Slam Dunk: My Study Abroad Career in Northern Hunan

The Timberwolves' ambitions for the new season were also told to all Minnesota residents through media reporters.

The excitement caused by this statement quickly spread throughout the state, and shortly after the Timberwolves held their media open day, teams in mobile cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago also held press conferences.

There is still more than a month to go before the new season, but all teams that have their eyes on the championship are already competing against each other.

As the player trading channel is about to close, the competition in this trading market is becoming more and more intense.

The Lakers have already completed the team formation for the new season, withdrew from the game in the free trade market, and started closed training.

The Knicks and Rockets also got the players they wanted before the start of the season and began preparing for the new season.

The Timberwolves, although a team that just won the championship, are the first team among all teams to prepare for the new season.

After several months of training, the new lineup has begun to show results.

As the team leader, Wu Dao reduced his shooting rights under the persuasion of the coach for the sake of better operation of the team.

If he had just entered the league, he would never agree with Coach Philip's idea.

Because for rookie players, shooting rights are closely related to team status and playing time.

A player who does not have the right to shoot on the court has no status in the team at all. Moreover, a player like Wudao is based on offense as his personal style. If even his right to shoot is restricted, his playing time will inevitably be severely limited.

But nowadays, Wu Dao no longer needs to prove anything to his teammates.

A scoring champion in a tournament and a finals MVP in a championship are enough to show his strength. With a certain status in the team, sacrificing some shooting rights to make the team's offense smoother is not a bad thing for martial arts.

In the off-season, among the various daily training items, in addition to these basic strength and physical training, martial arts also focus on strengthening the practice of assisting defense and conducting.

Coach Philip has higher requirements for Wu Dao. He is no longer satisfied with Wu Dao's outstanding personal scoring ability. He hopes that Wu Dao can play the role of connecting the team on the court. While ensuring that he poses enough threat personally, he can develop excellent conducting ability and revitalize the entire team.

He has already anticipated the difficulties that the Timberwolves will encounter next. All teams will study the Timberwolves' offensive tactics, and the defense against Wu Dao will become more terrifying than last season.

The worst-case scenario is that some teams would even commit a flagrant foul in order to win and send Wu Dao off the court.

In order to reduce the brilliance of Wu Dao and to let all the players help Wu Dao share the enemy's firepower, making such changes is also the inevitable path for the Timberwolves to continue to become stronger.

However, what surprised Coach Philip was that the talented Wu Dao finally reached a bottleneck during his training.
No matter how much Wu Dao trained, his assist defense could not meet Coach Philip's requirements.

When dealing with some standardized running positions, Wudao's assisting defense can be in place at the first time, but when some unexpected situations occur on the field and the opponent makes some changes on the spot, Wudao will not be able to assist in place at the first time.

After half a month of training, Coach Philip did not see any improvement in Wu Dao. He finally realized that Wu Dao had no talent for assisting defense.
No matter how hard you try in martial arts, it is impossible to have the same assisting defense ability as Garnett.

God gave him excellent offensive ability, but took away some of Wu Dao's basketball IQ in assisting defense.

But what made Coach Philip feel relieved was that Wu Dao had a pretty good talent for breaking through. His field of vision was wide, and his body was outstanding. During the game, he had a chance to pass the ball even when facing a double team.

There are still great gains to be made by focusing on strengthening the transmission ability of martial arts.

Budo has no way to be the central axis in the low post and drive the offense of the entire team through excellent basketball IQ and good conduction.

However, he can act as an initiator of an offense, relying on his outstanding breakthrough ability to affect the opponent's defense and thus create scoring opportunities for other teammates.

The operating modes of these two offensive systems have different requirements for players. The latter system relies more on the personal abilities of the players and has similar requirements for basketball IQ.

But the first method is not something that Wu Dao can handle. His understanding of techniques and tactics is not as good as his scoring ability.
After Barkley joined the team, the Timberwolves' biggest concern was the balance of export rights.

But when martial arts made a compromise, the balance of the right to attack was no longer a problem.

Lian Wudao has already agreed with Coach Philip's idea, and players like Garnett and Marbury will not object, and they have no reason to object.

Time flies, and it is October in a blink of an eye.

In the early morning of the month, the Timberwolves set out and began to play some low-intensity and low-density warm-up matches under the arrangement of the league.

This warm-up match is actually the NBA preseason game, it’s just a different way of saying it.

The competition venue is not limited to the country. In order to expand the influence of the league, the NBA even held one of the Timberwolves' warm-up games in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture.

This game was more of a commercial performance than a warm-up match for the Timberwolves to hone their lineup.

The Timberwolves' opponent is not the NBA's own team, but the Neon national team.

The result of the game was naturally not surprising. It was a completely one-sided massacre. The Timberwolves didn't even send out their main players in this game. Wu Dao even left the court early after only playing for a quarter of more than ten minutes. The rest of the time was spent by different main players and substitutes fighting against their opponents.

But even this low-level fight completely crushed the Neon men's basketball team.

There were two games in total. The first game was a game for the Timberwolves to establish their power, and they won by almost 30 points. In the second game, the Timberwolves played more conservatively, and only won by 15 points.

The two consecutive NBA preseason games held in Kanagawa also caused a sensation in Japan.

Nike, which has already signed a contract with Budo, also took this opportunity to open several stores in Neon, and took advantage of the NBA preseason to quickly expand its territory.

Originally in this place, the better-selling sports brands were all local, and even Adidas' market share was higher than Nike's.

This country, which originally did not promote basketball, has also been influenced by the emergence of martial arts.

But Budo's influence was not limited to this. His agent found a group of trolls in a certain oriental country, and they promoted the "Japanese basketball threat theory" during the NBA preseason. Under the influence of the press release, major domestic newspapers also reported on the two NBA preseason games held in Kanagawa, and also used Budo's name to criticize the closed practices of the domestic basketball circle and expressed concern about the issue of domestic players playing overseas.

Our domestic fans are still obsessed with the title of "Asian Overlord", not to mention that in the 90s when the team was at its peak, when Yao Ming had not yet achieved results in the CBA, the influence of the 94 golden generation has never disappeared.

The 96 Atlanta Olympics was just around the corner, only two years had passed.

The influence of Asian Jordan Hu Weidong is at its peak. This year, the Mavericks of the NBA also hoped that Hu Weidong could go to the United States to play, although it was a short-term contract, but everyone knows that if Hu Weidong can make the trip in his prime, he will be a regular rotation player after adapting to the NBA arena.

However, due to a knee injury, Hu Weidong was unable to make the trip.

This incident, because of the various announcements related to martial arts, gained a lot of attention and was once again dug up by media reporters.

Not only Hu Weidong, but also the fact that Dazhi was invited by six NCAA universities in the Atlanta Olympics was dug up by the media. His failure to go was closely related to the management system of the national team.

Now that the media sees that Dazhi’s influence around the world is far less than that of “outsiders”, the emotions of the Chinese people are naturally completely ignited.

The wave of public opinion created by reporters has put pressure on Gong, Li and others, and this wave of public opinion is growing stronger as the NBA regular season approaches.

When Wudao, who was far away in Kanagawa, learned about the current trend of public opinion in the country, a look of surprise appeared on his face.

Then he immediately reacted and held a media conference with the help of the team:

“For athletes, pursuing improvement should be a good thing.”

"Anything that restricts an athlete from pursuing their limits is destroying an athlete's future."

"In basketball, the fastest growth happens to be between the ages of 16 or 17 and 24 or 25. You should take risks while you are young."

"Who knows what kind of situation a player can get into?"

"In my opinion, the actions of a certain local basketball administration are simply killing the professional lives of athletes for their own selfish desires."

"I met a player named Yao during a training camp in the United States. To be honest, I was a little envious of his talent."

"He has the potential to become a superstar, but if he doesn't enter the NBA as soon as possible, I'm afraid the ceiling he can reach in the end will be very limited."

No one knew why Wu Dao suddenly held such a press conference and said such words against the Dongda basketball management in front of the media. I am afraid that only Wu Dao knew the nature of that group of people. If you want to change from within, there is no way to change those people's old ideas and concepts.

Coincidentally, he is now one of the hottest stars in the NBA. By speaking out through overseas media, he has the opportunity to force those people to make changes.

Wu Dao's words were also translated into Chinese by someone. When some fans heard the name "yao" from his mouth, they had no idea who he was talking about. However, everyone who was closely related to Yao Ming knew who Wu Dao was talking to.

Those people also tried to suppress this surging wave of public opinion through some means, but when they failed to produce sufficiently substantial results, their means were completely ineffective.

The media reporters also had something to say. Ren Wudao was an NBA superstar who once defeated the Bulls led by Michael Jordan, defeated Shaquille O'Neal, and made Barkley his deputy. How could Giegie's words be wrong?
These domestic leaders who have made no achievements in the world of basketball, do they know basketball?!

The pressure from public opinion has completely become a trend. Yao Ming, who had just returned to China and had already accepted the current situation and planned to make achievements in the CBA arena first, also became uneasy.

At the same time, Dazhi, who already has a certain status in the domestic basketball world, is also ready to make a move.

He could not make it in time for the 98 draft, so he thought about going overseas first, training while looking for an opportunity to enter the NBA. At worst, he could participate in the 99 draft!

He has played in the World Series and is full of confidence in his own abilities. The public opinion storm that has been created this time will also be of great benefit to him.

Improving yourself and entering a higher level league is one thing, but making and spending dollars is equally important, isn't it?
The billion-dollar lifetime contract between Budo and Nike has already spread throughout the domestic basketball circle.

No matter how simple and undemanding an athlete is, it is impossible for him to remain indifferent to a contract of this amount.

The storm of public opinion stirred up by Wu Dao made the leaders extremely anxious. After thinking about countermeasures for a while, they finally came up with a dirty trick. They started buying articles to accuse Wu Dao of saying those words in order to destroy unity.

Some people, after becoming obsessed with black magic, started to criticize Wudao, saying that his basketball skills were not good enough and that he was just lucky enough to get into the Timberwolves and get the support of the black brothers. In the end, they even started to question the standard of the NBA.

These remarks have gained some market share in China, but unfortunately, there are quite a few fans in China who follow the NBA league, and these remarks are simply a joke in the eyes of insiders.

Against this backdrop, Wu Dao, who had finished his pre-season game in Kanagawa, boarded a plane to Ami after visiting relatives and friends for a few days.

In the next series of warm-up games, the Timberwolves will gradually increase the playing time of the main players so that they can adapt to the court as soon as possible to cope with the regular season starting in early November.

1998 11 Month 2 Day.

The regular season of the new season has officially started. The Timberwolves' first opponent of the new season is the Kings led by center Verratti Divac, a mature veteran who has just turned 30 years old.

111: 87.

The Timberwolves' first game of the new season was like a crushing defeat, easily crushing their opponents.

In this game, Wu Dao "only" scored 26 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 1 steal.

In addition to him, Garnett and Barkley both scored over 20 points, Tom and Marbury both scored in double digits, and the offensive distribution of the entire team was quite balanced.

All NBA teams that pay attention to the Timberwolves' growth have noticed that Wu Dao's scoring data has declined slightly compared to last season, but they also noticed that Wu Dao's other data began to soar.

(End of this chapter)