With three points at the start, Nash begged for a maximum salary to renew his contract

With Irving submitting a trade application, the most important job for the Cavaliers in the summer is to find ways to keep Irving. , you can only find a suitable next home as much as possible.

However, Irving's condition is not just to be traded, he must be traded to a strong team, otherwise he will not play for that team, and after Barabara said a lot, he actually named him to join Celtic.

As soon as those words came out, those other teams interested in Irving backed down.

Although they can impress the Cavaliers with a higher bargaining chip than the Celtics to get Irving, if Irving is unwilling to play for them, they will not be able to keep Irving when the contract expires.

So the deal evolved into a unilateral bargain between the Cavaliers and the Celtics.

With Irving's words, the Celtics certainly want to lower the price as much as possible and get Irving at the lowest cost.

But the Cavaliers are not easy to mess with. The offer is too excessive. They would rather kill the net and force Irving to stay with the Cavaliers for two years, and it will not be cheaper for the Celtics.

The two sides bargained and wrangled for a month and a half. From Irving's announcement in early July that he would leave the Cavaliers to the formal agreement between the two teams, it was already August 7.

In the end, the Celtics were still the same as in the original history. They sent three players, Thomas Jr., Jae Crowder, and Ante Zizic, plus a first-round and a second-round chip, and got Irving from the Cavaliers. .

Even if it is three for one plus a first round and a second round, this deal is still a blood loss for the Cavaliers.

Last season, Thomas Jr. averaged 29 points and 6 assists per game in the regular season, but in the playoffs, his shortcoming of height was immediately exposed. The average data dropped to 23 points and 6.7 assists per game, and his shooting percentage also dropped to 42.6%.

Irving's height among point guards is not considered top-notch, but his height of 1 meters at least makes him not completely reduced to a burden like Thomas Jr. on the defensive end.

As for Jae Crowder, who averaged 13.9 points and 5.8 rebounds per game last season, as the Celtics' fourth scoring point, it is a pretty good boost.

All in all, the Celtics were happy with this deal. They intercepted the Jazz's All-Star small forward Hayward at the beginning of July with a maximum salary, and got Irving through the trade. Sen Tatum, the basic plate of a championship team has been successfully built.

On the other hand, the Cavaliers, the combination of the three champions fell apart, leaving only James and Embiid as the two champions. Although Thomas Jr., who ranked fifth in the MVP list last season, was added, the team's strength was still affected.

The only fortunate thing is that because the Celtics and the Cavaliers met in the divisional semifinals in the playoffs last season, a series of butterfly effects caused Thomas Jr. to not relapse from the old injury in the East Finals and the Cavaliers. aggravated.

So in theory, Thomas Jr. will be healthier next season than in the original history, and his performance should be better.

Of course, the Cavaliers themselves don't know this.

After the deal with the Celtics was concluded, the Cavaliers management began to seek reinforcements in the free market. Their first goal was Wade, who had already started negotiating a buyout with the Bulls.

The Cavaliers are not the only teams in the league that are constantly looking for trade reinforcements.

In early September, the Brooklyn Nets finally made a move.

After Wang Chao left the team, the Nets have been in a state of silence, except for the three-year 3 million contract renewal of striker Bojan Bogdanovic, no action.

At this stage, the Nets, even without Wang Chao, have a very strong lineup structure. In the eyes of the outside world, they are still a powerful team in the East, especially when the Cavaliers lost Irving and their strength plummeted. It is still a popular team to enter the finals next season, but it is quite difficult to defend and win the championship.

The Nets were obviously not satisfied with this, so at the beginning of September, the Nets finally started to act. They sent Bogdanovic, Harrell, Powell, and Brogdon to the Los Angeles Clippers in a package deal, and also included a future first-timer. Round, 9 for 4, get All-Star guard Chris Paul from the Clippers.

Once the deal was announced, it immediately caused a violent shock in the league.

Paul, the god of point guards, joined the Nets and teamed up with Durant. The team also retained the two most potential players, Jokic and Booker. Although many potential players on the bench were traded as trading chips, the team The bench lineup is unprecedentedly empty, but the basic set of Durant + Irving + Jokic + Booker makes the Nets once again the favorite to win the championship.

The completion of this deal made Durant very happy. When interviewed by reporters, Durant could no longer restrain his joyful expression, and said happily: "This feeling is amazing. I have never had such a deal with Paul in my career." Top-level point guards have teamed up. Wang Chao’s organizational support is very strong. He also plays the point guard position in the team, but he is more like a point guard like LeBron than a traditional point guard. I believe Chris The mature and experienced organization and coping ability can make our scoring easier. Although we lost Wang Chao not long ago, the joining of Chris has given us the strength to defend the championship!"

Westbrook: "???"

For Durant, Paul joining the Nets is really the best result of this summer.

If Wang Chao doesn't leave the Nets and let Durant continue to be his second child, Durant himself will not be able to bear it.

Joining the Warriors as a veteran 1.5 and being able to grab Curry's FMVP in the finals proves that he is the strongest player in the Warriors. In the Nets, he is a pure veteran. Not only is his tactical status, but his statistics will always be second to Wang Chao Next, even in the finals, Wang Chao made PUA public because he wanted to grab Wang Chao's FMVP.

So when he learned that Wang Chao really left the Nets to join the Nuggets, Durant's first reaction was to breathe a sigh of relief.

With Wang Chao gone, Durant is now the boss of the Nets!The joining of Paul has given him a big boost. As a traditional point guard, Paul will definitely not be able to take away his position as the leader of the Nets. As long as he can lead this powerful Nets to win the championship in the new season, then the Finals The shame will also be washed away.

Paul joined the Nets, but Wang Chao never thought of it.

In the original 17-18 season, the Clippers, who were determined to overthrow and rebuild, traded Paul to the Rockets. The deal was 7 for 1. The Rockets got 7 players and sent a first round and a second round at the same time. It can be said that the blood was spent.

Paul did not disappoint the Rockets. The Rockets teamed by him and Harden had the league's best record of 17 wins and 18 losses in the 65-17 season, and fought seven bloody games with the Warriors in the Western Conference Finals, even taking the lead 3:2 Winning the match point, if it wasn’t for Paul’s accidental injury in the Tianwangshan battle, which caused G6 and G7 to fail to play, the Warriors staged a reversal surprise attack when they trailed by 17 points in the first quarter, tying the score to 3:3 and winning the final victory in the tiebreaker. If it wins, the Rockets are very likely to win the championship in the 17-18 season.

After all, what broke out from the east was a battalion full of remnants, and the Cavaliers led by James single-core all the way up against the sky, had a huge gap in strength.

Now, the management of the Rockets has undergone a major change because of the conditions at the beginning of Wang Chao's joining, and the core of the team is Kawhi Leonard instead of Harden. Naturally, they do not have the courage to change 7 for 1. The Nets took the first step to get Paul.

The lineup of Durant + Paul + Jokic + Booker, in Wang Chao's opinion, may have surpassed the two major aircraft carrier teams of the Cavaliers and Warriors.

毕竟原本时空的17-18赛季约基奇，已经能场均稳定贡献18.5分10.7篮板6助攻，布克场均更是能得到24.9分4.5篮板4.7助攻的数据。

Considering that both of them have the effect of Wang Chao's accompanying potion to assist training, and their strength is stronger than that of the same period, the strength of the Nets can be imagined.

"Unexpectedly, I really made myself a strong opponent..."

He sighed, but Wang Chao didn't pay much attention to it.

To this day, how strong his strength has become, in fact, I don't know very well.

Wang Chao's overall ability score has already reached 99 full points in years of training, and many abilities have even met the promotion requirements. Upgrading to 100 has unlocked more powerful abilities.

In terms of talent skills, Wang Chao had as many as 23 talent skills before. With this championship, his talent skills have increased by 2, reaching 25.

Two new talents, Wang Chao chose to use them on defense and long-lost offense respectively, and got the two talents of defensive vanguard and fantasy footsteps respectively.

The effect of the defensive vanguard talent is that the talent carrier will take the lead in defense on the field, which will bring encouragement to teammates, and can increase the enthusiasm of teammates to defend and a small increase in defensive ability.

This talent is obviously similar to the defensive core in the 2K badge. It can improve the defensive ability of teammates and is extremely cost-effective.

The ability of the fantasy footsteps talent is to make Wang Chao's movements more realistic when performing fantasy footsteps in the interior, and it is easier to sway the defender.

To be fair, this is the first talent related to inside offense that Wang Chao has acquired. As an outside player, almost all of Wang Chao's offensive talents are outside shooting bonus types. The only one that can be used inside is the air walk talent.

Although with Wang Chao's current offensive ability, the offensive ability without talent to assist the inside line is also very strong, but this kind of icing on the cake, the talent that can make his inside offensive skills more threatening is definitely valuable, especially the current high-quality center in the league. In fewer and fewer cases, the efficiency of inside offense sometimes does not lose outside shooting.

The confidence brought by personal ability to Wang Chao is one aspect, and the Nuggets' lineup is not as weak as imagined is another reason.

The offensive firepower of Wang Chao + Mitchell + Murray is not necessarily worse than that of the Nets. The main thing is that the offensive firepower of Wang Chao alone is comparable to Durant + Paul. Mitchell + Murray is even It's not as good as Booker + Jokic's offensive ability, but it's not too inferior.

More importantly, the real strength of this Nuggets team is its defensive ability.

Wang Chao + Gobert + PJ Tucker, now has the defensive attribute bonus brought by the defensive forward.

Just imagine, Gobert guards the basket, and Wang Chao and Tucker take advantage of their mobility to help defend and defend. What kind of terrifying defensive system is this?

In the 17-18 season, the Jazz created the strongest defense in the league only by relying on the inside combination of Gobert + Derek Favors, and the average conceded points per game during the regular season was the lowest in the league.

The Jazz is still like this, and now the Nuggets have a defensive combination of Wang Chao + Gobert. It is entirely conceivable how strong the Nuggets' defensive ability will be in the new season.

In contrast, the Nets are indeed stronger than the Nuggets in terms of offense, but on the defensive end, Booker and Jokic are not the kind of players who are good at defense, and so is Durant.

Someone once analyzed that Durant's defensive ability has actually been greatly underestimated. The monster-like height and wingspan make Durant as long as he is serious, his defensive radius and defensive efficiency are quite high.

But here comes the question, when can Durant get serious on the defensive end?
Physical fitness has always been Durant's weakness. Being able to fully display his offensive ability in the game will already consume [-]% of his physical strength. If his physical strength is wasted on the defensive end, his offensive efficiency will inevitably be severely affected. Influence.

This is why Durant has a good defensive ability, but he has never been selected to the best defensive team in his career.

When you can only choose the same offense and defense, you must choose offense.

This is the same reason that in the future, old James will always be criticized for defending with his eyes and akimbo. Physical limitations doom the old James to not being able to have both offense and defense as he did when he was young, and the situation is even worse.

As for Chris Paul, as a player selected to the All-Defensive Team 9 times, his defensive ability is very strong, but his height of 1 meters is destined to show his defensive ability only when defending the same small guard , In the NBA, what talent brings can often not be smoothed out with hard work.

Even Jimmy Butler, as a well-known top star with mediocre talent, his so-called mediocre talent is only in comparison with Kawhi Leonard and other talented monsters.

Among ordinary players, Butler's talent is also at the top level.

Besides, talent is divided into static talent and dynamic talent. Butler's static talent is mediocre, but his dynamic talent is quite good. His jumping, speed, strength and other aspects of his body are better than Leonard's.

The topic is far away, back to the free market in the summer.

Paul's joining the Nets has already caused an earthquake in the league, but the "strong earthquake" has not ended.

Time soon came to mid-September, and the league once again had a super big deal.

The Oklahoma City Thunder reached a trade agreement with the New York Knicks, sending Brook Lopez and Kanter, and getting superstar Carmelo Anthony from the Knicks.

In this way, the Thunder got their wish and formed the Big Three combination of Westbrook + George + Anthony!
No matter how disappointing the performance of the Thunder's Big Three in the upcoming 17-18 season is, at least for now, the combination of these three is at the top level in the Western Conference and even in the entire league. It has become one of the top favorite teams in the league. Its strength is second only to the Nets, Warriors, Cavaliers and other teams. It is even rated above the Spurs and Rockets. up.

The successive birth and establishment of multiple super teams in the league have made many basketball commentators sigh that the league has entered the era of multi-star teams to win championships without knowing it. People are overwhelmed, when did this trend start to rise?

From this point of view, Wang Chao, who went to the Nuggets without teaming up with any star, is like a clean stream.

However, within two days of such exclamation, Wade had just reached a buyout agreement with the Bulls on September 9. Wade, who became a free agent, joined the Cleveland Cavaliers with a one-year veteran's basic salary contract of 25 million, which once again caused a strong aftershock.

That's Wade!Like James and Anthony, he is one of the strongest players in the 03 class.

With James, Anthony and even Bosh, who has been away from the league for a year because of blood clots, still holding a maximum salary contract, Wade, who is not inferior to them, actually joined the Cavaliers with only 230 million US dollars?

Last season was the 16-17 season. Wade in the Bulls could indeed see a decline in his personal ability, but even so, in the absence of Butler in the Bulls, Wade, who was the team's first scoring point, was still on the court. Both can contribute 19.2 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.4 assists.

With such a personal performance, at the moment when salary is inflated, even if age is taken into account, if you can't get an annual salary of 2000 million, 1500 million is definitely no problem.

In fact, after Wade and the Bulls reached a buyout agreement, many teams offered him good contracts, but Wade did not accept it.

For his dying career, it doesn't make much sense to make more money. It's better to take advantage of the last time to compete for the championship.

For this reason, after careful consideration, he decided to choose the Cavaliers of his good brother James.

Even if they fell in the Eastern Conference finals last season, even if Irving left the team in the new season and the team weakened, the Cavaliers are still one of the favorite teams to win the championship. After all, they still have James and Embiid.

The Nuggets also contacted Wade immediately after he bought out the Bulls, and promised to give the other party a mid-level contract offer, but Wade still did not consider joining the Nuggets at all.

After all, what else does the Nuggets have in their current lineup besides what Wang Chao can do?
What Wade wants is to win the championship, not to make money, and even if it is to make money, the mid-level contract offered by the Nuggets is not as attractive as other teams.

Failing to sign Wade, Wang Chao will not be too disappointed.

Originally, signing Wade was just to improve the depth of the team's bench, not necessary for the team.

And the Nuggets already have Rose and Kuzma on the bench, which is completely enough.

Wade and the Cavaliers reached a signing agreement. It was already September 9. The preseason game is about to start, and all teams in the league have already assembled.

The Nuggets are no exception.

As early as the beginning of September, the Nuggets called all new players to take makeup photos.

As always, Wang Chao chose the No. 1 jersey as his team number.

This summer, he took a relatively long vacation. From the end of June to the beginning of September, Wang Chao stayed in New York for more than two months, and did not hold a private training camp as usual.

In the past two months, Wang Chao has been at home with his daughter.

Joining the Nuggets next season, Wang Chao has no plans to move his family to Denver.

Both Miranda and Kerr will stay in New York. After all, Kerr is still young. It would be fine if she was born in Denver. Now she has adapted to the environment in New York. Going to a city with a plateau climate like Denver is not conducive to children. grew up.

Besides, Wang Chao didn't plan to stay in the Nuggets for a long time. In his plan, he would lead the Nuggets to win the championship this season, and then he would leave here. It will only be a year. It will be another matter where he will go when the time comes. up.

If it is a bustling place with a pleasant climate like Los Angeles, you can buy a luxury house in advance and arrange for Miranda and Xiao Kerr to live in it.

By next year, 2018, Wang Chao will also be 35 years old. With the blessing of steel and iron bones, he does not know how long he can maintain his peak period, 40 years old or longer, but in order to complete the system The ultimate mission goal is to win the mysterious prize. Wang Chao still intends to play for at least six to seven years and help those teams without championships win championships as much as possible.

This can also be regarded as the feelings of a fan of all kinds of stand-alone game players. Before clearing a game, if you don’t get all the achievements, you always feel that something is missing. Even after that, the game process is just a simple swipe Brushing, there is no fun at all, but for the goal of all collections, I will still try my best to complete all the tasks.

Wang Chao can be sure that when he chooses to officially retire, he will become a legend in the league and even the entire basketball world. (end of this chapter)