Slam Dunk: My Study Abroad Career in Northern Hunan

Entering the first warm-up match of the Timberwolves, Wu Dao left a deep impression on the Timberwolves' management.

Unlike owner Glenn Taylor, the team coach is much more cautious in correcting the martial arts.

In the NBA, it is not strange for players to be in great shape on a certain day or during a certain period of time and perform amazingly.

Whether Wu Dao can become a starting player depends on Wu Dao's stability. Only players who are stable enough can have the possibility of being a stable starter.

Therefore, in the following days of training, Phillip Saunders participated in practice matches.The Timberwolves' team practice games are all played in the target center. After all, it is the home court, and it is very important for the players to adapt to their home court.

As for the martial arts who had just arrived, they were not familiar with it at all. The basketball hoop in the center of the target seemed to be tailor-made for martial arts. In the next few days of practice matches, martial arts still maintained a high level of performance, regardless of Philip Sander. No matter how Si changes his formation, no matter what tactics his martial arts opponents use to target him.

Martial arts can always score crazy points on the opponent's head.

After a few days of competition, his personal scoring average has even reached 36 points per game.

In today's basketball environment, such a scoring average is really alarming.Phillip Sanders and other team management have completely recognized the ability of martial arts in their hearts, but before officially correcting martial arts, they still need to test the upper limit of martial arts.

A practice match is, after all, a practice match.

When Wu Dao played with the players, although the intensity of the game was pretty good, neither Garnett nor Tom could "do their best" when defending Wu Dao.

When playing against Wu Dao, even though the matchup was already beaten by Wu Dao, they still deliberately controlled their defensive movements when defending, and their defense was very clean.

But in fact, both Garnett and Tom actually made a lot of small moves when playing against other teams in the regular season.

In this era, if you want to defend your opponents well on the front line, some things are already "standard".

Moreover, Garnett and Tom's defense, even if there are many small moves during the regular season, their defense is already clean compared to certain players.

There are some bad guys in the NBA who choose to box when they can't beat them with basketball.

Some defensive actions are not directed at the ball at all, but completely directed at the person.

In the opinion of Philip Sanders, the "defensive intensity" that martial arts currently faces is not enough.

However, in normal training, it is certainly impossible for Philip Sanders to ask his players to give Wu Dao more intensity than they should. He can only ask the referee to call the penalty when Wu Dao holds the ball. Make the scale wider.

Increase confrontation intensity.

After a few days of practice matches, Garnett and Tom also noticed that the referee was a little more relaxed.Therefore, when defending, some physical contact given to martial arts becomes more frequent.

Under such defense, Martial Arts' offensive efficiency indeed declined somewhat.

The average points per game finally dropped to around 30.

Although it was still a terrifying scoring efficiency, it finally made other players breathe a sigh of relief.

Averaging thirty points per game, although it is still a bit scary, he is still a normal human being.

Wu Dao has a cheerful personality and is strong. Although he refuses to carry sneakers and a water bottle for Tom, the boss, but other than this, Tom and Wu Dao get along well.

Garnett is a trash talker. He always likes to talk trash when facing Martial Arts on the court. Martial Arts is not used to him either. He often responds with basketball and then talks trash back in return.

English-language trash talk is too indestructible to martial arts. For people like him from Zaun, even Garnett's trash talk can't break through martial arts defenses.

After experiencing the martial arts studied by Zu An, after the trash talk was translated into English and spoken out, it really made Garnett somewhat vulnerable.

One day, Martial Arts scolded Garnett for being angry, and this guy used his eyes to mock Martial Arts.

But Wu Dao gave Garnett a shirt the next day and kindly told him that the shirt was made of fine cotton.

Although Garnett only had a high school education and did not pay attention to the lectures when he was studying, in such a big environment, how could he not understand the purpose of martial arts emphasizing cotton.

The angry Garnett yelled that martial arts was racial discrimination and wanted to challenge martial arts to a duel. Faced with Garnett's unreasonable request, martial arts of course readily accepted it.

It just so happened that Shinichi Fujima's gym also opened a branch in the city where Martial Arts was located. Martial Arts enthusiastically invited the team's teammates to visit and, by the way, accept Garnett's duel invitation.

After that day, although Garnett still talked trash while playing, he never mentioned the martial arts duel again.

After that day, the voices of Wu Dao's teammates speaking to the newcomer Wu Dao were obviously much softer.

Although Budao and Garnett talk trash constantly on the court and don't interact much off the court, it's not necessarily true that the relationship between the two is a fire and water.

After Wu Dao joined the team for more than a month, Flip Saunders often put Wu Dao, Garnett, Marbury, and Tom in a team to play together during training.

When playing against each other, the two of them were very difficult to deal with, but when they were on the same team, the two of them acted extremely well together.

As we all know, Garnett is a tough guy who plays very hard on the defensive end.

The system the Timberwolves have built around Garnett is defensive counterattack.

A strong defense was built around the inside of Garnett, Tom and others. After blocking the opponent's attack, he quickly converted and launched a counterattack.This is the way the Timberwolves are best at serving.

With the arrival of Martial Arts, he easily integrated into the team's system.

Wu Dao has a sense of assisting defense, but to be honest, he is not top-notch in the true sense. What he excels at most is one-on-one defense. No matter what kind of opponent he is, trying to solve Wu Dao one-on-one is not the same thing. Easy things.

But as long as there is help, it is relatively easy for players with strong personal strength to break through martial arts defense.

And Garnett can also make up for the deficiencies of martial arts on the defensive end.

Garnett is quick on his feet and very mobile. Of course, more importantly, he is also very good and willing to cover for those missed by his teammates.

Garnett's attitude on the defensive end is similar to Duncan's.

Although their personalities are not very confrontational, in terms of playing style, Wu Dao and Garnett are surprisingly in harmony.

And Tom himself is not a striker who dominates the ball. As for Marbury, although he is also a ball-holding core, he is a person who is willing to share the ball for the team.

Therefore, when Martial Arts and these people formed a team, they played very smoothly.

The regular season of the NBA 97-98 season officially begins on October 10.31.

In September and October, NBA teams will conduct some warm-up games. This warm-up game is usually also called a pre-season game.The purpose of the preseason is, firstly, to warm up, expand the influence of the league, and expand the market to facilitate ticket sales; secondly, it allows the team to see the quality of the rookies; thirdly, it allows the team to adjust the lineup and allow the players to adapt to the routine in advance. race.

Generally speaking, in the warm-up stage, all teams will not use their strongest system. Most teams will test the new lineup for a while and then stop at it.

Before the start of the NBA preseason, Budao also heard that Duncan, the top pick in this year's draft, represented the team in the summer league and had begun to adapt to the intensity of professional basketball games in advance.

Budao wanted to participate in the summer league and practice his skills first, but his request was ruthlessly rejected.

The NBA's summer league was not officially established as an official event until 2007. Prior to that, the so-called summer league was actually an "irregular" competition for team members to participate in on their own.

These competitions are organized by local cities or teams, and the participating teams also include many teams from the secondary leagues.

Generally speaking, 1.2-year-old rookies in NBA teams, or unsigned free agents under team inspection, will participate in the summer league to increase their popularity and let the team get to know the player better.

The stage of the summer league is also a stage for rookies and free agents to show their value.

But Phillip Saunders felt that there was no need for martial arts to participate in such a competition.

On the one hand, Wu Dao has already shown his terrifying strength in regular training, and his value does not need to be reflected in the summer league at all. On the other hand, Phillip Saunders does not want to increase Wu Dao's exposure.

Martial arts is the true secret weapon of their Timberwolves, and he doesn't want martial arts to be exposed so early.

Yes, Wu Dao has indeed shown an almost unstoppable offensive ability during team training, but in the NBA, no player can withstand the enemy's research and targeting.

The later the strength of martial arts is exposed, the shorter the time for the enemy to react. This is Philip Sanders' idea.

Without the summer league as an opportunity to increase its popularity, Martial Arts has no regrets.

Because he heard another news.

Duncan, the world-famous No. [-] pick, suffered in the summer league.

Duncan faced Jazz second-year center Aust Tagg in the summer league and scored 14 points and 8 rebounds.

It sounds like a very good statistic, but this statistic does not meet the expectations of Spurs fans at all, and it also fails to meet his status as the number one pick.

What's more, data is data, and Duncan's performance on the court did not satisfy the fans.

Wu Dao didn't know that Duncan would stretch his hips so much in his debut. In his heart, Duncan was the "number one power forward in history."

This game also paved the way for the Jazz to sweep the Spurs in the 97-98 season.

Seeing Duncan's failure in the summer league, Wu Dao's originally optimistic mood also sank.

During this period of training in the team, the martial arts was going so smoothly that he felt like he was almost invincible.

But when he saw that Duncan, who was also invincible in the team's training matches, was defeated, Wu Dao immediately became more humble.

Duncan is deflated, but the person who is alert is martial arts.

As mentioned before, in this era, NBA preseason games have not yet become a regular rule, and the games are organized and promoted by local teams themselves.

Although the Timberwolves do not allow Budo to play in the summer league, it is absolutely essential for the team to test the new lineup before the regular season.

After all, the test of training results must be on the playing field, right?
The Timberwolves' poor performance forced them to find some "evenly matched" opponents to play against during the warm-up match.

In the end, the Timberwolves' management chose to invite the Warriors and Nuggets for a few close contests.

Among them, the Warriors are "a level better" than the Timberwolves. In the 96-97 season, they had an "excellent" record of 30 wins and 52 losses, and missed the playoffs.

The Nuggets are on the same "level" as the Timberwolves. They had 21 wins and 61 losses last season.

These are all famous "strong teams" in the Western Conference. In the eyes of the Timberwolves management, they are just right as opponents!
When the Warriors and Nuggets faced the Timberwolves' invitation, they agreed without much thought.

In this year's draft, they all selected rookies who they thought were pretty good. Facing the Timberwolves, a team with a "somewhat" stronger panel, both the Nuggets and Warriors felt this was a good training opportunity.

So in September.

The Timberwolves invited the Colorado Nuggets to come to Minnesota to play a training game.

Today's Nuggets are really a "bad team" with little strength.

The team's salary peak is Bryant Stick, a standard defender worth just over $400 million.

This defender's offensive ability is better than nothing, and the passing ability of the team can only be said to be visible.

The team's No. 183 player is a defender with the same salary level as him, Sherman Douglas, oh, [-]cm tall.

In fact, there is no need to list the extra data. What is left by the Nuggets are just "stinky fish and shrimps" that cannot be put on the table.

The biggest player is Eric Williams, the 95th overall pick in the first round of 14.
A man who averaged 97+ per game in the 98-20 regular season.

It's just a pity that he got injured after playing four games.

And in a team like the Nuggets, Eric Williams' ability to average 20+ per game doesn't actually mean how awesome he is.

vs. the Nuggets at home.

The Timberwolves took it very seriously!

The rookie Wu Dao was put on the bench and did not get the opportunity to start playing.

In the third quarter of the game against the Nuggets, the Timberwolves, led by Garnett, Tom and Marbury, beat the opponent 77:59, leading the opponent by 18 points.

After three quarters, Garnett, Tom, Marbury and other starters came off the field, replaced by the rotation headed by Terry Sr., and Wu Dao also got the opportunity to play in the last quarter.

However, facing an opponent with no fighting spirit, Wu Dao only scored 12 points and was finally led by Terry to end the game with 95:73.

His NBA rookie season officially began in such a simple and unpretentious manner.

(End of this chapter)