rented a conference room at the hotel to discuss the next day’s game.

They had locked in a playoff spot, but that didn’t mean the season was over; they still had targets to strive for in the regular season.

They had secured a playoff berth but not eighth place; they were currently seventh. Securing the spot with two games to spare simply meant that even if they lost their last two games and the Bucks won all theirs, they wouldn’t fall out of the playoffs. The Bucks still had a chance to overtake the Chicago Bulls for the eighth spot.

Rankings, naturally, the higher the better. If they could leap over the Pacers and the Wizards to reach fifth place, they could avoid the top three teams in the East.

Their next opponent, the Knicks Team, was weak, ranking last in the league, causing some players on the Bobcats to become complacent.

But a statement from the team leader during the internal meeting refocused the team.