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Chapter 574 - 248. This is retribution!

Chapter 574: 248. This is retribution!

After the game ended, Harden fled back home, slept, and upon waking up, he felt much less guilty.

The first thing he did after getting out of bed was to go online and read the news.

After browsing for a while, he became upset—no one was even cursing me!

Harden certainly didn’t enjoy being cursed, but in his view of basketball, if a game was lost, he should be cursed. The only reason for not being cursed was—he wasn’t worth it.

There it was; the negative news about their team was all about Durant starting strong but finishing weak, and Brooks’s poor adaptability...

He and Carter were merely mentioned as ’other players on the Thunder Team.’

Especially seeing Zhang San plastered all over major websites, Harden felt even worse.

"40+ isn’t enough? Then 50+!"

Zhang Yang’s post-game sentence was wildly arrogant, making it sound as if he could score 50+ in the playoffs anytime he wanted.

But he had just scored 50+, making it impossible to refute his words.

Considering the NBA has been established for nearly 60 years, there are fewer than 20 people who’ve scored over 50+ in the playoffs.

Before Zhang Yang, there weren’t enough active players with single-game 50+ scores to count on one hand—Kobe, Carter, Nowitzki, Ray Allen, Zhang Yang being the fifth active player.

In the star-studded history of the Lakers, Zhang Yang was the fourth person, with only Baylor, West, and Kobe having scored over 50+ in a single playoff game before him.

This one game alone was enough to secure Zhang Yang’s place in basketball history. Even in ten or twenty years, while flipping through the NBA playoff data charts, his name could not be overlooked.

Harden’s feelings of discontent spread wildly.

He mused about his first encounter with Zhang Yang 10 years ago. A year later, Zhang Yang had caught up with him in strength. Since then, Harden developed a competitive spirit, always competing with Zhang Yang from high school leagues to college as teammates...

Harden didn’t suppress his feelings of envy or discontent; they had been one of his important motivations for moving forward over the past nine years.

As his emotions began to settle, Harden started to rethink the previous night’s game.

He looked over Durant’s stats from the past two years and discovered something—the more he and Westbrook dominated the ball, the better Durant played!

When Durant took more than 20 shots in a game and scored over 30 points, his performance was often strained, and the team’s win rate was not high.

But when Durant took sixteen or seventeen shots, scoring around 25 or 26 points, his efficiency approached that of Jordan! Taking key shots when needed, an average of 27 or 28 points per game was enough to contend for the scoring title with high efficiency.

Last season’s scoring champ Kobe averaged 27.9 points per game, and this season’s scoring champ Anthony averaged 28.7 points per game.

Harden recalled the years he had partnered with Durant. When he and Westbrook were weaker, Durant always looked frustrated on the court, but last season, when he and Westbrook were vying fiercely, taking away much of Durant’s ball possession, with Durant averaging only 17 shots and assists dropping to 2.5 per game, he seemed happy, appearing very comfortable and at ease.

This season, he averaged 20 shots per game and Durant 18, but Durant was still happier than when he was taking 20 shots per game in the past.

It might not seem like a big difference between taking 20 shots and seventeen or eighteen, but it is a very special threshold. O’Neal used to describe whether he was getting old by saying, "Back in the day, I could take 20 shots every night."

In the playoffs, maintaining shooting efficiency, Durant’s shot attempts certainly did not match the prime of O’Neal.

After analyzing, Harden found a direction—"I need to play more self-centered!"

With this thought in mind, he immediately took action, changed into casual clothes, and went to Durant’s house to tell him his thoughts directly.

This was another point where Harden was more favored by Durant than Westbrook.

Westbrook was a typical ’snake’ player. If he had something to tell his teammates, he wouldn’t speak; he would let his actions do the talking, believing that if his teammates were smart enough, they would understand him. This was arrogance, as well as a test of his teammates’ understanding.

This often displeased teammates. If he were the boss, they might have accepted it, but unfortunately, Westbrook was not the Thunder Team’s boss.

Even Durant, who lacked the mentality of a boss, was displeased by his teammates’ attitudes.

Harden was different; he was willing to express his thoughts directly, telling others why he did what he did, which was very much to Durant’s liking.

The two of them had their first discussion about what their cooperative relationship on the court should look like and how to allocate ball possession and shooting rights.

This was something Durant easily compromised and accepted...

As they talked, the two of them began to feel discontented with Brooks.

If there was a capable and experienced coach, they would have started considering these matters and sorted them out, like the Zen Master with O’Neal and Kobe.

But Brooks hadn’t even noticed these issues; the two had to gain experience through setbacks.

Not only that, but during last night’s game, both of them felt the gap between Brooks and Bickerstaff’s command capabilities.

Bickerstaff’s on-the-spot adaptability was endless, whereas Brooks’s pre-game arrangements were fairly in order, but whenever there was a problem on the court, he would look to Durant; if Durant couldn’t handle it, he would look to Harden and kept relying on Durant, with no third strategy.

Indeed, Brooks had his strong points—talent development.

But everyone in the team was used to it, took it for granted, forgot his good, and only remembered that his command during the game and his reserves of offensive tactics were dragging them down.

...

Besides Zhang Yang’s single-game 50 points leading his team to an upset victory over the first in the West, Durant’s strong start and weak finish, and Brooks being outclassed by Bickerstaff in command capabilities, there was another hot topic today.