Chapter 1062: Chapter 441: Breaking the Voting Record Again!
Losing to the Spurs had reasons within the Bobcats themselves. Being tornted by the two previous opponents from Texas was miserable enough, two intensely contested battles with single-digit point differences, plus the last ga of a five-ga trip, the Bobcats players had stamina issues, not to ntion injury impacts. Not only did Millsap not co to the away ga, but Pietrus also got injured after the ga with the Rockets and missed the ga against the Spurs.
However, the Spurs’ offense was really unexpectedly strong for the Bobcats, scoring 35 to 26 against them in the first quarter.
The day before the ga, while looking at the Spurs’ scouting report, Zhang Yang discovered that the Spurs, who were 15 wins and 12 losses before Christmas, had quietly reached 20 wins and 12 losses.
After ending their 12-ga winning streak, the Spurs secured a six-ga winning streak, bringing their record to 21 wins and 12 losses, tying the Mavericks who just lost to the Grizzlies!
With a starting lineup of Conley, Finley, Guy, Diaw, and Duncan, plus main bench players like Ginobili, Roger Mason, Kurt Thomas, Bonner, George Hill, Udoka, and Oberto, the Spurs’ 12-player rotation was really starting to click offensively!
But there was quite a difference from Zhang Yang’s impression of the “Spurs system,” mainly because moving Duncan to the center position increased the team’s speed, and it was centered around the organizational offensive abilities of Conley Diaw, Ginobili Hill leading the team offense. Overall, it was still star-studded basketball.
However, so things were already showing; many Spurs players were becoming functional, most notably… star player Duncan, averaging 21 points, 10.6 rebounds, 2.3 assists, and 2.3 blocks per ga. His average assists were the lowest of his career, but scoring and shooting percentage were at a four-year high, and efficiency had rebounded from last season’s career-low of 23.1 to a level comparable to his career average of 24.7.
Duncan was playing simpler, his personal defensive efficiency showed so improvent, directly reflected in his blocks data, rising from last season’s average of 1.9 blocks to the career-average level of 2.3 blocks.
Guy was no longer being trained to beco the next McGrady or whoever, his shot proportion had increased, but his holding rate had decreased, often used as the first option for long-distance shots, cuts, and the occasional simple isolation — forceful shots.
Zhang Yang guessed Popovich’s idea was that, since this guy’s isolation play always ended up dribbling and pulling up over defense to shoot, it would be better to play faster, avoiding the situation like the last two years with McGrady — dribbling while teammates stopped.
From the overall performance, Guy was slightly down from last season’s sophomore year, still uncertain if this was a painful adjustnt period from fundantally changing his play style or simply a bad fit.
To make a talent like Guy choose a functional style, it mainly took a higher-caliber talent, team core Duncan first chose and successfully beca functional.
The Spurs were completely different from before, their offense had begun transforming, but not without cost — surrendering an average of 97 points at the start decreased to the current average of 99.6 points, which was below the league average performance.
Tonight the Bobcats’ overall state was poor, yet they still scored over a hundred.
It’s obvious the Spurs’ preparation for changing the playing style wasn’t as thorough as in the original tiline of the 2010-2011 season.
It might be because of different lineup or overall different NBA landscape…
Zhang Yang also noticed a rather outrageous statistic, with Duncan earning a maximum salary of 20.6 million and Ginobili close to a ten million annual salary of 9.91 million this season, the Spurs’ total salary was 63.31 million, more than 8 million below the luxury tax threshold.
This ant that in two or three years, when Guy and Conley would need renewal, Popovich could thoroughly lower salaries for Duncan and Ginobili, who would be two to three years older, keeping the salary firmly below the luxury tax threshold.
Previously Zhang Yang’s attention on Popovich was all about his coaching ability, only now discovering that the business acun as Spurs’ executive was also quite sothing.
…
On the 6th at noon, Zhang Yang returned to Charlotte with the team, and when he got ho, he found mom, dad, and brother were there, prepared fried sauce noodles for his return.
Previously, when he first transferred to Compton High School, every ti he returned ho, mom and dad would prepare fried sauce noodles for him.
It’s an old ho tradition, when soone cos back from traveling far, the family prepares a bowl of steaming hot fried sauce noodles for them.
But by 11th grade, since mom and dad started their business, it stopped happening.
Now, Zhang Yang guessed it was because the market conditions were bad, mom and dad’s company’s market expansion was stagnating, maybe even shrinking, they had ti? Regardless of reasons, he ate happily and with relish.
Things like this, if there are, they are blessings, if not, it’s normal. Everyone is busy these days, he too hasn’t much ti to be with family, spending eight to nine months with the team each year, the remaining three to four months involve comrcial endorsents, training.
In the afternoon, he played baseball with little Wukong for a while, his brother had quite sports talent, not even four years old, swinging a mini baseball bat with vigor, but it frustrated him. He hoped to play basketball with his brother, thinking maybe in the future they could play real brother basketball.
Even if the NBA didn’t work out, the CBA should be possible, if not, teaming to play amateur basketball was also fine.
Unexpectedly, little Wukong liked baseball from the start.
On the bright side, at least it wasn’t soccer, lucky their family lived in Arica doing business, and not doing business with eagles.
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