Chapter 58 58. Happy May Day to Brother Pao!
The Spurs and the Hornets played fiercely. Although the score difference was huge, every game was exciting.

The Lakers were in a terrible situation. They lost the home-court advantage 78 to 86 in the first game of the playoffs due to carelessness. They won two games in a row in G2 and G3 to regain the home-court advantage, but it was still a torturous game. The score of G2 was 81 to 75 and the score of G3 was 91 to 86. The scores of the three games seemed to have returned to the NHC (high-post defense no-hands-on) era seven years ago.

Zhang Yang also felt a tingling sensation on his scalp when he saw the scores between the Lakers and the Grizzlies.

In the last 20 games of the regular season, the Grizzlies only lost 93 points per game. During this period, the average points scored and conceded by the 30 teams in the league was 101.2. You can imagine how difficult the Grizzlies' defense was.

That is the Lakers. With three tall players, they only lost 20 points per game in the last 94 games of the regular season, which is comparable to the Grizzlies. The three tall players can compete with the two bears, and then Kobe will win the game.

Zhang Yang watched the live broadcast of the Game 2 between the Lakers and the Grizzlies. He originally thought that the Lakers would perform mediocrely in the playoffs this year, but in reality, they were very strong! It could even be said that they were the strongest team he had seen in more than two months.

With three highs as the base, Kobe raising the ceiling, and a combination of inside and outside, this lineup can be said to be a model of contemporary basketball.

No wonder after the Lakers fell behind the Mavericks 0-2 at home, most people still believed that the Lakers would eventually make a comeback.

It’s not that the Lakers are not strong enough, they are a qualified two-time defending champion...it can only be that the Silver Horn King, who is like a god descending from heaven, is too strong!
It is April 4th, the day of Game 29 of the series between the Spurs and the Hornets.

In the past few days, regular season individual awards have been announced one after another.

MVP, Ginobili... ranked eighth in votes, making the list for the first time in his career.

Best Sixth Man, Zhang Yang...came third in votes, a fraction of Odom and Terry.

Best Defensive Player, this is quite interesting, Duncan ranked third, and the vote rate was the highest in his career.

Howard's defensive dominance has visibly declined. There are rumors that he has a herniated disc and a back injury, but the Magic fiercely refuted this statement and secretly began to inquire about the price of Howard from various teams...

Garnett received the second highest number of votes, almost the same number as Duncan. No one would have thought that the two 35-year-old men would have the best defensive performances besides Howard this season.

For the Most Improved Award, Zhang Yang ranked second, receiving 26 first-place votes and accounting for 26.35% of the total points. He has made great progress, but the progress of the winner Kevin Love can be described as exaggerated, from averaging 14 points and 11 rebounds per game to averaging 20 points and 15 rebounds per game, the first player to average 28+20 in 15 years. The last time such data appeared was Moses Malone in the early 80s.

At 6 o'clock in the evening, the fourth game of the series between the Spurs and the Hornets began.

Trailing 0-3, the Hornets played as if they had given up the game tonight, with 18 to 29 in the first quarter and 16 to 35 in the second quarter. They were 30 points behind the Spurs at halftime. The total score in the first half was not as much as the Spurs' score in the second quarter alone!
The performance of the Hornets was unacceptable even to their opponent Zhang Yang. What was going on with the opponent?

Are the Spurs that strong? They beat a playoff team by 30 points in the first half? That's outrageous!
He estimated that the Nuggets players who created the 09-point tragedy in the first round of 58 also had the same confusion.

但看到保罗半场打了21分钟至出手4次，4投2中加上2中2的罚球拿到6分1板3助攻的数据……张杨明白了。

Indeed, in the first half of tonight, Zhang Yang didn't feel Paul's presence very much. Not to mention compared with G1 and G3, it was much worse than G2.

After the halftime break, Popovich put five veterans including GDP, Richard Jefferson and McDyess on the bench and did not let them play. He asked George Hill, Zhang Yang, Danny Green, Blair, Split and others to practice... The score difference continued to widen.

Paul continued to play in the second half and played for another 9 minutes. He was replaced in the second half of the third quarter and Hornets head coach Monty Williams never replaced him again.

Monty Williams felt desperate, and Paul was also desperate, but the latter's despair was not about this game or this playoffs, but about this team. He planned to call his agent tomorrow to discuss a trade with the Hornets management.

As for the ever-increasing score gap, Paul, sitting on the bench, smiled indifferently...

At 8:24 pm, the final whistle sounded.

张杨今晚狂扔27次，其中19次出手在下半场，27投15中，其中三分球3中1，加上6中5的罚球，拿到全场最高的36分7板1助攻3抢断。

GDP三人得分都没上双，邓肯半场8分8板顶薪表现，吉诺比利6分4助攻、帕克8分7助攻……三人出场时间都只有十四五分钟。加上乔治-希尔的14分9助攻、丹尼-格林的18分、斯普利特的11分……

120 to 69, the Spurs slaughtered the Hornets by 51 points and swept into the second round!
We advanced, it was a massacre, the Spurs players just high-fived and hugged each other.

The celebration was so quiet, completely different from the passionate and enthusiastic Suns.

Zhang Yang celebrated with his teammates, feeling a little reluctant. He could feel that he was about to leave.

This time, his feelings were very different from the last time. He spent a lot of time studying, training, and improving himself. He also thought about problems from the team's perspective and helped the team...

The difficulty of the training is definitely higher than the 'trial version', but the lowest difficulty task he chose was not particularly difficult. In addition, he was deeply impressed by the Spurs this season. After all, it was the most amazing season when the 'Spurs system' debuted. He was willing to use his brain to analyze and completed the task smoothly.

Through this experience, he took a big step forward in the direction he hoped for. Although this series was not a big event, at least he was not just standing on the sidelines and watching. He played a very big role!

In the end, with a 50+ point difference, Zhang Yang didn't expect the game to turn out like this. Let's just take it as a way to wish Brother Pao a happy May Day two days in advance!
His vision gradually blurred...

……

……

On December 2003, 12, at 26 o'clock in the morning, the day after Christmas, Zhang Yang woke up from his sleep. The 'yesterday' he thought of after waking up was when he went to bed after watching the game on Christmas night.

As the saying goes, the first time is new, the second time is familiar. This time he took the initiative to recall this training trip... It was a very good trip. He didn't know when he would go to this timeline next time, but he was looking forward to it.

At this time, the door of training appeared in front of him. Seeing the words on the door, he felt that he didn't know when he would go to this timeline next time.

It was written on the door that the next experience would open a new timeline.

He felt a little regretful, but for him who had just woken up from a dream, the 10th timeline felt like a good dream. After a moment of regret, he began to look forward to new experiences. He didn't know what era the new timeline would be, what the beginning would be like, and who he would meet.

He learned a lot from this experience. He understood the "incomplete version" of the Spurs system and learned a lot of ball-handling pick-and-roll skills, mostly related to scoring after the pick-and-roll. He also learned a lot of defensive coordination and defensive skills, as well as the European step.

The gains from training have increased to 3: Steve Nash's sense of ball control rhythm (elementary), improved continuous jumping ability, and the devilish pace of the demon sword.

The devil step and the European step are a perfect match.

He hasn't tried the continuous jumping improvement yet, but as the name suggests, it has the same function as ball sense and devilish steps in improving basketball talent.

New tasks are coming.

"Mission: Accumulate 20000 shooting points, reward: Physical talent limit +1."

As for physical strength, Zhang Yang feels it's pretty good. At the age of 22, his physical strength is not bad, better than Ginobili, and probably better than Yao Ming, but he is not one of the best in the NBA.

He re-evaluated his physical talent. He is currently stronger than DeRozan, probably simply because he is one year older. As they grow older, DeRozan will definitely narrow the gap in physical strength and surpass him...

I hope there will be more tasks that increase physical strength talents!

After closing the door, Zhang Yang got up, washed, changed into long-sleeved sportswear, and holding the basketball he had already inflated last night, he went downstairs, picked up a few chairs, and rushed to the park. He practiced the basic skills of the European step and striding around the chairs, and got to work!
An hour later, Yang Jing got up and went downstairs to go shopping. There were a few chairs missing from the bar counter of the coffee shop... She was startled. Was her house robbed?
She quickly checked her things...the change was not missing, the electrical appliances were not missing, and other things were not missing, except for a few chairs. No way, what thief would steal a few broken chairs without taking anything else?
(End of this chapter)