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Chapter 648 - 278. Bad Kid VS Fly Man

After washing up and ordering meal from the restaurant, he immediately went to the study, turned on the computer, refreshed both the internal and external news websites, and couldn’t help but smile... well, he just let himself laugh, hehe.

"Bad Boy Jack Crushes the Run-and-Gun Storm"

"8 straight wins, Bobcats tie the franchise’s longest winning streak"

"Lethal Jack, lethal three-pointers"

"22 three-pointers, tragic record night for the Suns"

"Catalyst’s 41 points unable to best Crazy Jack"

"Clutch showdown, Booster falls short against Bad Boy Jack"

"Killer Jack: Rick planned the tactics well, Emeka did a great job delaying under the basket, Raymond passed it well, I just caught the ball and shot it in"

"Single Game 43 Points + Buzzer beater, Zhang Yang laughed heartily, once again proving his superstar caliber"

"..."

"..."

Sports websites at home and abroad used a lot of space to cover last night’s game between the Bobcats and Suns.

’Booster’ refers to Nash, which was a nickname he earned in the 04-05 season when he led the rise of the Suns; ’Catalyst’ refers to Stoudemire’s nickname from the same season, a dual nickname set for the pair.

That somewhat abstract news piece was from a renowned domestic website’s sports headline. Curious, Zhang Yang opened the website, was shocked by how it looked, and then started reflecting—did I laugh too overtly in last night’s interview? I thought I managed my expressions quite well. It seems I need to practice my camera smile more.

Starting with 8 consecutive wins, 43 points in a single game plus a buzzer beater, all the news Zhang Yang saw about the Bobcats, about himself, was all praise, great stats plus a win, which was quite normal.

There were also several other miscellaneous news items, they scored 143 points last night, setting a new season-high for a team’s single-game score; the previous holder... was the Suns, who on the 4th defeated the then second-highest scoring Warriors 137 to 129.

Reading this news, Zhang Yang’s excitement cooled down a bit, they scored 143 points, but the opposing Suns scored 141 points...

After lunch, Zhang Yang left home, drove for over 20 minutes, and arrived at Tuhang Stadium.

Having earned two days of rest after defeating the Suns, today Carlisle had only scheduled two hours of personal training, just coming to the stadium in the afternoon was enough, players could choose their time.

However, some players received notice to attend a team meeting at 1:30 in the afternoon, and Zhang Yang was one of the members to attend.

When Zhang Yang arrived at the meeting room, he saw his teammates who were to attend the meeting had already arrived, Felton, Rondo, Mike Miller, Hill, Okafor, and Muhammad, including him, Zhang San, making it a total of 7 players at the meeting.

Zhang Yang looked at his watch, 1:16 p.m., and complained, "You’re all so eager to come to work, and no one’s offering you extra salary."

Hill laughed and said, "I came in the morning, had an appointment with Thomas for a check-up, we’re about to go on a three-game road trip, and he wanted to assess my physical condition."

Felton added, "Me, Rajon, and Emeka agreed last night to come in this morning for extra free-throw practice, we performed terribly on our free throws last night, wanted to practice more, Nazr heard about it from Rajon and said he wanted to join the practice too, his free throws were quite bad as well."

Zhang Yang: -_-||

He just said that casually, not expecting his teammates to actually start explaining.

But speaking of which... Zhang Yang commented, "It’s really time to practice, each of you four missed two free throws, we only had 24 free throws last night, already fewer than our usual, and you guys missed a total of 8!"

Felton replied, "That’s why we’re here practicing, we will improve, we have already gotten a lot better than last year, last night was just an anomaly."

The other three felt embarrassed to respond, Felton was fine, his rookie free throw percentage was 74%, and last season he had already reached 83%, this season after 7 games he was at 86.7%, just last night he was 2 for 4.

In fact, the other three this season were not too bad at free throws either, Rondo during his rookie season had only a 50% free throw average, this season after 7 games he was averaging 2 shots 1.4 makes, already at a 70% acceptable level, just last night was unlucky and missed both.

Okafor had a 57% free throw rate during the 05-06 season, and it was over 60% last season, this season before last night he was averaging 6 shots 4 makes per game, 66.7% success rate, last night was exactly 6 for 4 as well.

As for Muhammad, he didn’t take many free throws to begin with, having an average of only 1.6 free throws per game throughout his career, his percentage wasn’t that important, Zhang Yang guessed this outgoing veteran had likely just heard about the collective free throw practice and joined for the fun of it.

Of course, both for Rondo and Okafor the free-throw improvement was only relatable compared to before, saying it was alright compared to their past records, there was still a lot of room for improvement.

Felton ’comforted’ his younger brother, then all six pairs of eyes turned to the bystander, Mike Miller.

Mike Miller: [・_・?]

Zhang Yang said, "They’ve all given their reasons for coming in early without overtime pay, now you make one up, otherwise you seem very unsociable."

"..." After a moment of silence, Mike Miller said, "Every rest day in the morning, I come to the gym to make 500 three-pointers, 100 each from 5 key angles."

Zhang Yang replied, "Uh...it seems like every rest day morning I see you training, on away game rest days when there are no training facilities in the morning, you find a place in the afternoon to make up for it, you’re really hard-working, I need to learn from you!"

Mike Miller pursed his lips and let out a noise, saying, "Who could be as diligent as you guys, is it possible that every rest day you see me is just because every time I come to the gym to train, you guys are already training?"