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Chapter 715 - 302. Some people are capable from the very beginning.

Chapter 715: 302. Some people are capable from the very beginning.

After the meeting, the players headed to the training court to warm up. Today, there were two tactical training sessions. Midway through the season, there were some adjustments to the details of the gameplay.

While warming up, Felton complained to Zhang Yang, "It’s always like this. Every time we beat a strong team, the game debrief feels just like we lost."

Zhang Yang, "That’s just Rick’s style, he never thinks it’s good enough, he always wants better."

Felton, "I know, but it’s just every time we win, he can still find a whole bunch of problems. It feels kind of disheartening."

Zhang Yang, "At least when we lose, Rick doesn’t shift the blame onto us."

After thinking for a moment, Felton replied, "That’s true, that part of him is indeed good. You’re the same, every time we lose you talk like it’s all your fault. Let’s drop that—it’s disheartening to think about, even though I know what’s going on. By the way, Jack, do you think the Hawks team will pose a threat to us in the playoffs?"

Zhang Yang, "They might. Didn’t Sam and Rick just say to keep an eye on the Hawks team’s performance if we have time? But I don’t think they are a big threat."

Felton, "I love your confidence! I also don’t think they will pose a particularly big threat, at least not right now. We don’t need to focus too much on them; they’ve just put together a new lineup. The way they play the day after tomorrow might become irrelevant in a week or two."

The Big Fatty is becoming more confident and calm... Zhang San, "Confident? Ah, not really."

Felton, "What do you mean?"

Zhang Yang, "I mean that we might not be able to hold onto the top two spots. I reckon the Chicago Bulls and the Pistons could both get 60 wins. We’re currently at 22 wins and 4 losses, with 56 games left. We need 38 wins, and given our recent performance, it will be tough."

Felton, "..."

Although speechless, Felton felt that Zhang Yang was right. They had won 8 out of their last 11 games, and last night’s win was so thrilling and tough. If it hadn’t been for Yao Ming and Hinrich running into a crisis of stamina, they would have already had 7 wins and 4 losses this month... He took out his phone and calculated; assuming a win rate of 7 wins and 4 losses for the next 56 games, they wouldn’t reach 60 wins!

Personal concerns always mattered a lot to Felton.

It wasn’t definite that a 13-game winning streak at the start guaranteed the league’s first place. Instead, teams that started with such long winning streaks often performed worse later. In the 02-03 season, the Mavericks started with 14 consecutive wins, ending the season second in the West and the league with a record of 60 wins and 22 losses, ultimately overtaken by the more stable Spurs.

The 93-94 Rockets started with a record first 15-game winning streak, ending the season with 58 wins and 24 losses, 5 wins behind the first-place Seattle SuperSonics in the West.

In NBA history, only the 96-97 Chicago Bulls, who started with 12 consecutive wins, ended up first in the regular season out of all the teams who had at least 10 consecutive wins at the start.

...

The training volume in the afternoon was quite small, with almost no opposition in offensive training – the defenders were as useful as chairs, and the defensive training was just about double-teaming and rotation movements, all finished within an hour.

After the team training ended, Zhang Yang continued with extra practice. With back-to-back games tomorrow and then moving on to away games, he was less than a thousand Shooting Value points away from mastering his shooting talent. It was time to focus and master it before the delay stretched into next year.

After training shooting for half an hour, Zhang Yang took a break to eat a few bananas to replenish his sugars and electrolytes.

Carlisle came over to chat with Zhang Yang, with Christmas just gone, most of the chat was about the holiday.

Seeing that Zhang Yang’s rest and energy replenishment was almost done, Carlisle talked about work-related matters, asking Zhang Yang what he thought about the coaching staff’s mid-season adjustments.

Zhang Yang reflected on the training just done.

The defense training was quite routine.

After the first five to six weeks of play, they had settled on their current roster, and improving the defense to a much higher level was challenging.

After discussions with the coaches and key players, they decided to simplify the defense into primarily man-to-man, double-teaming, and switching, focusing more on building an offensive system.

Today’s defensive training was no different from before.

So Carlisle’s question was about the offense.

But Zhang Yang felt the offensive training was also quite routine. The content was twofold: one was optimizing the running positions based on the general issues encountered in the past few games, a regular part of every training session, and the other was a small adjustment to player roles... hmm?

Zhang Yang countered, "Has my ball-handling role decreased?"

Carlisle, "Yes, so I wanted to understand how you feel about this. We considered your opinion first."

Zhang Yang, "I have no objections. The reduced ball-handling mainly involves play-making, counterattacks and initiating attacks. While I’m not averse to these tasks, I still prefer shooting."

Carlisle, "I also think your tactical role should be more specialized, just like last night and last season. Scoring is your biggest strength, and we should let you be more free on offense. You shouldn’t have to handle both the regular offensive lead and the clutch plays. A season is too long, and a career is even longer; we should plan more for your long-term career."

Zhang Yang nodded and said, "The play-making role is supposed to transition to Paul. By mid-season, Grant, Emeka, and Nazr should be reducing their playtime, preparing for the later season and playoffs. Now is a good time for Paul to take on more responsibilities... But can he handle it?"

Carlisle, "Every player moves from can’t to can. We need to apply pressure, allow him to make mistakes so he can improve quickly. That’s the test for him; if he can’t catch it, we can consider other possibilities sooner."

Zhang San: You truly are strict with yourself and insist others be the same, Carlisle.

Though it’s not exactly a bad thing... Zhang Yang, "Does every player go from not being able to being able to? It doesn’t seem like Duncan did."

Carlisle, "..."

Entertaining the head coach enormously, Zhang Yang got back to the topic, "The ball-handling work I’ve been doing less of, Raymond doesn’t seem very good at it, does he? Are you planning to train Rajon like you did Paul?"

Carlisle, "I guess so."

Zhang Yang, "But then Raymond’s playing time would decrease, and he doesn’t seem to need rest like Grant and Emeka, does he?"

Carlisle, "I’ve talked to him; he supports the coaching staff’s decision... Michael has already agreed with him on an early contract renewal."

Zhang Yang, "Uh, no wonder, being a leader is in his character, as long as the money is right everything is easy to say..."

Having roughly finished their chat, Carlisle left, and Zhang Yang continued his training.

By 5 p.m., with the evening sunlight casting its glow on the horizon, the ’Gate of Trials’ finally popped up on Zhang Yang’s side.

"Accumulated Shooting Value: 120001, your shooting talent randomly +1, remaining shooting value: 1... Random shooting talent is mid-range, your mid-range talent has been upgraded to: 89 (95), mid-range talent has reached historic level."

Finally having saved up 120,000 shooting value, Zhang Yang was already pleased, but seeing it was for his mid-range shot, he was completely thrilled.

He thought he would wait until his three-point and attacking skills limits reached 94 before improving his mid-range capabilities, as it had been stuck for a long time. Previously, he got a five-point improvement in his three-point talent, four in mid-range, and had never even once received an increase in his attacking skills from new achievements.

A new mission also started.

The first mission was the usual, 120,000 shooting value randomly adds +1 to physical fitness.

The other... after seeing it, Zhang Yang directly burst out, "Damn, why is it so expensive?"

Chase-down shooting skills mastery, 100,000 shooting value!

...

After another blissful night of sleep... The next day, December 27th in the morning, Zhang Yang got up early, did his morning exercise, and prepared for the game at the arena.

The last back-to-back of 2007, must play well and give a good performance.

His current small goal—keep the league’s number one spot until the end of 2007.

In the evening, the home game for the Hornets against the Bucks commenced.

The Bucks had played 26 games so far, 9 wins and 17 losses, so hopes weren’t high for their record, but their star performances were solid.

The contemporary ’King of Comebacks’, Michael Reed, starting from a second-round pick, rookie year salary of $320,000, second-year $470,000, to a 3-year $9 million contract with an All-Star performance, up to the summer of ’05 and a 6-year $91 million max contract— even Arenas’s comeback story wasn’t as impressive as his.

This season Reed was at the peak of his career performance. Reed, who didn’t make the ’Dream Eight Preliminary Team’ in the summer, didn’t join the US team for the Pan American Basketball Championship, but after the season started, fans were calling for Coach K and Colangelo to recruit Reed to the Dream Team for the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Bogut had been playing an average of 14 points and 10 boards with 2 blocks per game. Before Christmas, he got an early contract extension, starting salary of $10 million, 5 years for $60 million, effective from the 09-10 season, calling himself ’the third best center in the East’ on the day he signed.

The last one to claim himself as ’the Xth center of the West’ was Dampier, which later became a joke. Ironically, Bogut’s big contract was about the same as what Dampier had received, his bold statement inciting controversy.

But after some discussion, fans thought Bogut’s claim as the third best center in the East wasn’t problematic.

Whether Yao Ming or Howard was first was debatable, but they were definitely the top two.

Emeka shifted down to power forward after losing weight, O’Neal got old, the younger O’Neal was slacking off, Curry was done... Looking around the East, there really wasn’t a third center better than Bogut.

Mo Williams also delivered his peak season, averaging 18 points and 7 assists.

But apart from these three stars, there wasn’t much impressive about the Bucks. The unibrowed hero Villanueva, troubled by injuries this season, regressed instead of progressing, currently averaging just 10.5 points—a career low...

At 9:22 p.m., after 2 hours and 22 minutes of play, led by Okafor with 22 points and 20 boards, the Hornets won a major victory over the Bucks, 119 to 103.

As for this ’East’s third best forward’ thing, Okafor was still quite concerned about it.

Zhang Yang took 18 shots and made 8, including 2 of 6 three-pointers, plus 10 of 12 free throws, scoring 28 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals.

With a miserable shooting percentage, he struggled during the 33 minutes he was on the court, yet still couldn’t reach 30+ points. Zhang Yang was used to this; whenever they faced weaker teams, as long as his Hornets didn’t drop the ball and the weaker teams didn’t have an outburst, the opponents would prioritize double-teaming him.

This, along with his teammates, he had also often done in the early part of his rookie season...