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Chapter 624: He actually used me as an experience bag!

Chapter 624: He actually used me as an experience bag!

The pre-game preparation time ended, and the starting players of both teams came onto the court.

Bobcats: Felton, Zhang Yang, Hill, Okafor, Perkins,

Miami Heat: Jason Williams, Wade, Ricky Davis, Haslem, O’Neal.

Ricky Davis was acquired during the off-season in exchange for Anthony Walker by the mastermind.

The Timberwolves got Bynum, who did not like Ricky Davis; the mastermind valued Davis for his expiring contract, which would allow them to get rid of the remaining three years and $25 million of Anthony Walker’s contract. The Timberwolves were interested in Walker’s ability to organize the offense and shoot from distance, thus both sides got what they needed.

At 7 p.m., Okafor outjumped O’Neal to win the tip-off, and the game started with the Bobcats attacking first.

Felton advanced to the frontcourt and passed the ball to Zhang Yang.

After receiving the ball, Zhang Yang immediately made a ball-protecting motion as Wade stuck to him aggressively and fiercely from the start.

The few thousand Bobcats fans who came to the away game cheered, "Number 3 vs. Number 3, a clash of two great FMVPs from the same era!"

Although Wade was entering his prime, almost 26 years old, Zhang Yang was younger than the newest generation of players. Both players, one from the 2003 class and the other from 2005, belonged to the same era of NBA entrants.

With O’Neal fading from the forefront, so many Bobcats fans still gathered on the South Coast to watch their game against the Miami Heat, drawn by the matchup between the two players.

In the last preseason game, Wade was constantly scored on by Zhang Yang using his height and wingspan advantage. Tonight, he was sticking close, not giving Zhang Yang any space to jump and shoot.

In the confrontation, Zhang Yang switched the ball to his left hand and made a step-back feint.

Wade guessed it was a feint, but he still pressed forward, not daring to take a risk; knowing the man in front of him, number 3 was too risky and would shoot if given even a sliver of space.

Seeing Wade press up, Zhang Yang stopped his step-back motion, charged forward, and in a moment of clashing with Wade, he pulled the ball to his left, spun around Wade, and surged forward!

This rhythm and timing elicited continuous exclamations from the fans.

However, Wade’s physical fitness was exceptional; he managed to stop in time, turned, and chased after Zhang Yang. Although he couldn’t prevent Zhang Yang’s accelerating sprint, he blocked the direct path through the middle, forcing Zhang Yang to go baseline and creating a chance for a defensive recovery. But!

O’Neal didn’t step out!

Wade anticipated this, always ready to block, attempting to give Zhang Yang a chase-down block from the side.

But as Zhang Yang surged close, he didn’t stop but instead, with the ball in hand, took three big steps towards O’Neal under the basket!

Cheek padding: ?

Is he trying to dunk over the Big Shark?

Enraged, O’Neal couldn’t hold back anymore and pressed forward.

Zhang Yang took two steps before jumping, not forward, but vertically, with a small movement forward. His right hand in the air made a small loop, changing his shooting motion into a lob... Perkins caught it with both hands and slammed it home for two points!

Watching Zhang Yang and Perkins jump up and bump butts to celebrate after completing the alley-oop, Wade thought, "Isn’t this the same way I used to play with O’Neal?"

What seemed like a reckless charge into the paint to dunk was actually to draw out the rim protector, creating an opportunity for the center to score... In his first two years with O’Neal, Wade loved to use this play.

Well then, last season when the Big Shark still had fight in him, Zhang San wouldn’t dare to act so boldly. Now seeing the Shark in decline, he dares to bully him like this?

Realizing what happened, Wade was annoyed. Although he wasn’t very generous externally, he was very loyal internally.

Both numbered 3, both FMVPs, during the offseason they were constantly compared.

The key issue was the media, experts, and fans’ opinion of Zhang San; generally, he was rated higher than Wade.

Everyone felt that the current Wade was certainly stronger than the current Zhang Yang, yet they still thought Zhang Yang was better.

This brought up the ’youngest record’ created by the royal media. Although the Bad Kid Jack wasn’t highly regarded, his talent and strength, continually breaking the ’youngest records’ and even surpassing Magic’s youngest FMVP, saw a significant boost in his ratings.

For this reason, Wade harbored more private grievances against KING, seeing as they still weren’t considered ’one of their own’.

With that last play, Wade’s hostility towards Zhang Yang reached its peak.

The teams switched from offense to defense, and Wade, just past half-court, hurriedly called for the ball.

Because he saw that the one standing in his path wasn’t the fiercely competitive Felton or the experienced Hill, but Zhang Yang!

The fans of Wade and Zhang Yang at the venue simultaneously cheered and screamed.

Wade arrived at the top of the arc, faced Zhang Yang who stepped back a good distance, and broke through!

Zhang Yang controlled the defensive distance well and also predicted the direction of Wade’s drive, moving in time... yet he still couldn’t stop it!

Wade drove into the paint, unleashed the Euro step, took two big steps, found a gap, jumped amid the crowd, withstood the contact, and scored on a floater.

The mystique of the Assassin’s Euro step; the rhythm of the Bad Kid’s Euro step, pleasing to the eye; the explosiveness of Flash’s Euro step, unmatched!

After scoring, Wade pouted his lips and retreated while facing Zhang Yang.

Zhang Yang exhaled sharply and flexed his left chest, which was sore from Wade’s shoulder bump.

"There’s just no way to defend against that! Even stepping back two steps doesn’t help!"

Wade’s explosive starts and impact are significantly stronger than similar players like Baron Davis and Francis.

Since Wade entered the NBA, the only person who has been able to effectively contain him one-on-one is Kobe Bryant, and that was only during the first two and a half years of Wade’s career.

From the 03-04 season to the first half of the 05-06 season, in the four times Kobe faced Wade, he managed to defend very well in three of them, holding Wade’s shooting percentages to 33%, 38%, and 40%.

But in the latter half of the 05-06 season, when Kobe faced Wade, he could no longer contain him. Although Wade struggled to perform explosively against Kobe, in their subsequent encounters, he consistently scored twenty-five or twenty-six points with about a 45% shooting percentage, ensuring a stable performance.

During the 05-06 season, Kobe’s scoring frenzy was so intense that people overlooked Wade’s dramatic progress in the latter half of the season.

In March 2006, Wade scored 35+ points in eight consecutive games, including three games with 40+ points, raising his average points per game to 27... That month, Kobe had four 40+ point games and scored 40+ points in five out of six games, culminating with a 51-point game, indeed leaving little limelight for other scorers.

To sufficiently limit Wade in one-on-one, basic defensive skills, awareness, judgement, decisiveness, physical confrontation, and movement speed are all essential, but Zhang Yang can’t manage it yet.

However, it wasn’t Zhang Yang who asked to personally defend Wade.

Offensively, he pushes forward regardless of who defends him; defensively, he’s very cautious, choosing challenging plays but not overly difficult opponents.

This was Carlisle’s arrangement to get Zhang Yang more practice time against opponents like Wade.

Carlisle assumed the other team would have Wade guard Zhang Yang, so he had Zhang Yang guard Wade to get practice on both offense and defense.

Who else is there? White Chocolate lacks the physique and combativeness. The remaining guards, Ricky Davis?

Surely they wouldn’t have Smush Parker guard Zhang Yang, right?

The Heat had snatched Smush Parker from the Lakers with a $4 million deal for two years, but before the new season even started, Pat Riley was already regretting it during the preseason games.

"What the hell is this? Isn’t he a quality role player averaging 11 points?" When Wade breaks through, Death Parker just stands on the left sidebar, not even understanding how to move along with the penetrating positions.

Signing Smush Parker gave Pat Riley a new appreciation for Kobe’s individual skills, so much so that it significantly diminished the Jordan-like aura he saw in Wade...

Not just him, Felton also had a goal of ’learning through playing’ tonight, though he was just practicing his offense. White Chocolate is now a point guard with simple playing style and excellent, steady defense.

As the game progressed, under Wade’s lead—playing both offensive and defensive roles—the Heat started off well in attacking.

The Big Shark, initially lazy and unmotivated, was sparked into action after being playfully set up by Zhang San for an alley-oop, seizing the opportunity to squeeze under the basket and support Wade’s breaks.

Haslem did well with mid-range responses, and White Chocolate was good with three-pointers. Otherwise, Ricky Davis, who can’t shoot and doesn’t play off-ball, occasionally dragged the team down.

However, defensively, the Miami Heat’s front three includes two defensive black holes, Ricky Davis... and O’Neal.

O’Neal was now too slow, even expanding to the edge of the three-second zone he couldn’t make it back under the basket. Facing Zhang Yang’s aggressive moves, he would extend out only to leave his rear exposed, and even then, it wasn’t certain he could block Zhang Yang. If O’Neal miss-timed his extension, he would get passed by Zhang Yang’s Euro step; facing Felton, he simply squatted and did not come out, watching Felton making close-range floaters.

Felton, going one-on-one against White Chocolate, had some difficulty in breaking through, but it wasn’t significant. Relying on his increasingly skilled step-back shooting, he could always break through smoothly.

On Zhang Yang’s side, if Wade focused on defending the drive, it would actually be quite difficult for him, but Wade had to stick close to him; if Wade was even slightly delayed in his approach, Zhang Yang would rise up and shoot, and his shooting was incredibly quick.

With Zhang Yang’s willingness to shoot over 40 times a game, Wade really couldn’t afford to back off.

On the wing, Ricky Davis was like a decoration defensively, with help defense essentially non-existent. He would make a show of contracting inward, but it was just a motion, utterly ineffective in reality.

Haslem was great at help defense, but he was on the other side of the three-second zone. Getting over there would just leave Okafor a wide-open shot, better not to help at all.

Wade had to play both the roles of offense and defense ferociously, scoring 9 points and 4 assists in a single quarter; yet, when the quarter ended, he saw they were trailing by two points...

to 27, the Timberwolves led the Miami Heat by two points entering the break!

Looking at the score, Wade felt an unprecedented sense of powerlessness, even more than in his rookie season.

Back then, his teammates included Odom, Eddie Jones, Brian Grant, Alston, Caron Butler, Malik Allen, Rasual Butler, Samaki Walker... even without trading for O’Neal, they would have had the talent to break out of the East with two or three years of normal growth.

Last season, their defending champion season, during training camp Pat Riley, seeing O’Neal’s performance plummet drastically, not only did not think about trading or signing to strengthen the team, but he also immediately decided to cut investments, starting to offload role players, keeping only the veterans whose contracts were expiring soon.

Now, their best player on the second unit was a rookie, DaQuan Cook, chosen 21st overall in the first round.

They had become so weak that they couldn’t even beat the Timberwolves!

This summer, he saw his team continuing to sell off players who could still compete, yet on the other side, number 3, though reluctantly losing Gerald Wallace, the Timberwolves’ management was actively poaching free agents from other teams, aiming to slightly improve their clutch shooting ability, even taking back Cardinal’s hefty contract... Both were number 3, both were Finals MVPs, but he felt the disparity in their treatment.

However, for now, Wade let go of these thoughts, the feeling of helplessness about the score fading, replaced by a surge of anger.

He realized it, the 19-year-old player on the opposing side was using him for defensive practice!

What irritated him more was that he could feel Zhang Yang getting better at it!

Initially, Zhang Yang simply demonstrated talent—defensive positioning and distance choice, anticipating directions of drives, swift footwork... At first, Wade didn’t feel pressured.

But as the game went on, he felt Zhang Yang’s movement choices, timing for contacts... these details getting better and better.

Although Zhang Yang’s defense was still quite manageable for him, he didn’t fear defenders who were merely skilled. However, this feeling of being used as an ’experience pack’ drove him crazy!