start with scouting

Chapter 444 One person is a strong team

As the saying goes, "Sincerity is what leads to gold and stone", Su Yang's words of praise finally won the complete trust of Cousins.

Starting from the purchase of the Kings, first invited to have a barbecue, then had a heart-to-heart talk on a private plane, and publicly announced that Cousins ​​​​is the boss of the Kings, followed by signing a four-year top-level long-term contract, and finally compared the representatives of each team. Finally brushed full.

If it's a strategy game, Cousins' favorability for Su Yang is 100, and his loyalty is also 100, which is full.

"I am very happy to stay in Sacramento for a long time. I am very happy to play for coach Su Yang. I will reduce those irrational and unnecessary behaviors in the new season. I will lead the team to the playoffs. We are the kings..." Cousin Si is in high spirits.

After the press conference, Su Yang returned to the office in a hurry to discuss cooperation with Anta, Peak, and Li Ning. He directly opened a game that made Li Ning unacceptable and voluntarily quit. .

Covington and several other players are willing to sign the contract, and the conditions are relatively loose. It is enough to wear brand sneakers to play a certain number of times each season, and there is no need to bind them with long-term contracts. It will not delay the players from signing big names in the future, but they will pay endorsement fees. reduce accordingly.

Anyway, Anta and Peak showed their faces in advertising, Covington and other players made extra money, and Su Yang raised his reputation to attract people's hearts.

In addition to player endorsements, Anta and Peak's venue advertisements were also arranged. Jiang Ruolan served as the revenue director, and vigorously negotiated two short-term contracts, earning a small profit of 200 million US dollars. After the future record is improved, the advertising cost will be greatly increased. .

I won straight away.

The next day, November [-], the Kings played against the Clippers at home.

Su Yang rushed to the arena early to read the scout report first.

The biggest change for the Clippers in the new season is the entry of the championship coach Rivers, and Rivers also serves as the president of basketball affairs and has the power to sign contracts for players. In order to give his son a big contract in the future, lock the Clippers as a substitute. Space, foreshadowing.

The first signing of Rivers was to get Redick. He obviously wanted to replicate his championship experience with the Celtics. He clearly wanted Redick to be used as a young white version of Ray Allen. A floppy hand to hand.

The starting salary of Redick's contract is 650 million US dollars, which is not expensive to be honest, but the contribution to the playoffs is very small, which is a bit wasteful.

When the signing was signed, Clippers owner Sterling also came forward to object, which made Rivers succeed by threatening to resign.

"The Clippers are as good as Paul and Griffin. The rest of Redick, Jamal Crawford, and Jared Dudley are middle-class contract traps. The luxury tax is really weird..."

Su Yang complained for a while, as an exchange of experience with Xin Ji and others: Never give away small change, take the whole money if you want it.The mainstream team building idea should be like that. In the 20th year of the new NBA century, except for the Spurs and Warriors, almost all the winning teams are operated by superstars.

The reason why the Spurs and Warriors don't pile up is because they have a lot of cash, some of which are sent to the door for nothing.

At six o'clock in the afternoon, the game officially started.

Su Yang adjusted the starting lineup, Jason Thompson went to play center, and Cousins ​​was changed to power forward. When the short whistle sounded, he pulled Cousins ​​and said: "Griffin will definitely find a way to irritate you , you must remain calm and don’t be deceived.”

Cousins ​​nodded to show his understanding, followed by his debut, turned around and passed Griffin on the first offense, and made a layup.

The Clippers changed sides to attack, and it turned out to be around the Clippers thugs. The quality of Jordan's screens was very good, and Paul passed the ball quickly and accurately. It was hard for Marcus Thornton to match the rhythm, and he could only watch Redick make an emergency stop. Catch, hit and 19-footer for two.

A hit is a hit, the efficiency is really low, that is why the Celtics were easy to be reversed at the beginning, the whole team ran tactics around a certain player, the motivation was too obvious, but when the confrontation intensity in the playoffs increased, they hit the iron several times in a row and took the lead The advantage is gone.

Between you and me, Cousins' defense allowed Griffin to make a layup, and Griffin's defense made Cousins' walk error, while Paul on the Clippers side did not attack the defensive weakness Thomas Jr., which seemed very important for winning Sure, pass to Redick frequently.

The Kings are not particularly outstanding. Although the Clippers' scoring efficiency is mediocre, the overall defense is not bad. Antetokounmpo and Thomas Jr. can't rush up. The first quarter of the game lasted 3 minutes. Su Yang requested a regular timeout and arranged for Gay and Mill Sapp appears.

Cousins ​​took advantage of the opportunity to return to the center position, and the offensive firepower of the Kings' power forward and small forward positions suddenly increased significantly.

The Clippers were hard to resist. The Kings took the opportunity to play a 7-0 offensive. Rivers also replaced Paul and Griffin as usual. Winton and Gobert, direct generals.

Without Paul's command and defense, the Clippers were even more chaotic, but Jamal Crawford won in chaos. DeGebert's scalp tingled.

It's a pity that the Clippers have Crawford who can play like that, and the others either don't have themselves or have no authority to launch an offensive.

Su Yang didn't instruct the Kings players to specifically target them, and Crawford's own state declined after playing the game, and he began to pay for nothing.

The Kings took the opportunity to gradually expand their advantage, leading the Clippers by 14 points at halftime, making it useless for Paul to score 11 points in a single quarter.

Back from the halftime break in the third quarter, Paul suddenly gave up attacking Thomas Jr., and did not take the initiative to seek scoring opportunities from other positions. He even failed to send out assists for a long time. Win the competition.

Su Yang didn't relax at all. He commanded the king's generals to fully blossom. Eight players scored 8 points in a single quarter and entered the fourth quarter with a 32-point lead. Finally, he saw Paul who became anxious and let Paul attack consecutively. Take the defense and quickly shrink by 21 points.

At the critical moment, Su Yang arranged for Thomas Jr. and Millsap to pick and roll consecutively. The two took advantage of Griffin's defensive weakness and scored 9 points on 6 of 13 shots. They maintained the lead strongly for the last 3 minutes, and Rivers followed suit. Foul free throw tactics.

Thomas Jr. and Thornton made decent free throws, while Paul, who entered the runaway mode, hit two consecutive three-pointers.

Seeing that the lead had dropped to about 11 points, Su Yang was quite puzzled: "Why didn't Paul attack before? Could it be because of back-to-back consecutive battles, which exhausted too much energy? But this is the third game of the new season, flying from Oakland to Sarawak. City, I'm not too tired..."

While wondering, after the game was over, the Kings defeated the Clippers 110-104 and won two consecutive victories at the start of the season.

Five Kings scored in double figures, Cousins ​​scored the highest 24 points, and Paul scored 26 points for the Clippers.

Many fans thought the Kings were a fluke, and by the way, Dudley, who the Clippers spent a lot of time signing in the offseason, had a defensive efficiency (allowing opponents to score every 100 rounds) to be the lowest in the Clippers at 122, which was teased by Gay like a monkey.

The offensive efficiency is not bad, and he hit two three-pointers, which almost allowed the Clippers to strengthen the front line, which seemed to be half the battle.

The Kings rested for one night and flew to Oakland the next day to challenge back-to-back the Warriors, who had a significantly upgraded lineup during the offseason.

When the game started, Su Yang took a look at the Warriors roster and found that there were Bogut, Iguodala, David Lee, Thompson, and Barnes, but there were no Curry and Green, and the starting point guard was Tony. Douglas, that's downgrade.

"The symbol of the Warriors is that Curry has no ball and Green deals the cards. This is equivalent to gathering a bunch of components and waiting for the core to be in place..."

Between sighs, the two teams played inextricably, mainly because of Thompson's three-pointer, and he scored 5 of 4 in the opening 3 minutes.

Fortunately, Thompson's state did not last long. During the king's bench stage, Gobert dominated the inside, grabbed 8 offensive rebounds, helped the king get many second chances to score, gradually established a lead, and finally defeated the Warriors 98 to 89.

With three consecutive victories at the start, the king's team has greatly increased their momentum. They returned to the home court to rest for three days to face the visiting Eagles from the East.

Because Su Yang snatched Millsap, the Eagles chose to use Carl Landry as a substitute, and the offensive and defensive threats plummeted.

After the whole game, the Kings won 105 to 100 without any risk. They won four consecutive victories at the beginning of the season and continued to dominate the list.

After ESPN’s post-match analysis, guest Scott Pippen said: “Before the season started, we underestimated or even ignored the Sacramento Kings like we did in the past many years. It has been promoted to a strong team, among which Su Yang contributed the most, he has his own system, where he goes, he will become stronger..."

Many fans also expressed their concern for the Kings on social platforms. ESPN then announced an adjustment plan, temporarily abandoning the national live broadcast of the Washington Wizards and 76ers in the United States, and instead live broadcasting the Kings and Nuggets. After all, the two offensive teams will be very interesting.

Amidst the praise, Su Yang was worried about the King's defense, because in the first four games, he had a big lead, but was almost reversed. Before the training camp was held in October, the defensive strategies arranged around Thomas Jr. were often useless.

(End of this chapter)