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Chapter 421 - 195. Dwayne, do you think O’Neal is too old now? (8000 words)

Chapter 421: 195. Dwayne, do you think O’Neal is too old now? (8000 words)

On the morning of the 24th, the Bobcats left Charlotte and headed to Washington D.C.

On the plane, Felton flipped through the newspaper and complained, "Yesterday, they were still hyping whether we have an advantage against Western teams; today, hardly any media are still reporting this news."

Gerald Wallace, who was chatting with the Big Brother Group, responded, "That kind of thing is only worth hyping when it’s still uncertain; once it’s confirmed, it’s not important anymore."

Felton replied, "I know, of course, if we had beaten the Clippers, this topic wouldn’t even exist, but we cared so much about it yesterday, and now it feels so uncomfortable."

Gerald Wallace thought about it and agreed, "True, thinking about how much we cared about saving face yesterday, it seems foolish."

Zhang Yang interjected, "Just think of it as more exposure. Looking back, these topics may seem meaningless, but all this trivial exposure can look impressive, and who knows, it might even boost our commercial value."

The two leaders thought about that one and felt it made sense.

What Rondo and Okafor heard was, "If you think you’re foolish that’s fine, but please don’t include me."

Gerald Wallace and the people from the Big Brother Group sat together for a while and then went to play cards with Muhammad to smooth over the emotional wounds.

Ten days after his return, his focus had always been on how to regain his playing condition.

Last night, he finally exploded under Artest’s terrifying defense and rediscovered his feel for the game, but before he could be happy about it, he found out that his protégé had run off!

One of Felton’s protégés, Matt Carroll, was traded away, but in return, they got Jarett Jack, who was from the same draft year as Felton and from the same agency as Zhang Yang. Felton had no shortage of followers, but they’d even managed to snatch away his prince protégé, Millsap!

Upon boarding the plane, Gerald Wallace saw Millsap sitting and chatting with the others from the ’Big Brother Group’ and went over to listen in, understanding why the guy had run off.

Felton was analyzing with Millsap how poorly they had defended against Artest the previous night, teaching him how to combat it.

Okafor was discussing with Millsap how to use his physical advantage against a player like Brad Miller who defends with intelligence.

While his prince and other protégés were discussing the game passionately...

Frankly, Gerald Wallace, hearing Felton and Okafor patiently teaching Millsap how to play, was tempted to ’defect from the struggle group.’ The things the two were teaching Millsap were insightful, so after listening, he even chatted with them a bit before going to play cards.

But as the leader of the ’struggle group,’ unless everyone else defected, he couldn’t possibly defect.

He was about the same age as Felton, but had entered the NBA four years earlier; serving as a subordinate was absolutely impossible!

...

After resting one night in Washington D.C., on March 25th, the Bobcats arrived at the Verizon Center to challenge the Wizards.

Starting today, over this week, the Bobcats would play every other day, with two away games followed by two home games, facing the Wizards and Miami Heat.

At the end of March and the beginning of April, it is another low viewership period in the NBA regular season. These four games were the ones the league had planned to heavily promote before the season started.

This time, the Jewish owner’s gamble didn’t go wrong, as the first match in this series for the Bobcats, during a period of low overall viewership in late March, brought a small surge in viewership, and was the second game after March 16’s ’Mad Three’ to start with over ten million advanced paid viewerships before the game even started.

The New Bad Boys Legion VS the Wizards’ Big Three, the topic was very popular.

The rookie sensation Jack, who had thrown 46 times for 82 points in a previous game, was directly challenging Agent Zero Arenas, who had won his last face-off with Kobe 60 to 45. This duel was something the fans were very interested in.

Even though Joe had nothing to do with this game, the commentator couldn’t stop mentioning the blacksmith.

The first game to break ten million pre-paid viewerships during the Mad Three phase was Kobe’s game, the city derby, the Lakers versus the Clippers, battling for playoff positioning. Kobe scored 51 points, his 11th 50+ point game this season.

In the past 12 games, Kobe managed 8 times to score 50+ points, elevating his average score per game from 28.3 points to 31.3 points, overtaking Arenas’ average of 29.9 points to return to the top of the scoring leaderboard.

Although there is still a week left in March, and the Lakers have three more games to play, Kobe was already seen as having locked in the Western Conference Player of the Month for March with an average of 45.1 points over 12 games after playing 55 games in February. With his average score increased by 3 points over those 12 games, even if he performs poorly in the last three, scoring over 40+ points per game for the month was secure, and so was the Player of the Month.

’The best player in the world,’ a title earned during this month.

Both media and fans generally believed that Kobe’s performance this month exceeded the scoring frenzy from last season, where he scored 62 points in three quarters to a single-game high of 81 points. Some even believed that this month’s Kobe surpassed the 81-point Kobe and came closer to Michael Jordan.

At 8 PM, the game where the Bobcats visited the Wizards began.

The matchup did not disappoint the fans in front of the TV; the Bad Boys Legion and the Big Three started the game on a high note.

Arenas played well tonight, taking shots when he should and passing when he should.

Shortly after losing his scoring title to Kobe, Arenas tried to outscore him to regain the lead... but quickly gave up, focusing on battling for a playoff spot instead.

With the Big Three scoring aggressively tonight, Arenas made 12 out of 25 shots, including 4 out of 10 three-pointers, and with 7 out of 9 free throws, he scored the highest in the game with 35 points; Jamison made 13 out of 27 shots, including 4 out of 7 three-pointers, and with 4 out of 4 free throws, he scored the second highest with 34 points; Caron Butler also scored 26 points by making 8 out of 15 shots.